A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father

I'm giving this book three stars primarily on the technical aspect of Burroughs writing. It's extremely well written, evocative, moody, and at times actually scary.For those who are familiar with his other books, this is also uncharacteristically very serious, lacking the many laughs or frankly even chuckles his other books have elicited. My problem with the book is that I kept waiting for the torrent of what I believed, and is actually foreshadowed, of violence at the hands of his father towards Augusten. Some of the incidents that he relays are awful there's no denying it, and there's no way to underestimate the feelings brought on by living with someone who was so clearly an angry alcoholic, but less so the menacing sociopath he would lead you to believe tormented him. The homicidal impulses he believes his father was capable of were merely that; feelings. And as the book progressed it seemed to become less about an abusive parent, whether physical or emotional, and more about a boy becoming a man and finding the way to put to rest the monster that had been created, and accept he might never get the love and validation he was seeking from this wolf he called "Dead".

Augusten Burroughs has written some funny books. Prominent among them is his autobiographical RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, about growing up with an older brother with Asperger Syndrome, a mother with mental illness who retreated from conflict, and a father who was an alcoholic. Burroughs managed to mine that potentially horrific set of circumstances for nuggets of skewed humor. In A WOLF AT THE TABLE, he gives up the struggle to find amusement there and tells it like it was. The result is gripping, depressing and at times truly scary.

The wolf is Burroughs's dad, a man who battled the demons of booze, demons that in the author's skilled treatment often come to terrifying life. The flawed patriarch abused his wife and children, forcing them all to exist within his life-despising mental morass. As a small child who had a right to expect a modicum of love from his parents, Burroughs simply learned to retreat and expect very little from Daddy --- no hugs, almost no touching, no walks, no talks, no kind words. His father, a college professor, sat and drank, demanding utmost quiet while he did so. The second son became an invalid who hid from the world. Incident after incident infused his young spirit with hopes, then dashed them.

One day Burroughs's father took him to the University, to his classroom. The boy, seeing some space on the blackboard, began to scribble. He informed Burroughs with a smile, "That was a bad idea." Burroughs became used to feeling a chill in the air when his father smiled: "there was nothing happy in that smile."

Burroughs begins the memoir with a scene in which he is being hunted by a ravening presence: "if my father caught me, he would cut my neck." The child in his pajamas races, blundering through the woods, trying to elude "the jabbing slash from his flashlight." Nightmare? Or fact? Later, we are told, he sees a telltale pine needle in his father's hair.

As time passes, Burroughs's brother becomes an increasing burden to the family, exhibiting wildly anti-social behavior and only occasionally acting in a sane way to try to help his younger sibling survive the horror. At one point, his method was to teach the boy how to shoot a rifle, telling him, "You have to be able to protect yourself because I won't be around."

So where was the mother in this family drama? Passive, mentally unstable, far too weak to combat her cold, often enraged husband, she was probably unfit to raise children, even in the happiest of circumstances. She married someone who was promising, a rising star among men, who was studying for the ministry. Not long after their wedding, the star fell. The man of God lost his faith, dropped out of his studies and began to worship the seductive satan of alcohol. He later developed psoriatic arthritis, which compounded his misery and his hatred of all things life-affirming and comforting to others. Over the long years of Burroughs's lost childhood, his father became paranoid and his mother the trembling prey for his fits of anger. At best, he was a control freak and she was his cowering lackey.

A few times she ran away, taking her confused son with her. For a little while there would be an unsettled peace, in a motel room, with the only parent who touched him and confided in him. Then she would be taken away, institutionalized, and return home in a zombie state, all the heavy tranquilizers still unable to suppress her need to scream occasionally. The deaths of two family dogs underscore the evil that roamed the house. One was ignored when it was clearly sick, and despite Burroughs's childish alerts, it died without succor. The other was finally put out of its misery after it turned savagely aggressive.

More than once, from an early age, Burroughs had fantasies of killing his father. But he could not, he realized, because his father hadn't whipped and tortured him --- "all he was guilty of was not wanting me."

No matter how "normal" one's childhood, there are moments when a child simply cannot comprehend the actions and thoughts that emanate from the grownup realm. Mistakes are made in the "best" of homes. This book chronicles one long, depressing, harrowing series of life-ruining mistakes. That its author pulled through is a small miracle of resilience. Burroughs sets up no signposts along this perilous route. He simply re-walks his childhood path, every harrowing step of the way, and we walk a few steps behind, putting our feet, often reluctantly, in his small footsteps.

A WOLF AT THE TABLE is being hailed as a masterpiece created by a remarkable talent, and all the praise is fully deserved. Though a difficult read, you will find something of yourself in it.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

I do not believe that this book is a memoir. If this book is a memoir then he and James Fray should get together and compare notes. If you do not understand you need only to read the first chapter and see that their is NO WAY possible that this man remembers so vividly at 1 1/2 years old the details he has written. This book is an embellishment about his life. I believe as many other reviews that after reading this book I question the authors honesty. I did before everyone blast me enjoy Running with Scissors very much. It was a great read it however is not a memoir. There are many people in this world that grow up in disfunctional families and do not make it their goal to profit off it.

this book was really good. showed the life of a boy and his relationship with his father. amazing how a parent can mess up a childs life and the child becomes an adult and the feelings never go away from chuldhood.

I have read all of Mr. Burroughs previous books and have enjoyed all of them, with the exception of the ridiculous Running with Scissors. A Wolf at the Table is a real departure for Burroughs and it is executed with moments of sheer brilliance. The most powerful strategy he employs in this text is his use of his childhood perspective. His phrasing and consistent childhood point of view keeps the reader edgy and reminds us of our own fears and insecurities as children. The world looks so very different from this side of adulthood. There were numerous moments where his style and insight was so precise that I had to remind myself that he was looking back on these issues, not writing them at the time they happened. Truly, that is a skill.
The epilogue of this book where Burroughs feels (but does not experience) the real intense love that a father can have for a son overpowers the reader almost as much as it overpowered him at the time he experienced it.
There is no neat resolution. One ends this memoir feeling that Burroughs has no good use for his father's memory. One cannot blame him if he doesn't. However, the book is not a nihilistic work, but a plea. If anything the perceptive reader will put this text down feeling a deep sense of responsibility. We all have obligations to those we love, and those who love us. After finishing A Wolf at the Table, I hope that I always meet them.