This Is How

Starred review from March 19, 2012
In this hilarious and searingly straightforward memoir, Burroughs (Running with Scissors) turns the self-help genre upside down with his advice on matters ranging broadly from “how to be fat” and “how to lose someone you love” to “how to hold onto your dream or maybe not” and “how to finish your drink.” On “how to find love,” for example, he counsels, “be the person you are, not the person you think you should be… if you want to have a chance at meeting somebody with whom you are genuinely compatible, never put your best foot forward… be exactly the person you would be if you were alone or with somebody it was safe to fart around.” On “Why Having It All Is Not,” Burroughs commends the virtues of limits and the ways that such limits force improvisation; he doesn’t believe “you can feel deep satisfaction in your life unless your life contains restless areas, holes, and imperfections.” In “How to End Your Life,” Burroughs, recalling his own teenage experience, distinguishes between suicide and ending life. After his brush with suicide, he realizes that he really didn’t want to kill himself; what he really wanted was to end his life, which he accomplishes simply by changing his name and walking out the door and starting a new life. As always, Burroughs is smart and energetically forthright about living and loving.

Burroughs has made a career out of writing and narrating books about how screwed up his life has been. Now that he's sober and relatively together, he wants to share his life's lessons. The advice he gives, based upon his own mistakes, is conveyed though humorous stories. By way of these personal stories, he sees through social niceties and comes up with some common-sense observations and sage advice--even if some of it is a "just-get-over-it" kind of advice. Burroughs's voice is persuasive and humble, and he sounds like he genuinely wants to give good advice. But listeners familiar with his past may question his credibility. F.T. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine