Happy Birthday Augusten Burroughs

October 23, 2008

Funny.

The last two nights when I was driving home at 7pm The Writer’s Almanac on NPR played the same show–which was about Augusten Burroughs (author of Running With Scissors, Dry, A Wolf at the Table…duh). It felt kind of like that movie, Groundhog Day, in fact, I had to check my cell phone to see if it was still the same day. Weird.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Mr. Burroughs, born October 23, 1965.(photo by Brad Harris, courtesy of New York Magazine).

I’ve never met you (though Ted and I did see you at BEA in LA in 2003; you walked past us down a long hallway heading to an event), but I admire your tenacity and drive, your prolificacy, and your taste in art and artists (as seen on his splashy new website), and most recently–your tattoos! Nice ink.

There is even an official Augusten Burroughs T-shirt, designed by the awesome James Anthony (whose handprinted T-shirts,  featuring illustrations, engravings and woodcuts from the late 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, i’ve oogled on Etsy for a while). He’s got a great sale going on now, too. Check him out. I’m going to have to get one myself, I think. (photo courtesy of augusten.com)

Oh, but back to Augusten Burroughs. There was an interesting article/interview with him in New York Magazine back in April, called The Memory Addict about writing memoirs. The quote before the article is intriguing:

Memory is the same as imagination.
—Giambattista Vico, New Science, 1725

Speaking of quotes, here’s one from Mr. Burroughs himself, on writing in general:

“The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.”