I’m constantely fascinated by the unveiling of fake authors and/or stories. This past year has uncovered such fakes as J.T. LeRoy, Nasdijj, and James Frey.

Now, it appears that extremely popular author Augusten Burroughs is a fraud as well. If this accusation turns out to be true, will the book industry throw a sheet over the whole “memoir as a first book” practice? I surely hope so.

Scissors author accused as a fraud
By Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, Boston Globe Staff | December 5, 2006

Sure, A Million Little Pieces author James Frey is a fraud, but Augusten Burroughs is an even bigger phony. So says Buzz Bissinger, who blasts the best-selling author of Running With Scissors as a complete impostor in the new issue of Vanity Fair.

“I don’t know how [Burroughs] lives with himself,” Bissinger told us yesterday. “Running With Scissors contains little strands of fact that were wildly embellished, and if you take those away, you don’t have much of a book.”

Bissinger’s story, on newsstands next week, includes interviews with the Turcottes, the real-life western Massachusetts clan with whom Burroughs lived as a teen and who are characterized as more than kooky in the book. The family, which is suing Burroughs for defamation, claims he fabricated much of the memoir. (Burroughs has denied that, but wouldn’t talk to Bissinger about the suit.) Theresa Turcotte says her family debated whether to sue Burroughs.

“If you’re Clint Eastwood or Barbra Streisand or somebody else, you can just intimidate the [expletive] out of [a publisher],” she says. “But when you’re us, what are we going to do . . . go over and say, ‘You know, you hurt our feelings?'”

Bissinger, who wrote Friday Night Lights, believes Burroughs betrayed the Turcotte family.

“They took him in and did their best, and he turned around and wrote about them in the most vile way possible,” he said. “It’s totally gratuitous.”