To start with, I'm going to add a link to a piece that aired on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered this past Sunday -- from a great team, reporter Joe Shapiro, and producer Tracy Wahl. It's a profile of the real mother portrayed in the book "Running With Scissors" - a classic monster mom, a wild woman. Except, maybe she's really human like the rest of us, and just as fascinating as the cruelly drawn caricature her son presented to the world. It's interesting to read a few of the comments posted by listeners on NPR's blog. Some harsh words. What do you think? How do you feel about the role of the reporter question in this piece? Is it a fair story? Did the reporter sound like he was approaching the story objectively? These are questions, not criticisms...discuss...
9 comments:
You go Susan!!! I think Joe/Tracy's piece did an effective job at showing the other side of a person. It makes me wonder though, if it's possible to create a whole portrait of anyone. I think you can with fictional characters, but I'm not sure about real people. It's extremely difficult for outsiders to capture the complexities of a person -- unless you dedicate hours and even years to understanding them. I think Tracy and Joe revealed a layer of this woman that her son obviously neglected. But in order to get a true picture of her mental health, you'd need to spend an extended period with her. Tracy and Joe didn't have that luxury, few people do. If someone knows of an audio biopic out there that does paint a full portrait of someone, please pass it along.
I think that's a good point Tina. I think one of our dilemmas was how much to include about Margaret life since the 1970's. She's taught school children, she's worked with prisoners and one writer from Amherst told us that she was one of the best writing teachers she had ever met. In the end we decided to stay firmly in the present -- what is she like now. People change moment to moment, year to year. And so in some ways profiling a person is a series of choices about what time frame to include. Even if you spend weeks with a person, you might not get a true picture of that person in the present. You know?
I just entered this comment on the NPR web site, but they may not choose to display it all, so I want to enter it here, also, with thanks to this blogger for the opportunity.
Bravo to Joe and Tracy for setting the record (at least partly, excuse the word) straight. I lived in Northampton for years and was close to Margaret Robison, knew Chris Robison, and even saw the psychiatrist who appears in both of their stories. What Chris has done is take a few thin ribbons of fact and twist, distort, and fictionalize them into a monstrous ball of grotesquerie. His characters are all gargoyles to hang around the ego of the fictional character he has made of himself. "Augusten" is a prissy little victim surrounded by monsters. Chris was not. I would rejoice in "Augusten's" good fortune if he would just admit that his "memoir" is fiction. By putting his mother's voice and personality out there, NPR has done a great service to all of us, especially to those of us who have mothers with mental illnesses: mothers who are larger than the worst things they ever did when their brains were out of control. I don't know why the American public likes RUNNING WITH SCISSORS. Maybe it's like a car wreck--they like to gape and congratulate themselves that no matter how bad their life is, at least it isn't THAT bad. So maybe the book does a service. But is it true? Is it art? Any of us wades into dangerous waters when we try to claim that our version of the past (especially when we were children) is TRUE. My own mother has a severe mental illness, and growing up with her wasn't easy, but I love her, and Jackie Leyden's DAUGHTER OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA liberated that love from my own distorted memories and gave the wonder of my mother's "difference" back to me. Jackie Leyden wrote in love. "Augusten" writes in hatefulness and spite. The power of forgiveness in Margaret's voice is a gift to all of us. She is loyal to her son Chris in ways that "Augusten" may yet come to understand, if he ever grows up. She could have denied what's in the book. I was there. I deny it. But she didn't do that. She defended him by not disputing him, by speaking of the parts of her life that have been unaffected by her son's cruelty. If that's the act of a crazy woman, then who among us is sane?
Thank you Tracy and Joe, for the courage to go in search of the truth, and for the artistry to present it clearly and unambiguously. Margaret Robison is a serious and gifted poet and visual artist. She is held in high esteem by the literary community in the Amherst/Northampton area, and those of us who are of her generation and have known her before, during and after the period that Running With Scissors describes, are appalled at the portrait of her that is painted by her son both in the book and in his interviews. She is a brilliant teacher and a poet whose work was featured repeatedly reading her own poetry on our local NPR station, WFCR, in the years covered by the book. Since that time she has been published widely in literary journals and has taught many of us who now are published writers and teachers. Personally, Margaret is a gentle and deeply spiritual person. All of us who have been her friends through the years know that her love for and her loyalty to both her sons -- so beautifully expressed in her answers to the questions in the interview -- is the deepest truth in the life of Margaret Robison. A long life of rich personal and artistic achievement should not be interpreted simply on the basis of her children's memory of two or three difficult years. The NPR interview is a beginning in righting the scale. You have my gratitude, Tracy and Jim.
I'm a person who has spent many hours and years with Margaret Robison since her stroke in 1989, when she was forced to give up the luxury of being alone as often as she might have desired. I have heard numerous stories about her life as we walked or ate or drove or waited together. Later, after reading almost any newly created piece she had written about her life, I would express disappointment that she had left so much out. "That's another story," she'd say. "It doesn't belong to this one." And I had to learn to accept that you can never, ever tell the whole story, or the complete story. The best each of us can do is tell A Story, fully aware that the way to that story is a long road strewn with what we had to leave behind. I am grateful to Tracy and Joe for their carefully crafted vignette about Margaret, a collage of many hours of conversation with Margaret and others.
Augusten made his choices and told his story which became an object generating its own gravity. As it spins (and is spun by the media) it draws in many, perhaps elevating some while crushing others.
As Tracy says, people change moment to moment, year to year. So do our memories of, and feelings about, our own lives. You could say everything is of the moment. But the written story, the poem, the painting, the movie—all of these exist in some nebulous eternity. How else would Emily Dickinson have brought comfort to someone in 1978 or 2006?
There are many stories to be told about Margaret Robison. Only one is of a mother bound by love to her far-from-normal children, raising and protecting them, often alone. Only one is of a depressed and torn mother grieving that she is leaving her children during her illness. Only one is of a woman bound to express herself by word or visual images. One is of a young girl, growing into womanhood, learning to love. Writing the memoir about her own childhood, marriage, family, breakdowns, therapist and teaching transformed her. That moment to moment changing. We may never read that memoir, fascinating as it might be—or perhaps we will. But that act of writing still feeds her healing. As she writes in a recent poem (http://www.margaretrobison.com/oldheart.htm), she is continuing the long journey of learning to love, learning about kindness and forgiveness. "About when to speak, and when to keep silent."
How can we live together as family, live in relationships of years or moments, and successfully cross the boundaries of self to enter into true understanding of another?
Tracy talks about experiences in Margaret's life that she was unable to use in the broadcast but which I think would help readers and listeners know more about the richness of her personality and life. She mentions that before her stroke, Margared led writing workshops, taught school children, and worked with women in prison.
In the eighties, I was teaching sixth grade at an area school and Margaret came as a "poet in residence" for several weeks. When I first caught sight of her and heard her soft Southern voice, I thought my very lively adolescents would "eat her alive." Quite the contrary! They were very silent when she entered the room, sat on the high stool we had, and rested her cane against it. They waited. Someone asked her about the cane which had a snake carved on it. "You're interested in my cane?" "Yes." "Well, there's a story to that." And they were off.
Very quickly, it became apparent to my kids that here was a person who was intriguing. They talked back and forth a bit. Margaret really listened to what they said, and often said it back to them. And then, Margaret asked them what was going on in this town on this beautiful spring day. Then heard a loud truck on the highway and mentioned that. Someone said his dog was probably sleeping on the step at his house. Someone said that the trees were starting to come out. Margaret wrote it all down, 20 lines or so, and then read it back to them. She opened up their very own world to close inspection and celebration in their very own words.
In the classes that followed, they wrote about their pets, and the experience of having a pet die. They wrote about what they would be if they could come back in another lifetime. They wrote about what they loved and what they hated. I was astounded at the beauty of their words, at the depth of feeling they were expressing, at their excitement when Margaret came through the door and how quickly they settled down to write.
Teachers in the school wrote too. The grant we had allowed us time to write together. We were amazed at our own depth, at the beauty of our own writing. We didn't know we had it in us! And it changed the whole way we related to each other.
Later, I joined one of Margaret's writing groups. Sometimes even now when I come across something I wrote then, I am amazed all over again - I didn't know I could write like that! I remember us all reading, Margaret too, and responding to each other's work. We came alive - pieces of our lives became clear - oh - I never realized before how important that tree in my backyard when I was a child was to me - that sort of thing. Pathways opened and we all delighted in each other's discoveries. Margaret's rich deep laugh punctuated our exclamations.
Margaret continues to be my friend, and I am enriched and blessed again and again with that friendship. It has been very sad to hear about how people read about a caracature of a time in her life that was painful and unsettled and laugh and laugh at it all. I sometimes laugh when someone slips on a banana peel too - it's a knee jerk reaction - until I put myself in the place of the one slipping. Then I'm abashed.
The Margaret I have known for more than twenty years is not the Margaret of Running with Scissors. I know a poet, an artist, a woman who chuckles with me at the absurdities of life. I know a woman of integrity, a woman who grows and is richer every time I go to visit her, richer in spirituality, in love for her son who has betrayed her, in ability to take adversity in her two hands, the one paralyzed by stroke, the other free to move, and to express it in writing. I am grateful that NPR gave her a chance to speak to a wide audience. I'd like to hear more of this on the air!
Mary Gene
From Barbara: I didn't really want or need to be Anonymous, but I found that the posting was easier for me to access with that choice.
The entries prior to mine are so heartfelt and eloquently written that initially I thought I wouldn't add mine. What more could I say? But, then I realized that numbers also matter, and I knew, most of all, that if I were being portrayed to the world in such an unfair and one-sided manner, Margaret would be right there to let everyone know that the book of my life had a lot more chapters than had shown up so far.
I've known Margaret since 1989, when she had her stroke. One thing that I haven't seen addressed in the postings is that some people responding to the All Things Considered program appear to equate having a stroke with having mental illness, as if Margaret is currently mentally ill. Perhaps they are led to think this way because her speech sounds "different", as a result of her stroke. Margaret would love to sound like her old self so that she could speak and read her poetry with ease. She has devoted much time and effort over the years to improving her speech, as well as her physical abilities. But, no one should think for a moment that the lack of precision in speech reflects a lack of precision in thinking. If anyone wants to understand that most emphatically, please read some of her poems in STROKE, her book of poetry about and since her stroke. The words, the phrases, the lines come from a clear and dazzling mind.
Nobody would want to be vilified by her child. Nobody would want a terribly rough time of her life to be played out on the big screen for laughs, as the movie preview I've seen certainly does. Margaret is responding to this assault in a way that is difficult for many listeners to comprehend -- forgiveness. She certainly didn't jump to that position overnight, but it is a deep belief that has come to her with time, prayer and hard thinking. There is a power there, and I say, More Power To You, Margaret. The next few weeks will be a challenge with the release of the movie. I hope that the love and regard expressed by many old friends, as well as by those who've met you for the first time through this radio program, will be a source of support and balance for you. Complex thinking, carefully crafted writing, questioning when reading and listening-- these are unfamiliar behaviors for many in the media and the general public. The flood of sound bites and superficial-stories- passing-as-truth can seem overwhelming, but we have to try -- you and all of the people writing here are doing just that. More Power to All of Us!
More Power to All of Us!
Yes, it's more important to prop up the ego's of a bunch of self-absorbed individuals than recognize the experience of a once victimized child. A thirteen year old child is a child--not an adult.
"A long life of rich personal and artistic achievement should not be interpreted simply on the basis of her children's memory of two or three difficult years."
Interesting…I guess it's more important to live a life of rich personal and artistic achievement than be a responsible parent...how boring, how bourgeois! I guess one could argue that this self-absorption, this complete and total lack of awareness and sensitivity for anyone else but for oneself often plagues victims of bi-polar disorder. How much of her complete lack of caring for her son was the bi-polar disorder or sheer selfishness?
A few difficult years?! That is an interesting choice of words. Signing your child over to your psychiatrist who passively stands back while he is sexually victimized by an adult? That is an earth-shattering choice which will leave an indelible mark on any child. Have some of you forgotten what it is like to be a child? A couple of years can seem like an eternity for an impressionable teenager. When are so many "adults" going to stop using intellectual/political/social excuses for being crappy parents? When are we going to stop blaming the victim? Children need the guidance of parents who are present both physically and emotionally. Indeed, Ms. Robison's bi-polar disorder was one of the main reasons for her lack of presence in her son's life. When it comes down to it, you can't force someone to care.
At this point we have only the self-invented Augusten Burroughs' word for what happened and how culpable his parents and the whole Turcotte family are for what he has chosen as an adult to do with his life. It seems clear that at least some parts of his "memoirs" are fabricated and that he dislikes having his version of reality challenged.
I read the book well before any of this came out, and I found it sad and lacking in real connection or the kind of realization one would expect from a person undertaking to write about such trauma for the purpose of understanding and dealing with it. None of the recent revelations surprise me.
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