Classic Impressions

ISBN 9780312428273

Paperback

Burroughs's abusive father was a philosophy professor whose complex intellectual obsessions isolated him from other people, particularly his own family. While at first he was merely a brooding peripheral presence in the life of young Augusten, he gradually begins to enact a torrent of abuse, both physical and psychological. As he brutally depicts this despicable behavior, Burroughs eventually determines that his father simply did not want him, but every dark and magnificent sentence of the book stands as a testament to his cathartic recovery.