Read This.
Full disclosure: I generally do not enjoy memoirs. I just don’t. I mean, here’s an entire genre dedicated to giving average people a platform for inflating or otherwise glorifying their more often than not average lives for personal gain. Remember the Oprah-driven outrage at that one dude? People were floored that he had *gasp* manipulated details in his memoir.
For. Shame.
Look, you want the whole truth? A real look at a person’s life, rife with the minutia of day-to-day living, studded sparingly with the rare sparkling moments of glorious triumph and pure anguish which we are all allotted? Read a diary or collection of letters. Sure, they’re dry and rambling and mostly uneventful—you know what? They’re still warped through the personal lens of the writer. This truth everyone’s so excited about? It’s a false promise. For example, there can be more truth in a totally fictional representation of something than in a first hand account of the same real-life events.
Person perception warps facts faster than a funhouse mirror.
With that caveat stated, and bearing it in mind, I love this book. Do I take it as gospel truth? Hell no. But I don’t need it to be. Augusten Burroughs is a fantastic storyteller and that is what I care about.
Dry is a heartbreakingly raw examination of one man’s struggle with addiction. It’s self-deprecating and darkly funny in a way that reveals more truth than any list of facts possibly could. I flat out do not care if anything in this book really happened. It stands alone as a beautifully written unlikely hero’s journey. From the bottom of a bottle, out of a Hoarders-esk apartment, through interventions and realizations and a gauntlet of failed, failing or otherwise tragic personal relationships, we watch our hero battle and falter and break though. We love him, we hate him, we cringe for him and through it all, he still manages to make us laugh. It’s a dazzling example of a coping mechanism familiar to so many of us. The more terrible his reality is, the funnier he spins it; it’s tragic in a way no “realistic” account of his trials could possibly be and the truth I get out of that is incalculable.
I’ve made it sound bleak… and I guess it is, but trust me. Give Burroughs a try. Think of him as a darker, more damaged David Sedaris. And yes, that is a compliment. Despite the serious nature of Dry’s subject matter, this book is entertaining & quick, perfect for outside reading in this glorious warm weather. Add it to your summer reading list and thank me later.
