Augusten Burroughs is a far-from-ordinary man that has led a far-from-ordinary life. His series of tragic memoirs, characterized by his razor-sharp wit and blatant honesty, detail an outrageous life that few could have escaped unscathed. The interview was a pleasant surprise, with Augusten warm, excited, and eager to speak about his new memoir, “A Wolf at the Table,” a much darker and even more intimate peek into his childhood. Augusten was almost frenetic during the time we spoke, but it was a controlled chaos. He seems to be at peace with his past and the role he now plays in sharing that with others. The following questions give a bit more insight into this fascinating man.

So this is the beginning of your tour, do you like the touring the aspect of being an author?
Yeah, I do. I like people, I like meeting people. The actual touring; the flights and the hotels and all that sort of thing is complicated. Thank God they handle it or I’d end up in the middle of nowhere somewhere. But yeah, it's great, because its when I get to actually meet the people who read my stuff. It's such an intense experience…even though the exchanges are pretty quick, at a signing, it's just quick. It's so intense, it's indescribable, you know you can’t make someone who’s not an author understand how much information you can get across emotionally that quickly.

The fact that your writing is so personal must make it easier for them to open up to you.
People do that to me, they open up, that's why there’s no ice to break. People come up and it might make some authors, some people, uncomfortable but people tell me things. But I love it, it’s real.

Has there ever been anything weird? Where someone has come and said too much?
Totally, it’s too close, yeah. I wrote about one woman, Dr. Pepper enema woman, and you know I thought that would be a trend, but it's rare. It happens, it definitely happens, but it's rare. I wish it would happen more, because that is what people want to know - who the freaks are, but it's so rare, people are really cool.

Do you think you have a personality that lends well to writing, or did you not have a choice - you had to write?
I didn’t have a choice, but my personality is suited for it too, because it’s a binge. I write in a binge, I tour on a binge, and then I do absolutely nothing but go home and watch Battlestar Gallactica. Nothing. It’s a total binge life.

Has your fame increased now that you’ve had a book made into a film, etc?
Yes, definitely, it always increases, you can see it, you can tell when you’re recognized, and you are written about more….and then with the whole memoir scandal…

Yeah I was going to ask you about that.
It [fame] has definitely increased, but I live the same life with the same friends that I’ve always had. Well, I have some new friends too, but you know.

So about this book [A Wolf at the Table], it’s definitely a lot darker and more personal.
Yeah, it’s a total departure, it’s not like anything else, it’s totally different…

Was it harder for you to write? Since you didn’t have the humor to cut it?
Right, and that’s exactly the key, I didn’t have the humor to cut through it when I was that age. That is why it [the humor] is not in the book, because I didn’t have that defense mechanism.

I thought it was really interesting how at the beginning of the book you were very young, you were sharing some of your first memories.
A lot of people don’t believe me that I can remember that far back, I can remember earlier, you know, and that was kind of like my ‘fuck you’ to people who think….I always get asked “How can you remember a conversation you had when you were 13?” and I’m like “Fuck you, how can you not?” I can remember when I was 8 fucking months old. You know Asperger’s runs in the family, its probably somehow related. My nephew has Asperger’s now, he was just diagnosed, my brother has it, my father very well could have had it, and I may have a touch of it. That kind of deep recollection of childhood memories is common in people who are autistic. I can remember the texture of the aluminum pot my mother was cooking with. So my feeling is that I write it anyway and let people think I made it up, let people think whatever they want. It’s just the way it is. It’s a double-edged sword because it's painful and very real to remember, when I was writing this book if was very upsetting and harrowing, it was very vivid.

So it is, it’s a hard process for you to write; you must get tired and run down.
Well the other books were fun to write. I hate saying it because it sounds spoiled but it [writing WATT] was harrowing, it was draining, I didn’t know if I was going to get out of it. In the back of my mind I was thinking “Are people going to hate this?” because it’s not funny. We’re such a consumer society and I’m a product of that. Are they going to be shaking the book, listening for the rattle and saying “my copy is broken, the funny is broken in this copy can I exchange it?” But I realized I couldn’t think like that. That is how the reviews have been, they love it or hate it.

I read about your brother and how he was able to make peace with your father before he died, were you able to do that?
Yeah he did. My brother had these early years, since he was older than me, and they had this little family that they were trying to make work. My mother married the wrong man, it was never meant to be. So there were some memories, he had some positive memories of my father. I don’t have any of him, he was just a horror. They had that weird little bond, they weren’t close, it wasn’t like they had a relationship that could be called close, but they had some fond memories in the past. Don't get me wrong, my father was horrible to my brother, he was much more physically abusive to him, then he was to me.

Your mother lives near you in Western Massachusetts, do you communicate at all?
No, I haven’t talked to her in years.

And is that ok?
Oh yeah, I love my mother, but I don’t like her. She’s not good for me, she never has been good for me.

So you’ve written about everything: your childhood, your various jobs, being an alcoholic and getting over that, etc. What now?
I have a lot more stories I haven’t touched on, and I may, but I love fiction. I’ve written three novels and I’ve published one, "Sellevision," that was just sort of light and campy, a beach read. I wrote it in 7 days and it just exploded out of me, I didn’t know what was happening from one page to the next, it just sort of happened. The other ones are much more grown up. I have other ideas. I love the world of fiction, it’s an adventure. With memoir I know the end of every story before I write the beginning, which is fine and good…and I’ll always write about my life as it happens, but I don’t know if I’ll always publish it.

After meeting with Augusten and getting to experience first hand his energy and passion, this Bostonist is sure she’s not alone in hoping he does continue to share his unique life with all of us.