![]() In fact, it’s one of the most compulsively quotable books in recent memory. It’s heavy, heart-wrenching stuff, but Burroughs has such a way with words that Dry almost never threatens to sink into melodrama. In addition to getting sober, he begins facing the realization that his HIV-positive best friend, Pighead, whom he almost constantly ignores in favor of long hours at the bars, is getting progressively sicker. Forced into an ultimatum by his colleagues, Burroughs, who is gay, gets into rehab at the Proud Institute, a substance abuse facility for gay people. This story finds Burroughs as a young advertising whiz facing almost certain termination because of his alcoholism. That book left Burroughs just as he hit adulthood, parted ways with both of his dysfunctional families and struck out on his own. It’s a follow-up to his sad yet hilarious book Running With Scissors, about how Burroughs’ crazy mother sent him to live with her even crazier psychiatrist and his unhinged family. That’s the subject of Burroughs’ latest memoir, Dry. That’s because, instead of wallowing in his pain and suffering, Burroughs treats the terrible events in his past with such humor that you end up laughing at things that aren’t in themselves funny. ![]() Nobody writes about incredible, unbelievable emotional agony like Augusten Burroughs. ![]()
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