Since the senior Robison died in 2005, he won't have a chance to refute Burroughs' portrait with a memoir of his own like the rest of his family. The eldest Robison was a popular professor of philosophy, respected by his colleagues and students, who suffered from severe psoriasis. Like his son, he was an alcoholic. The darker side of Professor Robison comes out in a particularly trying moment from A Wolf At the Table, as described by the Times:

...Mr. Burroughs describes a fight between his drunken father and his brother that took place when Mr. Burroughs was 10. Certain that it would end in one of their deaths, he runs to his brother’s room, grabs a rifle and then shoves it into John Elder’s hand, screaming, “Kill him, kill him, kill him.” John Elder raises the gun and points it until his father walks away. The next day, John Elder, who had left home for good, returns to teach Augusten how to fire a gun on his own so he can protect himself.

Burroughs' story  is undercut by John Elder Robison's version, a rendering complicated by his Asberger's Syndrome, which causes him to struggle with a lack of empathy, among other symptoms.

On the phone Mr. Robison said, “I didn’t see that same scene as a particularly monstrous event.” The rifle was a BB gun, he said. A teenager “looks at that scene and it’s almost comical,” he said. But to a child, “it’s menacing, and his big brother seems able to protect him.” John Elder acknowledges that because of Asperger’s it is often difficult for him to decipher emotions and meaning and says he think his father possibly shared some of his autistic traits. “Sometimes I can’t see the subtleties of behavior,” he said. “My brother is the opposite of that. He’s overdramatic.”

Their mother has no memory of the gun incident or her husband dousing his cigarette on his son's forehead. She plans on weighing in on the rest of her son's book in her own forthcoming memoir.

A Son Peers At Father And Finds A Sociopath [NYT]

Chapter Ten of A Wolf At The Door [Augusten.com, PDF]

I bought Frey's book, before The Smoking Gun debunked so much of it, and I liked it. I'm a sucker for confessions. (Hey, even Gawker loved him on first sight, back in January of 2003.) I love writers who specialize in wide-open honesty; it's sort of my favorite thing, actually. My favorite writers—Kathy Acker, Eileen Myles, Jonathan Ames, David Sedaris, Cookie Mueller, Sylvia Plath, Colette, Mary Gaitskill, Phoebe Gloeckner, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Dawn Powell—are all expert confessors.

Oh, and here are the people whose confessions generally rub me the wrong way: Chuck Klosterman, Neal Pollack, Nick Hornby, Steve Almond, Julie Powell, Elizabeth Gilbert, Stephanie Klein. The people whose confessions often reek of bragging, even when—especially when—the bragging is along the lines of "look how disgusting/uncool/modest/bad at relationships I am." Or: "look at what a lame person I used to be."

But I liked A Million Little Pieces specifically because James Frey seemed to eschew that kind of self-mythologizing. There was something about the book that just felt... honest. True. Which means, I guess, that Frey is a very talented writer? Or maybe just a very, very talented liar.

Frey didn't just pull an Augusten Burroughs—it's not like the lies were "discrepancies" attributable to "we all have our own personal truths," though he did use nearly that exact lame line. He blatantly wrote about factual things that never occurred as if they'd happened to him, and in doing so, made his readers feel sympathy and vicarious pain. He toyed with our emotions, and when we found out we'd been lied to, we felt betrayed. I did, at least—and, hey, Oprah did! And everyone who said, "well, it's still a really well-written book" seriously has something wrong with them.

But apparently it's a big so-what. Our culture isn't into consequences. Shame is the new fame. What yesterday's news means is that James Frey's career will continue, and as it does, the story of the fraud he perpetrated on four million readers will drift further and further down the page in any profile written about him, until it's in the last paragraph, until it's in the last line, until it's not there at all.

George Saunders, in an essay about how reading Johnny Tremain changed his life, wrote:

Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others). If we learn what a truthful sentence looks like, a little flag goes up at a false one. False prose can mark an attempt to evade responsibility, or something more diabolical; the process of improving our prose disciplines the mind, hones the logic, and most importantly, tells us what we really think.

You know that Miss Teen USA contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton, the one who gave a retarded answer to a stupid question and became an instant YouTube sensation? Last week, the wire services were full of pictures of her, going to fashion shows and parties. She's famous now. In a few more weeks, no one will remember what she originally became famous for. They'll only know that they know her name.

St. Martin's Press is pleased to announce a very favorable settlement of the lawsuit over Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs.

St. Martin's views the settlement as a complete vindication of the accuracy of the memoir. Among other things, it expressly allows continued publication of the memoir with not a single change to the text (other than a few trivial changes to the front matter, one of which changed "memoir to "book" in the Author's Note). The settlement does not require any change to the description of the book as a "memoir" on the cover or anywhere else.

Augusten Burroughs issued the following statement:

"I consider this not only a personal victory but a victory for all memoirists. I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir, and that it was not fictionalized or sensationalized in any way. I did not embellish or invent elements. We had a very strong case because I had the truth on my side.

Contrary to published reports, I did not reveal the family's real name to any journalists, and I never intended to hurt their feelings. I was just telling my life story.

To clarify, Running With Scissors is still called a memoir. It always has been a memoir, and the family expressly agreed that it will continue to be called one. I was happy to substitute the one word "book" for "memoir" on the Author's Note page, but it still says "A Memoir" on the cover, and will continue to be truthfully advertised as such. I was also happy to add an additional expression of gratitude to the family in the Acknowledgments, as well as to point out the fact that they remember things differently.

Not one word of the actual memoir itself has been changed or altered in any way. The text is exactly as I wrote it, intended it, and lived it. Running With Scissors was and continues to be the true story of my unusual and remarkable childhood."

Future printings of Running with Scissors will contain the following language:

Where the Acknowledgements page currently reads: "Additionally, I would like to thank each and every member of a certain Massachusetts family for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own," the following will be substituted: "Additionally, I would like to thank the real-life members of the family portrayed in this book for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own. I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors." In addition, on the Author's Note page (but, as the family agreed, nowhere else) the word "book" will replace the word "memoir." The book still will be described as a memoir on the cover and elsewhere. The family agreed to that, and "memoir" remains an entirely accurate description of the book.

According to a statement from the family's attorneys, Burroughs' new acknowledgments note will say that the Turcottes "are each fine, decent, and hardworking people," and that the book was not intended to hurt them.

Family Settles With Running With Scissors Author [AP]

Non-fiction: Memoir: John Elder Robison's memoir of growing up with Asperger's Syndrome and emerging as a fully-realized adult, with a foreword by Robison's brother, Augusten Burroughs, to Rachel Klayman at Crown, in a pre-empt, in a major deal, reportedly for $1.1 million (NY Post dollars), by Christopher Schelling at Ralph M. Vicinanza (world).

Deal Of The Day [Publishers Marketplace]

Ladies and gentlemen, the Fake Writer Club's latest inductee is Augusten Burroughs—at least according to a reportedly scathing article by Buzz Bissinger in this month's Vanity Fair (on sale next week). Seems that Burroughs got a little creative in Running With Scissors in his descriptions of the family that took him in as a teenager, as Bissinger told the Boston Globe:

"I don't know how [Burroughs] lives with himself," Bissinger told us yesterday. " ' Running With Scissors' contains little strands of fact that were wildly embellished, and if you take those away, you don't have much of a book."

Scissors Author Accused as a Fraud [Boston Globe]