Have a very dysfunctional Christmas

While I was growing up, my mother was notoriously crazy about Christmas, a trait she passed on to me (so, no, November 12th is not too early to review a holiday book); however, my dad was an alcoholic, so I know a little something about dysfunctional holidays. Augusten Burroughs' new book, You Better Not Cry, is a collection of short essays about some of his more memorable Christmases, mostly of the dysfunctional type. I should point out that I have never read anything by Burroughs before, though I know two things about him: he writes, with dark humor and edginess, about his crazy family, and he's gay. So of course, I was expecting another David Sedaris. That may not be fair to Burroughs, but my expectations definitely affected my experience of reading this book.

These essays do in fact sound like stabs at Sedaris-like true stories, and most work well enough. The first three are written from the viewpoint of the author as a child and they make his family sound quaintly nutty rather than downright crazy; any of them could be adapted into a family TV special, though the title story, the funniest one in the book, is about little Augusten's conflation of Santa with Jesus and is perhaps a bit too edgy for prime-time--it ends with him kissing a wax Santa figure a little too enthusiastically and turns suddenly into a scene out of a George Romero movie.

The tone changes dramatically with the 4th story, in which an adult Burroughs, prone to alcoholic blackouts, wakes up in bed one morning with a naked Santa Claus, or more precisely an old man with "a small WWII-era erection" who wears a Santa suit. The two best stories follow: "Why Do You Reward Me Thus?" a beautifully written tale about the Christmas he spent in an alcoholic daze with a group of homeless people, and "The Best and Only Everything," equal parts wrenching and touching, about Christmases spent with an HIV-positive boyfriend. The last essay, a relatively happy though not necessarily funny story about his current partner, is closer in spirit to Sedaris' latest work but is the weakest tale in the book.

Still, I'm happy to have read this, and it makes me want to go read his first memoir, Running with Scissors, to help complete the picture I have Burroughs from these stories. Occasionally, especially early on when he's writing in the persona of his younger self, his writing seems a little too crafted, like he's set a goal to try and write a laugh-out-loud line every five paragraphs or so. Like Sedaris, he takes a winding, sidetracking route through his memories which sometimes works (the naked Santa) and sometimes doesn't--he begins "Claus and Effect" talking about a boy he knew whose birthday fell right after Christmas, but this feels like a tacked-on part of the story rather than being integral to it. Still, I gotta love a guy who can write a sentence like this about Hannukah: "I'd stop forcing the poor Jews to tart up their humble little temple dedication anniversary into some corn-fed whore of a holiday to compete with our super-slut, three-titted Christmas." Much as I love my multi-breasted holiday, I almost fell out of bed laughing.