Perhaps it was inspired foresight. Or maybe it was alcoholic delusions of grandeur. But five years ago, while in the throes of alcohol poisoning and lying on sheets that hadn't been washed for a year, Augusten Burroughs, now 39 and the author of the bestselling memoir Running with Scissors and new essay collection Magical Thinking, decided to write a novel. Maniacally typing 18 hours every day, he completed the manuscript in a week. The book was entitled Sellevision, a madcap take on the Home Shopping Network, and the experience convinced him that he would eventually publish a book. It might not be Sellevision. He might be 80, feeble and toothless, and the publisher might be some obscure press few ever heard of, but a book of his would be published. Any other possibility was, as he puts it, simply "inconceivable."
"Once I wrote Sellevision, the life-long feeling that writing a book was impossible—I mean 200, 300 pages, in a specific order!—ended, says Burroughs, wearing his trademark baseball cap ("my hairpiece"), a plaid shirt, an oversize T-shirt and worn jeans while picking at an egg white omelet at a Manhattan cafe. Once I did it, I figured I could do it again. It was simply a matter of time before I actually got something published. It just happened a lot faster than I thought."
After writing Sellevision, he bought a guide to literary agents the size of "three phone books" and began sending the manuscript out to those names that "looked nice." One of the agents to receive it was Christopher Schelling, with Ralph Vicinanza. Schelling liked the novel and contacted Burroughs immediately, explaining he wanted to work with him on it. "Christopher went through with a red pen and made comments like, 'each time a new person speaks, make it a new paragraph,' " says Burroughs. "Or 'put that comma inside the quote mark.' Basic things that you would learn in school had I gone to school. But the last grade that I ever fully completed was fourth."
Although Sellevision was rejected by houses all over New York because, as Burroughs explains, it was "shallow and vacuous," one publisher, St. Martin's, was interested and acquired it for $7,000. But the book, Burroughs admits, initially didn't do so well. "It's a satire about the home shopping network and the people who would appreciate it, cynical urbanites, don't watch shows like QVC and those who do wouldn't buy it because it makes fun of them."
Still, St. Martin's was responsive to Burroughs's next book idea, a private journal that he had written chronicling his battle with the bottle called Dry.
"I was flabbergasted that they bought the writing I do for myself," he says. "So I said, if you like Dry, I should type up my childhood, which was really weird. So I wrote a 14-page proposal in like 20 minutes."
The proposal was for Running with Scissors, about being raised by a quack psychiatrist after being abandoned by his crazy mom. St. Martin's also bought it, but decided to publish it before the already completed Dry so that the two memoirs would follow the author's life chronologically. Of course, Running with Scissors became an unexpected publishing hit, with more than 100,000 in print in hardcover and 600,000 in paperback. Dry also did well, with 80,000 hardcover copies and 160,000 paperbacks in print.
Burroughs credits his success to St. Martin's eagerness to publish new writers. "What's great about St. Martin's is that they publish more first-time authors than any other publisher," he says. "You think about the very literary houses in this country, the ones with the ampersands and three names, and how they talk about supporting writers, and here's St. Martin's, which is not necessarily known as a very prestigious house, and they're out there publishing more new authors. A lot of those writers may come and go, but at least they're published."
Burroughs, however, is not likely to disappear anytime soon. The success of both memoirs was followed by a fairly lucrative deal for two more books, both essay collections, of which Magical Thinking is the first (with a first printing of 200,000). Magical Thinking contains Burroughs's inimitable ruminations on everything from fellating clergymen to the allure of transsexuals as well as the writer's failed stint as a child actor. The second, Possible Side Effects, is scheduled for 2005. In addition, Burroughs's editor at St. Martin's, Jennifer Enderlin, recently made a hefty seven-figure investment in three more books.
Inevitably, some see St. Martin's trying to groom the next David Sedaris. Burroughs isn't one of them. "I think that anyone who's funny gets compared to him. I don't make that connection."
Burroughs says his experience as an advertising executive, which he wrote about in Dry, prepared him for critics of his work. "Advertising ideas that you work really hard on are immediately shot down, and then you have five minutes to come up with something new," he says. "Similarly, there are going to be people who really love every word I write and those who think I'm the biggest hack that ever lived, but my self-esteem doesn't come from my writing. It's not my life."
His life, he explains, is with his partner of five years, his two dogs and his friends. "I'm obsessed with family and home and stability," he says. "Things I've never had."
And even if he never sells another book, he says, there's always a second profession awaiting him as a registered nurse. "I've always seen my alternate career as being in a hospital emergency room because I'm good under that kind of pressure. I believe that I can make everything work out. It's probably fucking delusional. And it's probably a quality that's applicable in only a couple areas of life. Emergency medicine is one. Publishing is another."
