Mark's review of Dry: A Memoir

Dry: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs

Mark's review

rating:

status: Read in January, 2005

After reading Dry I went over to Cedar Tavern for a martini. I don’t normally drink martinis, but according to Augusten Burroughs, the famous Cedar Tavern on University Place in Manhattan serves huge ones (“enormous; great bowls of vodka soup”) - so you get the most of what you pay for. But as it turned out their martinis are actually rather small, the opposite of Burroughs’ claim. And the bartender on the second floor told me that the martinis have been the same size for at least five years since he began working there. So what the fuck is Burroughs talking about?
Not that I was surprised by this. While reading Dry – a “memoir” about overcoming the “disease” of alcoholism - I couldn’t help but think Burroughs had, um, invented many of the book’s anecdotes and conversations. The Cedar Tavern trip confirmed the suspicions.
Do a little research and discover the writer Augusten Burroughs as a liar on many levels. First, his real name is Christopher Rob...more After reading Dry I went over to Cedar Tavern for a martini. I don’t normally drink martinis, but according to Augusten Burroughs, the famous Cedar Tavern on University Place in Manhattan serves huge ones (“enormous; great bowls of vodka soup”) - so you get the most of what you pay for. But as it turned out their martinis are actually rather small, the opposite of Burroughs’ claim. And the bartender on the second floor told me that the martinis have been the same size for at least five years since he began working there. So what the fuck is Burroughs talking about?
Not that I was surprised by this. While reading Dry – a “memoir” about overcoming the “disease” of alcoholism - I couldn’t help but think Burroughs had, um, invented many of the book’s anecdotes and conversations. The Cedar Tavern trip confirmed the suspicions.
Do a little research and discover the writer Augusten Burroughs as a liar on many levels. First, his real name is Christopher Robison. I can’t fully read his twisted mind, but it’s pretty clear the name-change is supposed to lend his authorial presence more grandeur. Is he trying to sound aristocratic? Sophisticated? British? As if he were William S. Burroughs’ son? Or what? You really should know you’re on the wrong track when you do the opposite of Mark Twain, who changed his high-sounding given name of Samuel Clemens into something people like Augusten Burroughs would likely describe as common.
About half of Dry is dialogue, and I wondered how Burroughs could recall all those intricate conversations, word for word, especially if he was drinking a liter of scotch every night, as he claims. We aren’t even given any prefatory disclaimer, as memoirs often issue, about how the conversations are recalled to the best of the author’s ability. Here’s a typical exchange (note that “Hayden” is a friend Burroughs met at their Minnesota-based rehab clinic):

Hayden is aghast. “That seems hostile,” he says.

“Rick’s a fuck. He’s a homophobic closet case and he hasn’t got an ounce of talent. He just hitched his wagon to Elenor years ago and she’s too busy to notice he’s as dumb as a box of hair.”
Hayden takes a long sip of water. “You have to keep an eye on this Rick person.”

For starters, even if you had remembered saying something as retarded as ‘dumb as a box of hair’ you wouldn’t publish it for the world to see, would you? Anyway, that’s simply not a line someone just improvises in the middle of a chat. That’s a line a bad writer cooks up because he can’t think of anything else to put down on the page. Hayden taking a ‘long’ sip of water (rather than, say, a short sip) is a nice touch, don’t ya think? That’s true literary talent right there for you.
The only part of Dry I didn’t hate is the very beginning when Burroughs is still routinely getting shit-faced. The buzz is officially killed on page 33 when he checks into rehab. It doesn’t even get dimly interesting again until page 257 after Burroughs falls off the wagon. The 200 or so pages in between are of course replete with a lot of AA/rehab talk and sermonizing. But mostly for Burroughs, the sober pages are just an excuse for the author to tell us all about himself and his dull relationships with co-workers and boyfriends. Unlike some of his fellow AA friends, he says he has no trouble staying sober, and even quickly stops attending meetings, so that he can instead focus the narrative on the drama of his relationships, whether we like it or not. Alcohol is rarely mentioned during these pages except when Burroughs feels the need to remind the reader that this is still a story about alcoholism. For instance, somewhere in the middle of the book, he concocts a tale about how he once went to a bar by himself and almost ordered a beer but then pulled himself together at the last second, settling for a Diet Coke. We are supposed to care and empathize with what is obviously an imagined scene. And then he’ll end certain sections by pretending to have a craved a drink at whatever point he’s at in his fascinating relationship memoir: “I have a sudden longing for a Cape Codder,” he’ll tell us, out of nowhere, leaving it at that. In hindsight, I realize these lines are intended to foreshadow his eventual return to drink. This is a story after all, so it really doesn’t matter if any of those longings actually happened.
In one scene after he quit drinking he describes emptying a bottle of scotch into the toilet: “I flush twice. And then I think, why did I flush twice? The answer, [sic:] is of course, because I truly do not know myself. I cannot be sure I won’t attempt to drink from the toilet, like a dog.”
Sorry folks, but I’m just not buying this schlock. And I’m happy to say that I didn’t buy this schlock – the book was given as a gift. One flush wouldn’t get rid of the booze?? One flush wouldn’t prevent Burroughs from sticking his face into the toilet bowl to drink the (now alcohol-free) water? I don’t know how anyone could believe any of this. To begin with, Burroughs wasn’t that bad an alcoholic. He wasn’t knocking back cologne or anything. He’s a rich-boy, then advertising copywriter whose worst offense was to overindulge on martinis and Dewar’s, with perhaps a little blow on the side. If you quit that, you don’t fall off the wagon by drinking toilet water. You simply go to the liquor store and buy another bottle.
And I think this yarn is the winner: He tells us that his spacious Manhattan apartment is “clean and modern in design” except that it is ridden with empty liquor bottles. “Three hundred one-liter bottles of scotch…And when I used to drink beer instead of scotch, the beer bottles would collect. I counted the beer bottles once: one thousand, four hundred and fifty-two,” he writes, expecting to horrify us. Now, I don’t believe any of this for a second, but if it is actually true, then the trouble here is that Burroughs is just a fucking nutcase, and alcoholism is the least of his problems. Think about it: he spends his time inventing stories that he passes off as biography. That’s pretty twisted if you ask me.
Burroughs himself tells us that he didn’t even realize leaving thousands of empty bottles on the floor was abnormal, until the subject was brought up in rehab. He also pretends to have not known that the very purpose of rehab is to make people dry. Without a trace of irony, Burroughs writes, “Sober. So that’s what I’m here to become.” Yeah right, like he didn’t know. For some reason, I can’t help but think that this sort of contrived stupidity plays well with the American public.
So here’s my verdict on this book: Like other “memoir” specialists Dave Eggers and more notoriously James Frey, Burroughs’ only goal is self-promotion. The book is a con job written for the sort of people who consider themselves hip and liberal but secretly watch America’s Funniest Home Videos. Ostensibly the memoir is about alcoholism but like I said that’s not what it’s really about. The only subject discussed at length is Augusten Burroughs and all of his tedious relationships. “Dry” is definitely the operative word here, but not for the stated reason. Alcohol is just the decoy plot, so that the author and publisher can rationalize the appearance of yet another Burroughs reflection on his ordinary or otherwise tiresome life. There are no ideas in this book. No insights. No worthy discussion of booze and drugs. It is shallow, written, apparently, for fans of Elle, People and Time magazines and for Oprah Winfrey, as the laudatory quotes on the back of the book indicate. And this is what pathetically passes for good, edgy, humorous writing in America these days. And I suppose the question of whether it’s memoir or as I argue fiction is ultimately trumped by the unavoidable conclusion that this book is quite simply the literary equivalent of dog shit, not fit for consumption by anyone who has taste, never mind an ability to detect fraudulence.

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message 1: by Mark

02/05/2008 08:23PM

Yeah, I wouldn't normally write a review that long, just casually. I wrote it for a magazine, but it got 'killed' so I just dumped it on here and Amazon...

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message 2: by Matt

02/17/2008 07:13PM

Interesting review, but not a good one. I accidently voted that I liked it...didn't realize the that "vote" option on a review meant an automatic plus vote.

In a nutshell I find your review to be verbose and polemic...no wonder it got "killed". I mean you are entitled to disliking the book, but you would have been better off to just say your didn't like it. Instead your diatribe lacks any constructive criticism and stinks of sour grapes. Perhaps you can use your sour grapes to make some wine/whine.

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message 3: by Jeff

03/12/2008 11:13AM

"your" thread? It's *the* comment thread for this particular review.

Let me jump into "your" thread, too:

The review was pretty awful. Rambling and hostile. It's extremely clear that the reviewer simply does not like Burroughs' style. That's fine, but many of the criticisms are simply invalid.

To address a few points of this weird review:
1) As for how he could possibly remember such details from his life of drink, well, he has mentioned on many counts how he has kept a detailed journal from a very young age, even through his drunkenness.
2) As for the "box of hair" comment, well, I found it to be rather hilarious, in a catty sort of way. Whether he genuinely has these conversations, and whether he even thinks of these things on the spot, it doesn't really matter. That's the catty, snarky style that people love and expect from him.

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message 4: by Sophia (last edited 03/14/2008 08:32PM)

03/14/2008 08:29PM

hmm....I'm on the fence.

This guy totally ruined any chance of me reading this book if it's really like he says. Plus there aren't very many 5 stars for it. Plus the movie Running with Scissors was a waste of life :-p

But I liked this thread, no matter whose it is.

You guys made me laugh :-)

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message 5: by Matt (last edited 05/15/2008 11:28AM)

05/15/2008 11:11AM

Angela, It is OK for people to disagree and it is even more OK to criticize someone's review. Especially if your friend is trying to get his reveiew published.

Jeff, indeed "box of hair" is a great line.

Sophia, give "Dry" a try! I haven't read "..Scissors" but have certainly seen a good book fail as a movie before.

Is this my thread yet?!

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message 6: by Emas

06/28/2008 10:02PM

There actually is a disclaimer. On the copyright page of the book, there's an author's note that reads: "This memoir is based on my experiences over a ten-year period. Names have been changed, characters combined, and events compressed. Certain episodes are imaginative re-creation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events."

I honestly don't care if memoirs are entirely a fictional version of the truth, as long as they're entertaining. And what I've read of Dry so far is entertaining, if not exactly heavy reading.

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message 7: by Daniel

08/10/2008 11:08AM

Exactly how many NY Times best sellers have you published? Oh, right you can't even get a review published, much less a novel. I can see why.

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message 8: by Aimee

08/29/2008 12:51PM

Burrough's was twenty-four when he had those martinis at the Cedar Tavern so your bartender would have had to work there closer to twenty years ago to remember them.

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message 9: by Jeremy

10/04/2008 08:55PM

I actually went to the rehab he described, and unless he knew someone who was willing to seriously blab, it was spot on. Yes, I am bored with his real life this-that-and-the-other type of B.S. memoire, but this one rung true.

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message 10: by Justin

11/20/2008 09:45PM

Since this not a case study about alcoholism, it's not exactly SHOCKING that much of the book would be spent recounting situations in Burroughs' life.

You seem to take great issue with people writing about themselves. Might I suggest you move away from the memoir section of the book store?

Might I also recommend that you never write another review. This is complete tripe. If you think that what Burroughs has written falls into the "bad" column and that your review is "good"...well, I'd suggest reevaluating your ability to critique anything at all.

One last thing- I've used and heard others use the phrase "dumb as a box of hair" for most of my life. Apparently it must be a regional colloquialism.

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Mark's review of Dry: A Memoir

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