Augusten Burroughs' "A Wolf at the Table"

I find Augusten Burroughs' books to be gripping. He has a real storytelling flair. This book deals with his missing relationship with his father and is mostly focused on his early life (up to age around 11). The earlier book Running with Scissors dealt with this relationship with his mother and how she farmed him out to live with her crazy psychiatrist's family.

He never pins down what problem his father had other than alcoholism and a "deadness" about him (i.e. a lack of empathy and "sense of fun" that included tormenting him and his mother). His older brother, John Elder Robison, writes in his book, Look Me in the Eye, that his father probably suffered from Asperger's Syndrome like John Elder. But Augusten implies that his father was sociopathic. While the father brutalized the wife and kids he put on a "nice face" and rose to be head of the department of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts. Amazing!

The books by the two brothers raises the question of "where is the truth"? The two sons agree that the family was dysfunctional, that the father was an ugly drunk who beat on his wife, and that the mother drifted into psychotic episodes when the younger kid hit about 10 years of age. The older brother had a fondness for his father despite the beatings he got, but apparantly never reconciled with the mother. The younger brother's story is a longer for a relationship with his father but that the father terrorized him when he was young and rejected him all the way up to the end of his life. The younger brother doesn't show much desire for a relationship with the mother and paints a horrible picture of her abandoning him to a dysfunctional doctor's family. How much truth is there here? Presumably a lot. But, here is an audio recording of an interview with the mother that gives the impression that she has recovered and seeks a good relationship with the younger son. It is a mystery. But it is fascinating.

These books by Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison are an interesting study in genius, madness, and dysfunctional families. And they show that despite terrible circumstances, kids can prevail since both brothers have succeeded despite the horrible circumstances of their childhood.