The Burroughs Adding Machine

 Augusten Burroughs has a pair. After years of dancing on the line between memoir and fiction, with all the crazy people in his past coming out of the woodwork to level charges (some in a court of law), he releases A Wolf at the Table, a memoir about his dad, an alcoholic professor. Almost immediately, Augusten's brother was disputing Burroughs' version of events, telling the New York Times that the gun he trained on his father did not hold large-caliber bullets, as the author writes, but BBs. Whoops. Then the Times gets his mother on the phone and asks about the lit cigarette her husband allegedly sailed between Augusten's eyes, along with something about a dog and a vet, and she says they have "different memories." Still, we love Burroughs and his crazy family, mostly because he writes well about them, and even the movie Running With Scissors was OK. And he just got a big cursive tattoo on his forearm that reads Cicatrix manet, Latin for "the scar remains," proving that he's just a big ol' lovable 16-year-old at heart. Consider this a tease before the master of the heightened memoir, James Frey, comes to town with his first novel, which is also his third novel. He's appearing at Slim's with heavy metal bands and Hells' Angels running security, which is kind of embarrassing, but maybe in a good way.
Mon., May 12, 7:30 p.m., 2008