Running With Scissors - The Hollywood Quarterly

Papercuts:
A Reader Response to
Running With Scissors
Written By:
Nazelee Dagliyan
Elizabeth Garcia
Aram Der Bedrossian
Suzanne Libraty
Violeta Dupon
Running With Scissors: Tense Shift
We are a group of young scholars who are studying the effects of literature on us
as we mature. As representatives of a culture known for open mindedness and liberal
mentality, we are interested in the social and personal effects of Running with Scissors.
While the subject matter of the story is intensively personal, we find that when we apply
reader response criticism, we have a more clear understanding of our relationship to the
text.
For our purposes reader response is subdivided into the perceptions of inside and
outside reader. Reader Response is a critical approach to literature. It emphasizes the
reader’s emotional connection to the text. Because we live in a diverse society, the
reaction to Running with Scissors may vary. It is the reader responsibility to shape his or
her own experience based on interpretation of the text.
The reader will become familiar with who he is on the unconscious and
subconscious level. As he learns who he is, he will experience inner realization as well as
self-knowledge. The keys to our interpretation of the memoir are through the inside and
outside reader, both of whom are directed by the narrator. The central component of the
inside and outside reader is voyeurism.
The dictionary definition of voyeurism is “the compulsion to seek sexual
gratification by secretively looking at sexual objects or acts; the actions of a Peeping
Tom.” In Freud's theory of personality, he depicts the pleasure principle as the driving
force of the “id,” that is constantly seeking gratification of needs, wants, and personal
urges. The pleasure principle tries to fulfill our most basic and primitive urges, such as
sex and hunger. When our needs are not met, we become tense and even anxious. In
Running with Scissors, the chapter “The Joy of Sex” contains the perfect depiction of
how the reader of this book turns into the voyeur from the objective observer. As
examining descriptive details such as, “I’m lying back on Neil’s bed, the top of my head
knocking against the headboard because his cock is inexplicably down my throat,” the
readers gets the feeling as if they are actually there watching this event. Depending on the
sex of the readers and their sexual preferences, they will in some way receive either a
sense of pleasure or disgust while reading this book. There is a form of Voyeurism when
reading such details because readers feel as if they are in the same bedroom with the
characters, and they are secretively watching as a “Peeping Tom,” as the definition of
Voyeurism suggests.
We refer to an inside reader as a reader who openly accepts the narrator’s
description of a story as an objective reality. The distinction of the inside reader is
described in the essay “Look Inside: A Feminist Response to Tom Jones” by Debra Hall.
The author defines the inside reader as “in the know because he reads the material the
narrator has carefully laid out for the reader” (Hall 6). This type of reader is easily
manipulated and willingly follows the ideas and beliefs of the narrator. Thus, the narrator
and the inside reader have strong connections to each other because they see the story in
the same way. In addition, when the narrator uses present tense, the reader experiences
scenes while reading the story and feels as if he or she is actually in the story themselves.
In Chapter 10 of Running with Scissors, Augustan illustrates his first sexual encounter
with Neil. The intensity captures the reader’s sexual attention. Therefore, the reader
relates to the character’s emotions in the story. As a result, the narrator controls the
thought process of the inside reader.
“Look Inside: A Feminist Response to Tom Jones” further distinguishes the
readers’ response to the text from the vantage point of the outside reader. The author
describes the outside reader as a reader that “enmeshes with the narrator and functions
within the novel as an extension of him” (Hall 8). On the other hand, the outside readers
are readers that challenge the beliefs of the narrator. These types of readers are more
skeptical because they are aware of what they are reading. The narrator may have beliefs
that the reader disagrees with, so the reader is less apt to accept the narrator’s opinions
and can even oppose them. In Chapter 13 of Running with Scissors, Augustan is abusive
to Neil and Augustan threatens Neil with a statutory rape charge. The outside reader can
feel disconnected because the narrator presents the relationship as distant. The outside
reader may wonder why the characters would suddenly become distant in a relationship.
Also, when the narrator uses past tense, the outside readers start to become detached
because they don’t see themselves as a character in the story. The narrator and the outside
reader are much more separated from each other. This means that the narrator does not so
easily control the pleasure of the outside reader.
As we read Running With Scissors, we learned many things about ourselves. The
self-realization did not come cheap. The book, which revolves around the life of a homosexual young boy, has many graphic descriptions. Often the author, Augusten Burroughs,
describes his sexual encounters with another man, Neil Bookman, who is over the age of
30. As the male respondent for our group, I would have to admit that during the detailed
descriptions of oral sex and sodomy, I felt extremely uncomfortable. When presented
with descriptive story details in the present tense, I felt disgust. The urge to throw the
book down as if it were a spider was really hard to fight off. I have always thought of
myself as extremely open-minded. Therefore, I am disappointed to admit that the
imprinted image in my head of two men sexually active with each other is something I
find repugnant. When placed in the present tense, in the room, as it were, I am likely to
feel the intensity and true feelings that the character is feeling him self. For example, in
the chapter “The Joy of Sex (preteen edition),” the description of their sexual activity and
Augusten’s disgust in the present tense definitely intensified my emotions. The words
cock and fucker, when presented to me “in the now” caused me to feel extremely uneasy
also a little sympathetic towards Augusten and his situation.
As the female respondent for our group, coming closer to the end of the book,
Running With Scissors, I realized that, although I was intrigued by the book, all
throughout the reading, I found myself not wanting to put the book down when I was the
inside reader. I came to find out that, as the context of the book shifted from an inside
reader to outside reader, I felt as though I was right there in the scene with Augusten
Burroughs when I responded as the inside reader.
It felt as though we were there in the scene sitting next to the protagonist and
experiencing everything he was going through; feeling his pain, love, passion, confusion
and everything else he went through in his childhood and teenage years when we
responded as the inside reader. For example, as a young woman I often feel moderately
happy. When I read the narrator’s present tense description of his own feelings of anger, I
experienced that identical pain. In the chapter School Daze, the words “you’re giving me
away to your shrink,” resonated with me as though I were in the moment, reliving the
experience in union of Burroughs.
When the context shifted into past tense and we became the outside reader, we
felt we were not being able to connect with the story. We could not feel his pain, love,
passion, and confusion, as intimately as when we were the inside reader. In the chapter
Oh, Christmas Tree, the narrator remembers a Christmas with his family: mother, father,
and brother, “I became obsessed with decorating my room in the spirit of Christmas.” I
was reading chapter and the words “I am most certainly am not hysterical” from the
mother were funny to read. I felt that I was disconnected from this chapter and was not
experiencing the emotions to the degree as when he was explaining how he went to his
mothers house and walked into an unpleasant scene. His naked mother and her lesbian
lover, whom he knew nothing about, doing a little more than kissing behind closed doors.
Being both an inside and outside reader in the same book has been an emotional
rollercoaster, especially in the story life of Augusten Burroughs.
The journey through Running With Scissors has been a fascinating experience in
self-discovery. We have not as young scholars, had a chance to take literary analysis to a
deeply interpersonal level. In his discourse on the level of reader response textual
interpretation the author allowed us, the readers to connect with the book on many
different levels. As a result we became familiar with who we are at an unconscious and
subconscious level, and through this experience, we gained inner realization and selfknowledge.
As we applied Freud’s pleasure theory, we understood more clearly why
Augusten felt the need to push himself throughout the book to fulfill his needs of finding
his happiness. In Freud’s words, “The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels
us - of becoming happy - is not attainable: yet we may not - nay, cannot - give up the
efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other.”
Augusten Borroughs has given us an opportunity to explore a completely different
world through Running with Scissors. His work has no filter, and he puts everything out
there in a way that helps us get a deeper feel for the content, and the mood and setting of
each situation and event.
Our responses to the text is best summed up in these words from Augusten
Borroughs.
“The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that
there was nobody to tell you what not to do.”
Bibliography
-Burroughs, Augusten. Running with Scissors: A Memoir. New York: St. Martin's, 2002.
Print.
-Cherry, Kendra. "Pleasure Principle." About.com Psychology. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
<http://psychology.about.com/od/pindex/g/def_pleasurepri.htm>.
-Hall, Debra D. "The Complete Thesis | Look Inside - A Feminist Response to Tom
Jones." The Complete Thesis | Look Inside - A Feminist Response to Tom Jones. Web. 19
Mar. 2012. <http://www.lookinsidetomjones.com/the-complete-thesis/>.
-Lye, John. “Reader-Response: Various Positions.” Brock University. 4 April 2006.
-"Voyeurism." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/voyeurism?s=t>.