Magical Thinking

What a funny book. I have just finished reading Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs, and could not stop laughing. This is not the usual book of funny stories, like Seinfeld or something like that. This is a cynical, witty, outrageous commentary on a strange childhood and how these childhood experiences continue to influence Augusten Borroughs throughout his adult life. He starts off describing his life at school and with his parents, particularly his odd relationship with his mother, and this somehow becomes the hilarious first chapter involving him in a Tang commercial. The chapter I found most amusing was the one involving telemarketing called Telemarketing Revenge. I think anyone who has ever received a telemarketing caller who simply won't go away, who then tries to make you feel bad if you want to hang up, will identify with this chapter and start planning thier own revenge. The interesting thing is that Augusten Burroughs actually carried out his plan with 100% success rate.


Most of the stories in this book come round to Augusten's concept of Magical Thinking, which is the belief that one exerts more influence over events than one actually has, but the thing is, he really does appear to have an extraordinary control over not only his own life, but other people's as well, simply by thinking about them. I think I'll go and work on that for myself now and see what happens.