Running With Scissors

[+ Lucky]

This book has nbeen on the NY Times best sellers list for a very long time and is now coming out (so to speak) as a major motion picture. So, when a friend gave me a copy of the book, I was interested to check it out.

 

Well, I am on page three and already hate it. Does it get better? What is the attraction here?

[buzz]

Glad to know there is another person with the same reaction I had. I tried another of his book and hated that too. The whole concept smells of another con job.

[Guest bighugbearphx]

I read that, and Burrough's three subsequent books, and reviewed them on Amazon and a bookstore website I participate in. Like you, I hated Scissors from the start, felt it was glorifying extreme dysfunction and irresponsibility, and have serious doubts that these are truly "memoirs" rather than mostly fiction. Got a lot of "nastygrams" from people who took exception to my Scissors review, and considered it the greatest book they have ever read. Go figure.

 

Why is it so popular, and made into a film? Guess it's the same reason people stop to look at horrible accidents on the road. I prefer to keep driving.

 

Two of his later books, "Dry" and "Magical Thinking", give a better insight into the author and are - IMO - better books. His latest, "Magical Thinking", I think is as bad as Scissors.

 

Still, I am curious to see how they dealt with some of the book's scenes in the film. Guess I'll wait for it to come to cable.

[Guest alanm]

I'm still on the fence about the ability of people to comment on your Amazon.com reviews. I reviewed "Kate" by William J. Mann (2nd review

on the review page), giving the Hepburn bio 5 stars. I was attacked by someone named "Mets Fan" and our back and forth went on much too long (11 comments).

 

I finally looked up William J. Mann's website and e-mailed him for help.

Mann did respond at length about his research and fans wanting to keep the "memory" of the supposed Hepburn-Tracy affair. You have to click on Mann's profile to find his response. The problem with the comments section is that author will not always be available to speak up for you

when someone attacks his sources.

 

I plan to see the film version of "Running with Scissors," tomorrow, if only to see how Joseph Finnes looks now. I know the film has received awful reviews.

[Guest alanm]

Oh....wait a minute.

 

William J. Mann is best known as the author of "Where the Boys Are" and

"The Men from the Boys." Two of the most popular gay novels of the last

few years.

[AdamSmith]

It sucks shit at least as far as page 50. For some reason I persevered that far before concluding it was getting worse, not better.

 

I dropped it and went back to Boswell's Life of Johnson and Larry Niven's The Ringworld Throne, which make nice reading in tandem. It was a relief to escape from Burroughs' world.

[+ Lucky]

Coincidentally, when I realized that I wasn't a Scissors sister, I picked up Mann's The Men From The Boys and immediately liked it. Surprising since I posted last year what a waste I thought his All American Boy was...

[Guest alanm]

I could not get through "All American Boy" until my fourth try.

 

From talking to the folks at Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia, my guess is that the two Provincetown novels still make money & have allowed Mann to write his Hollywood biographies (Hepburn, John Schlesinger, William Haines).