Gary Matthews, a philosophy professor, described Mr. Robison as “an almost motherly figure who looked after everyone in the department and was very kind,” while Fred Feldman, another philosophy professor who first met Mr. Robison in 1969, said: “I had tremendous respect and affection for him. He was a wonderful guy, a very generous, thoughtful and gentle man.” They also said Mr. Robison bragged about both his sons.

Image Mr. Burroughss father, John Robison, a philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts who died in 2005. Credit... Courtesy of Augusten Burroughs

Such sharply contrasting views are sure to renew questions about the truthfulness of memoirs in general and Mr. Burroughs’s in particular. Children of the psychiatrist with whom Mr. Burroughs was left in “Running” filed a lawsuit over inaccuracies. It was settled in August 2007 by changing some language on the acknowledgments page and a financial settlement of an undisclosed amount. Also, Mr. Burroughs and his publisher, St. Martin’s Press, agreed to call the work a “book” instead of a “memoir” in the author’s note.

Regardless of whether one is persuaded that Mr. Robison was as sinister as Mr. Burroughs depicts him, clearly the picture of a courtly philosopher is incomplete. Even his closest friend for nearly 45 years, Edmund Gettier, said that the kind and courteous man he knew “puzzled me in a way.”

“He was my best friend. We spent hours and hours together, and yet I knew nothing about his home life.”

Mr. Burroughs’s older brother, John Elder Robison, who wrote a memoir of his own, “Look Me in the Eye,” last year about growing up with Asperger’s syndrome, says his father was an alcoholic who mercilessly whipped him with a belt until he was old enough to defend himself. He writes that his father once lifted the toddling Augusten onto his knee and put out a cigarette on his forehead.

“He was mean as hell when he was drunk, no question about that,” John Elder Robison said by phone. The brothers now live next door to each other in Amherst. (Mr. Burroughs and his partner also have an apartment in Lower Manhattan.)