Wendy Burden

Families are weird. The rich are different. Rich families? Watch out.

Wendy Burden is a great - great - great granddaughter of the Commodore, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Despite the several generation gap between his time and hers, some things stay the same. The extraordinarily wealthy live in a fuzzy bubble, wearing their privilege like a mantle. They snap their fingers - figuratively and literally - and every desire is met, regardless of how ridiculous. The "help" insulate them from the mundane, show more every day matters with which they cannot be bothered. And girl family members? Well, they just don't count.

This memoir is delightful. It is more a series of chronological anecdotes, rather than a straightforward life-up-until-now recount. It contains two elements I like best in my reading about the rich; there's no apology for her wealth, and no harping on it. If she and her brothers want something, they go get it, without even much thinking of how it's paid for. And it's unflinching in revealing the many faults of her family. Her father's suicide, her mother's quest for...whatever she was after, wrapped up in the guise of a perfect tan, her grandparents' alcoholism, her uncles' eccentricities, it's just another day in the life. She deals and heads for the next one. Her affection for her family comes shining through, even when she doesn't understand or disagrees with what they are doing. It's also quite unflinching in showing that, well, screwed - up upbringing sometimes results in screwed up adults.

My only (small, minor, very tiny) quibble: Sometimes it seems that six or seven year old Wendy has the same wisdom as adult Wendy. Though that could be because of the circumstances of her raisin', or even Author Wendy places what she knows now onto her younger self. It took me out of the story slightly, because I would wonder how a child could have those insights at that age. But because overall, it was so delightful, I could rapidly return to where I was. Nicely done. show less

I loved this! No, really... I did. Wendy Burden has a self-deprecating twisted sense of humor. What's not to love? She's brutally honest about all her of her family's flaws without wallowing one bit in self pity. I'm not sure how she manages to pull it off, but pull it off she does. Yes, it's a 'poor little rich girl' type of tale, and yet I never get the impression she's looking for our pity, but instead just a bit of understanding. Her childhood was peopled with larger than life relatives, show more her paternal grandparents especially. I would warn you, if you don't have a sense of humor you might want to pass on this. The humor is what keeps it from being completely heartbreaking.

Note: I read in an online interview that there will be more memoirs to come from Wendy Burden, and I am happy about that! show less

Wendy Burden's Dead End Gene Pool (Gotham, 2011) is a darkly comic look at the tragic dysfunctionality of the American super-rich. The great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Burden spent much of her childhood in what her semi-exiled mother called "Burdenland," a parallel universe inhabited by the very wealthy.

Shuttled from one house to another depending on the season, Burden and her brothers grew up in the lap of luxury, but luxury with a sharp undercurrent of show more alcoholism, drug abuse, mental instability, and not a whole lot of TLC. While they wanted for (almost) nothing material, to hear Burden tell it there certainly wasn't much love or human understanding to be experienced.

This might have been an extremely depressing book (and is, in parts), except for Burden's keen sense of the absurdities she witnessed and her ability to bring out the humor in situations that some of the rest of us might not have been able to laugh off. Sharp, poignant, and hilarious, this memoir makes for great reading.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2011/02/book-review-dead-end-gene-pool.html show less

What a hoot!

But don’t take that the wrong way. Wendy Burden’s writing IS a hoot to read. The story she tells, though, isn’t. A hoot, I mean; interesting – it certainly is. A plucky gal, she has run the gauntlet of arrogance, male chauvinism, selfishness, and neglect as exhibited in no small way by her assorted relatives, and yet has apparently come out the other end with sanity intact, or at least a wicked dark humor!

The back cover reminds us that “The rich are different”. But show more actually reading about this particular strain of ‘the rich’ had my “eeeyeww” reflex in overdrive. No wonder they act so weird; each successive generation compounds the errors of the previous one. Yeah, just like us regular folks, except they just have so much more money to overdo it with.

All the leaves on this family tree have a certain twistedness to them. In childhood, Wendy’s particular twist is a fascination with the macabre. It’s cool that the cover type and chapter headings reflect that. (Speaking of covers, looking at the way the picture is creased, I can just imagine young Wendy using it for a paper airplane. I hope the finished product identifies the cover photo. My advance copy doesn’t.) Her dark side enjoys such things as The Addams Family and cataloging dead jellyfish. Creepy comics eventually make way for Edgar Allan Poe, and a reader is born. But Wendy is definitely light-weight compared to some of her forbears.

So, you’re an arrogant, influential, rich man, with four children, all sons. How nice for you; you have heirs. Two deaths and two crazies later, what do you do? You hate the daughter-in-law so much that you’ve barely tolerated your son’s children, and absolutely abhor the girl-child, because she’s, well, a girl. Between you and that same neglectful woman, you’ve managed to warp her three children, too. Now you’re down to a Soho party girl and two alcoholic druggie grandsons. How did all those well-laid plans work out for you?

A sharp child, Wendy knew that in her family, things weren’t ‘fair’ between the sexes. “My mother’s advice was to (quote) shut up and put up. [She] … was not one to coddle her children with parental guidance.”

“Number One Son got everything before me. Even psychoanalysis. … He didn’t recognize his hour with Dr. Berman as the spotlit, center-of-attention shower of love I knew it to be. I was burning up with curiosity; I needed to know what I was missing. But inevitably, my weekly joust for the dirt ended with no answers, and Will punching me in the stomach and declaring, ‘Dr. Berman says you’re acting out ‘cause you’re jealous.’ No shit.”

I kept thinking that if the old man would just put aside his animus, he already had the perfect person to take over the reins. But he refused to see the potential in the girl. I’m here to say that I’m glad her publisher didn’t make that mistake. I found this to be a great read and I hope she way outsells her grandfather’s autobiography! show less