“At 42 Augusten Burroughs is the first to admit he has written “more memoirs than anyone my age should be entitled to write.”
His fifth, “A Wolf at the Table,” comes out on Tuesday. But this new one, about his relationship with his father, breaks from the dark comedy that characterized the wildly popular “Running With Scissors.” Gone are the sharp one-liners, the exaggerated portraits and the wacky antics. In their place is a chilling and terrifying depiction of a soulless sociopath who can barely contain a murderous rage toward his youngest son and mentally unstable wife. It’s more Stephen King than David Sedaris.
“I knew before writing a single word that it wouldn’t have the same tone,” Mr. Burroughs said during a brief visit to New York from his home in Amherst, Mass. Tall and skinny in jeans, a gray T-shirt and baseball cap, Mr. Burroughs looks much younger than the bearded, severe man who stares out from the back of the book’s jacket.” …
… Sitting in his Manhattan hotel room, he leaned back in the chair and folded his arms, displaying a curling blue-green tattoo along both forearms; written in intricate script was “Cicatrix manet.” “I just got it,” Mr. Burroughs said, holding the tattoo out for closer inspection. “It’s Latin for ‘the scar remains.’ ”
