Too close to home

NORTHAMPTON -- The boxy Victorian with the No Trespassing sign in front is where the eccentric Dr. Finch lived with his extended family, the place Augusten Burroughs made infamous in his memoir ''Running With Scissors." As it did when the author stayed here 25 years ago, the yellow, two-story house looks a bit rickety, but at least there's no furniture in the yard.

Then again, maybe there never was. Maybe the book, a New York Times bestseller for 70 weeks that will soon will be a big-budget movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Annette Bening, is a lie. Maybe like those high-profile imposters James Frey and JT LeRoy, Burroughs is another memoirist who made it up.

The doctor's family says he is. They're suing Burroughs for defamation, saying ''Running With Scissors" is largely fictional. The author, they contend, sensationalized his life to make his story more compelling and, for the pain and suffering of being portrayed as more than a little peculiar, the family wants a retraction and$2 million.

But in Amherst and Northampton, where the bearded, big-bellied doctor was a familiar -- no, notorious -- character long before the book ever came out, Burroughs has many fans and defenders, folks who in spite of the lawsuit say they're inclined to believe what he wrote.

''This is Augusten's story. This is his truth," said Mark Carmien, owner of Pride & Joy, a gay-themed gift shop in Northampton. ''We all recognize what's happening here: They're blaming the victim."

Burroughs himself isn't talking. On the advice of his publisher, St. Martin's Press, he's keeping quiet until the lawsuit is resolved. The author's brother, John Robison, is not so easily muzzled. ''I was there," said Robison, who lives next door to Burroughs in the backwoods of Amherst. ''I can tell you for a fact that my brother's book doesn't fully describe the scope of events as they actually happened.

''If anything," he said, ''it's less than the truth."

Published in 2002, ''Running With Scissors" is certainly a good story: The author's mentally ill mother signs over guardianship of her 9-year-old son to her psychiatrist, a Santa Claus-like character who divines the future by examining excrement. While living at the doctor's house, Burroughs witnesses all manner of weirdness -- there's a room called the Masturbatorium and an electroshock machine under the stairs -- and he has a sexual relationship with an older man who is a former patient of the doctor's.

The book got great reviews, but questions about its veracity arose almost immediately. In part, that was because some details struck readers and critics as too vividly recalled -- not to mention too bizarre -- to be believed. But also, Burroughs had changed people's names, which some construed as a convenient way to cover embellishments.

For legal reasons, the author has been reluctant in interviews to reveal the identity of the doctor, but in Northampton it was widely known that the head of the chaotic Finch household was Dr. Rodolph H. Turcotte, a flamboyant local figure whose conduct, both personal and professional, frequently made headlines.

''For people who've been around here for a while, it was not a mystery," said Nancy Felton, co-owner of the Broadside Bookshop.

A Yale-educated psychiatrist who worked at the Northampton State Hospital before going into private practice, Turcotte was indeed an uncommon character. For years, the doctor, who died in 2000 at the age of 80, marched up and down Main Street carrying white balloons or an oversize red umbrella, and often wearing a Santa hat.

He was renowned not only for his quirky appearance but also for his crusades. In the 1980s Turcotte billed politicians, doctors, Catholic bishops, college professors, and even President Reagan himself $20,000 for his ''peace work." He undertook a ''peace walk" from Northampton to Sherbrooke, Quebec, during which he was briefly picked up by police who were concerned about his safety. And in 1994 the doctor gained more notoriety when he was charged with trespassing outside comedian Bill Cosby's home in Shelburne while attempting to solicit financial support for an entity he founded called the World Fathers Association.

''Throughout his life, [Turcotte] encountered problems with the establishment, as might be expected for someone who is an 'outside the box' thinker, and an 'outside the system' doer," Susan Winters Smith, current president of the fathers group, wrote in an e-mail. ''Some people labeled him too eccentric, but many people found him a great comfort as well as a source of wisdom." Smith maintains a website devoted to the doctor -- www.rhturcottemd.com -- and is writing his biography.

Likewise, David Bourbeau, a neighbor of the Turcottes who's known the family for nearly four decades, feels the doctor was misunderstood. ''Most everyone I know thought he should have been locked up. But [the Turcottes] are people who dance to their own drummer, who are on the fringe of society," said Bourbeau, owner of a local bindery. ''I saw the doctor, firsthand and over a 30-year period, take people barely capable of living and help them become productive citizens.

''My concern," Bourbeau said with a sigh, ''is the family. I don't want to see them hurt."

Turcotte was married with six children, but in reality his family was much larger. That's because the doctor's unorthodox therapy sometimes involved having patients move in with him. In ''Running With Scissors," the character of Neil Bookman, the 34-year-old man with whom Burroughs has a sexual relationship, was a patient and, like Burroughs, lived with Turcotte.

The doctor's unconventional ideas about family ultimately cost him his medical license. In a case that attracted considerable media attention and is referenced in Burroughs's book, a 35-year-old patient of the doctor named Jonathan Frey was convicted of raping Turcotte's 14-year-old daughter after the doctor gave Frey guardianship of the girl. In court, the doctor called the charges ''fantasy . . . an attempt to poison the atmosphere against me and my family," but the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine called it ''gross misconduct" and in 1986 revoked his license.

''Anyone who reads the available public record about Turcotte will conclude that my brother's book is eminently believable," Burroughs's brother insists.

Robison, who's eight years older than the author and operates a car dealership in Springfield, understands the Turcottes' antipathy toward the book but claims he witnessed much of the strange behavior described in it, including the doctor fishing feces from the toilet, family members eating dog food, living-room furniture in the front yard, and the predatory behavior of Bookman.

''I'm sure his kids remember [Turcotte] as a brilliant psychiatrist, not a madman," Robison said. ''But my brother's story is true, and he's right to tell it."

The attorney for the family, Howard M. Cooper, contends Burroughs did enormous damage by writing the book, and he called ''absurd" the suggestion that the author is somehow the victim. ''There has been an incredible invasion of my clients' privacy," said Cooper, the attorney who successfully sued the Boston Herald for libel last year. ''In this case, the only victims are the living members of the Turcotte family."

The lawsuit filed in Middlesex Superior Court argues that Burroughs defamed the family by presenting them as ''an unhygienic, foul, and mentally unstable cult engaged in bizarre and at times criminal activity." It claims the author included enough detail to identify the family and, on at least a few occasions, actually named them in interviews. The suit demands St. Martin's Press issue a retraction and state publicly that ''Running With Scissors" is a work of fiction.

The lawsuit does not seek to block the film, written and directed by ''Nip/Tuck" creator Ryan Murphy, but Cooper did say the prospect of a Hollywood movie based on ''Running With Scissors" was the impetus for the complaint. Starring Brian Cox as Dr. Finch and Joseph Cross as Burroughs, the movie is due out in the fall.

''The family is living in fear that there will be utter devastation to their reputations," Cooper said. Burroughs's attorney, Jonathan M. Albano, declined to be interviewed by the Globe. (Albano's clients include the Globe.)

The two sides are believed to be negotiating a settlement, but St. Martin's has already slapped a disclaimer on Burroughs's next book, ''Possible Side Effects: True Stories," which is due out in May. The book, a collection of stories, does not revisit Burroughs's years with the Turcottes. The note reads: ''Some of the events described happened as related, others were expanded and changed. Some of the individuals portrayed are composites of more than one person and many names and identifying characteristics have been changed as well."

In Northampton and Amherst, none of this seems to have diminished people's belief in Burroughs's story.

''To know Augusten is to be very fond of him," said novelist Elinor Lipman, who's had the author over for dinner twice since he moved back to Amherst in 2003. ''It's tremendously unfair -- and lazy -- for people to attack his book. After the [James] Frey thing, I think people just said, 'What's another big, best-selling memoir?' "

Mark Wootton, owner of Amherst Books, said the lawsuit hasn't changed his opinion of Burroughs or the book. But then, he's ''not on the bandwagon of people beating up" on memoirists. If, like James Frey in ''A Million Little Pieces," Burroughs exaggerated life inside the Turcotte home, Wootton wouldn't mind.

''There's a long tradition of putting in stuff that didn't really happen, from 'Don Quixote' to 'Gulliver's Travels,' " said Wootton. ''It's creative nonfiction."

Joan Barberich, an owner of another Amherst bookshop, Food for Thought, said Burroughs gave a reading there and the place was packed. ''It violated all kinds of fire codes, I'm sure. There were people outside tapping on the plate-glass window just trying to see in," she said. ''The thing is, memoirs are mostly about conveying an emotional truth, and sometimes the facts don't line up exactly. Memoirs are works of art."

Burroughs, who was born Chris Robison (he took the more fanciful name when he turned 18), lives with his partner, graphic artist Dennis Pilsits, and their two French bulldogs. Now 40, Burroughs is a generous donor to the local public radio station, and gives occasional readings in the area. But otherwise he keeps a low profile in the Pioneer Valley, which is populated with prominent writers, including Lipman, Jonathan Harr, Tracy Kidder, John Crowley, Richard Wilbur, John Edgar Wideman, Joe Nocera, Anthony Giardina, Roland Merullo, and Anita Shreve.

Burroughs's mother, Margaret Robison, is a poet living in nearby Shelburne Falls. Estranged from her youngest son except for the rare e-mail, she declined to be interviewed for this story. The author's father, John Gordon Robison, was the longtime chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst until retiring in 2000. He died last year at the age of 70.

Carmien, owner of the Northampton gift shop Pride & Joy, thinks the popularity of ''Running With Scissors" -- it has sold 700,000 copies -- and the subsequent lawsuit have changed Burroughs.

''I think his nature is to be gregarious and outgoing, but my impression is that he had to adopt a level of discretion because of all this," said Carmien, who organized a reading by Burroughs to benefit a local gay and lesbian youth center. ''What's happening here is a common story for gays and lesbians -- to be discredited in our stories of abuse."

John Robison acknowledged that his brother is ''freaked out" by the lawsuit but stands by the book.

''It's shocking to me how it's been embraced, really. I thought people would be so disgusted they'd never talk to us again," said Robison. ''His story is no longer shameful and no longer a secret."