Burroughs urges people not to wait for someone else to make amends or someone else to help rather, a person must take responsibility and have a strong understanding that everyone is the author of their own life. īurroughs says he does not believe in powerlessness or self-pity.

Burroughs discusses his own experiences and how he survived them and kept moving forward. Burroughs says the book is about crises, how a person must be 'absolutely brutally honest' with oneself. Burroughs wrote the book as a response to those questions. Synopsis Īccording to the publisher's synopsis, the book 'explores how to survive the 'un-survivable'' in a different way from most self-help books.īurroughs has said that the question he is asked more often than any other is how he survived certain experiences in his life. This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More for Young and Old Alike is the eighth book by Augusten Burroughs. You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas Print ( hardcover and paperback), digital Scissors, and casual fans might not go for it.For other uses, see This Is How (disambiguation). (June)įorecast: Burroughs is now an NPR commentator and started writing a sex column inĭetails last month, so his reader base may be expanding. Burroughs strains here to replicate that zany tone and occasionally indulges in navel-gazing, but readers accustomed to his heady cocktail of fizzy humor and epiphanic poignancy won't be disappointed. One of the many pleasures of Burroughs's first book was the happy revelation that despite the author's surreal, crueler-than-Dickensian upbringing, he managed to land among a tribe of fellow eccentrics. But when he falls for a wealthy crack addict and his best friend begins to succumb to AIDS, the support he'd enjoyed in rehab begins to crumble.

Initially repulsed by his recovery program's maudlin language and mind-numbing platitudes, Burroughs eventually makes a steadfast, equally incredulous friend in rehab, finds his own salvation and confidently re-enters society. and the check?' ' Alas, Burroughs's co-workers are tired of him embarrassing clients by spraying Donna Karan for Men not only around his neck but also on his tongue to mask the tangy miasma of alcohol, and they insist he seek help. The real Augusten would say, 'Could I get a Bloody Mary, extra Tabasco. Asked to sign reams of legal forms before entering rehab, he notes, 'the real Augusten would never stand for this. Burroughs has a knack for ending up in depraved situations and a vibrant talent for writing about them. None of the many readers of Burroughs's mordant memoir debut, Running with Scissors, would doubt that its entertainingly twisted author could manage, by page 41 of his new installment, to check himself into America's frumpiest alcohol rehab facility for gays.

Author augusten burroughs