Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Gotham (2010), Edition: 1ST, Hardcover, 288 pages
Description
For generations the Burdens were one of the wealthiest families in New York, thanks to the inherited fortune of Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt. By 1955, the year of Wendy Burden's birth, the Burdens had become a clan of overfunded, quirky and brainy, steadfastly chauvinistic, and ultimately doomed bluebloods on the verge of financial and moral decline-and were rarely seen not holding a drink. In Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy invites listeners to meet her tragically flawed family, including an uncle with a fondness for Hitler, a grandfather who believes you can never have enough household staff, and a remarkably flatulent grandmother. At the heart of the story is Wendy's glamorous and aloof mother, who, after her husband's suicide, travels the world in search of the perfect sea and ski tan, leaving her three children in the care of a chain-smoking Scottish nanny, Fifth Avenue grandparents, and an assorted cast of long-suffering household servants (who Wendy and her brothers love to terrorize). Rife with humor, heartbreak, family intrigue, and booze, Dead End Gene Pool offers a glimpse into the fascinating world of old money and gives truth to an old maxim: The rich are different.… (more)
Media reviews
Although Wendy Burden begins her darkly funny memoir, Dead End Gene Pool, by recounting the lives of her ancestors on her father’s side (she’s the great-times-four-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt), the book’s dedication makes it clear where the heart of her story really lies: “For my
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mother, goddamn it.” Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member madhatter22
Wendy Burden is a great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt and as would be expected, her family is rich. The kind of rich where you have butlers, maids, cooks, nannies, secretaries, gardeners and drivers to make sure you never need to lift a finger except to pick up another
Despite all this, Dead End Gene Pool is not at all a "poor little rich girl" story. Burden never takes a "pity me" tone, and writes with humor and great affection for her family, who she discusses with brutal honesty, but also with understanding and compassion. This could have been a much darker book, but it manages to be a fun read and a fascinating look at a way of life that most of us would find almost incomprehensible.
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cocktail. As enviable as this may seem, it didn't make her life a bed of roses. Wendy's father committed suicide when she was six. Her mother was rarely at home, leaving Wendy and her two brothers with a nanny or their grandparents while she spent her time in sunny vacation spots drinking, sleeping around and working on her tan. Her grandparents were also self-involved drinkers and her grandfather openly favored her brothers over her. Substance abuse issues and eccentricity were normal in Wendy's family, and the children are largely left to fend for themselves.Despite all this, Dead End Gene Pool is not at all a "poor little rich girl" story. Burden never takes a "pity me" tone, and writes with humor and great affection for her family, who she discusses with brutal honesty, but also with understanding and compassion. This could have been a much darker book, but it manages to be a fun read and a fascinating look at a way of life that most of us would find almost incomprehensible.
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LibraryThing member clamairy
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
Note: I read in an online interview that there will be more memoirs to come from Wendy Burden, and I am happy about that!
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'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, 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!
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LibraryThing member whitreidtan
When I was small (and angry at my parents) I would fantasize about my "real" parents. They were undoubtedly rich and royal. Well, Wendy Burden never needed to fantasize. Her family may not have been royal, but they were undoubtedly rich. You see, she is a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt and she
Opening with a quick run through of her moneyed family tree, Burden starts with Vanderbilt and hops through the branches down to her own paternal grandparents. Once she settles on the family members she actually knew, she starts in on the crazy, sometimes funny, sometimes terrible life that made up her early life. Her father, suffering from depression, committed suicide when she was just six. Her alcoholic mother, written out of the will for her serial adultery, became a completely absent and neglectful parent. And Burden and her brothers ping-ponged between their mother's empty of supervision home and their wealthy grandparents' servant-filled homes. In neither place did they find the nurturing and love that children need.
Burden chronicles not only the eccentricities of the very rich (when money is no object you can order cars from Europe to be delivered to you that same day or find game that is in season somewhere in the world in order to have it for dinner the following evening or pad your entire bathroom in foam so that when you stumble and fall in your alcoholic and aged haze, you won't bruise yourself), she also lays bare the odd child that she was, obsessed with the Addams family, collecting dead animals to watch the various stages of decomposition, begging for a pony and then creating elaborate and murderous fantasies about Will's demise when it was gifted to her older brother instead of her. She writes about many of her family members as if they were fictional characters, mocking their faults (an overly flatulent grandmother and a misogynistic grandfather), exposing their immorality (Uncle Ham-Uncle Ham's Nazi fetish), and generally skewering all and sundry. In one instance she appears to think that her uncle's obsession with tracts warning against the evils of inherited wealth, which he distributed to the whole family, is laughable but really, it seems that while he may have been a buffoon, at least as Burden represents the family, his tracts weren't off base.
While there were funny anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book, this was ultimately a sad story. The absenteeism, the drug use and abuse, the mental illness, acknowledged or not, and the general lack of love and attention displayed here make it hard to call this a funny book or even one rife with dark humor. I was left with the feeling that the people in Burden's family were unpleasant and distasteful and I wouldn't have wanted to know them myself. She does have a neat turn of phrase here and there and some amount of self-awareness comes through but the narrative itself is often choppy and repetitive. This brief visit into the skeletal closets of the highest of society makes me grateful that I don't live there and it was with an unseemly sense of relief that I closed the book at the last. Although I didn't love the book myself, it is a fascinating peep into a world in which very few people live and those who enjoy the lifestyles of the rich and famous and want to know more about the grit under the facade of the houses and the cars and the possessions will undoubtedly enjoy this book for its insight into the troubled highest echelons of WASP society.
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grew up surrounded by rather obscene amounts of money, a child of privilege, apathy, and neglect. Dead End Gene Pool is her memoir of a childhood lived mainly in the company of servants and in the rarified air of the super rich. And having read this book, I am quite certain I'm glad that no royal, rich parents came to claim me from my perfectly happy suburban existence.Opening with a quick run through of her moneyed family tree, Burden starts with Vanderbilt and hops through the branches down to her own paternal grandparents. Once she settles on the family members she actually knew, she starts in on the crazy, sometimes funny, sometimes terrible life that made up her early life. Her father, suffering from depression, committed suicide when she was just six. Her alcoholic mother, written out of the will for her serial adultery, became a completely absent and neglectful parent. And Burden and her brothers ping-ponged between their mother's empty of supervision home and their wealthy grandparents' servant-filled homes. In neither place did they find the nurturing and love that children need.
Burden chronicles not only the eccentricities of the very rich (when money is no object you can order cars from Europe to be delivered to you that same day or find game that is in season somewhere in the world in order to have it for dinner the following evening or pad your entire bathroom in foam so that when you stumble and fall in your alcoholic and aged haze, you won't bruise yourself), she also lays bare the odd child that she was, obsessed with the Addams family, collecting dead animals to watch the various stages of decomposition, begging for a pony and then creating elaborate and murderous fantasies about Will's demise when it was gifted to her older brother instead of her. She writes about many of her family members as if they were fictional characters, mocking their faults (an overly flatulent grandmother and a misogynistic grandfather), exposing their immorality (Uncle Ham-Uncle Ham's Nazi fetish), and generally skewering all and sundry. In one instance she appears to think that her uncle's obsession with tracts warning against the evils of inherited wealth, which he distributed to the whole family, is laughable but really, it seems that while he may have been a buffoon, at least as Burden represents the family, his tracts weren't off base.
While there were funny anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book, this was ultimately a sad story. The absenteeism, the drug use and abuse, the mental illness, acknowledged or not, and the general lack of love and attention displayed here make it hard to call this a funny book or even one rife with dark humor. I was left with the feeling that the people in Burden's family were unpleasant and distasteful and I wouldn't have wanted to know them myself. She does have a neat turn of phrase here and there and some amount of self-awareness comes through but the narrative itself is often choppy and repetitive. This brief visit into the skeletal closets of the highest of society makes me grateful that I don't live there and it was with an unseemly sense of relief that I closed the book at the last. Although I didn't love the book myself, it is a fascinating peep into a world in which very few people live and those who enjoy the lifestyles of the rich and famous and want to know more about the grit under the facade of the houses and the cars and the possessions will undoubtedly enjoy this book for its insight into the troubled highest echelons of WASP society.
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LibraryThing member jennmaine
A few days after I finished this one, I realized that not much really happened in it, but that it really didn't matter as I found the book enjoyable anyway. A chronicle of the Vanderbilt family, and the effects of staggering wealth on its various members and associates, the humorous and often
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tragic character sketches are testament to the depleted energy and shaky moral character that remains in the family. Wendy Burden's account of her childhood spent with servants, often bitter and petty grandparents who hold the purse-strings, and a mother in search of romance and the perfect tan, is both entertaining and alarming as neglect and glitz combine in her life. Show Less
LibraryThing member PennyAnne
Another true tale of family dysfunction and neglect but this time the neglected child is a Vanderbilt and the neglect comes packaged in mink coats and fabulous trips to Paris. Supposedly 'darkly humorous and satirical' I found this book interesting (as in watching a car crash interesting) but in
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the end I just didn't care about Wendy Burden or her tragic life - perhaps because she never really lets you in on her emotions but rather writes a series of vignettes about her alcoholic grandparents, her alcoholic mother, her drug addicted uncles, her confused brothers etc etc. Yes, an unfortunate and lonely childhood and not one I would wish on anyone but in the end she couldn't make me care. Show Less
LibraryThing member sashzj
Despite the arguable excess of memoirs about disfunctional families, Dead End Gene Pool was a wonderfully entertaining read that I did not want to put down. Burden's self-deprecating tone and wild tales about her family had me laughing out loud, and, without being pedantic or heavy-handed, the book
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reminds its readers that money can't buy happiness. Show Less
LibraryThing member brainlair
Let me start by saying I couldn't finish Dead End Gene Pool. I felt disengaged from the first chapter and never found my entrance into the material.
Burden starts out with a prologue introducing us to Cornelius Vanderbilt and taking us through her family line on down to the birth of her father and
Using this plane ride as an introduction, we jump to the grandparents, or Gran, or Popsie with small bits of the children's mother as well as her uncles on her father's side. The major disconnect for me starts with the description of the grandparent's German chauffeur, George, who is suspected of being a Nazi. This fascination with George's heritage is fueled by Uncle Ham's deep interest in all things regarding the Third Reich as well as Wendy Burden's "humor." "German people liked to cover their lamps with...the skin of Jews gassed at Auschwitz." I didn't find it "wickedly funny", "intriguing", "quirky" or any of the other adjectival words on the back.
We move on to Christmas with Wendy Burden's paternal family. Uncle Ham is excited to receive a book on Hermann Goring while Wendy receives an Easy Bake oven which she calls a "crematorium." I'm sure, again, this is meant to be funny because she probably means putting dolls or other toys in the Easy Bake but, for me, here is where I give up.
Burden starts out with a prologue introducing us to Cornelius Vanderbilt and taking us through her family line on down to the birth of her father and
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eventually to her brother, Will, and finally herself. Once we get into the memoir itself, I start to lose interest. The Burden children are seven and eight and enroute to visit relatives when their plane meets some turbulence and we get our first glimpse of Wendy Burden's sense of her place in the family. "Being a girl meant squat in my father's family."Using this plane ride as an introduction, we jump to the grandparents, or Gran, or Popsie with small bits of the children's mother as well as her uncles on her father's side. The major disconnect for me starts with the description of the grandparent's German chauffeur, George, who is suspected of being a Nazi. This fascination with George's heritage is fueled by Uncle Ham's deep interest in all things regarding the Third Reich as well as Wendy Burden's "humor." "German people liked to cover their lamps with...the skin of Jews gassed at Auschwitz." I didn't find it "wickedly funny", "intriguing", "quirky" or any of the other adjectival words on the back.
We move on to Christmas with Wendy Burden's paternal family. Uncle Ham is excited to receive a book on Hermann Goring while Wendy receives an Easy Bake oven which she calls a "crematorium." I'm sure, again, this is meant to be funny because she probably means putting dolls or other toys in the Easy Bake but, for me, here is where I give up.
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LibraryThing member tloeffler
Wendy Burden is the great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt on her fathers side. She has written a memoir of her growing-up years being shuttled between her unfathomably wealthy grandparents, and her jet-setting mother, widowed young, who barely allows the dirt to settle before she
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whisks off with a drink in her hand to pursue the perfect tan. I am not normally a fan of "poor little rich girl" stories, but this was hilarious. Yes, it is hard to feel sorry for someon who never wanted for anything (except a pony), but Burden tells the story in such an easy, detached way that all I could do was chuckle. The opening chapter, which includes the "genealogy," was confusing to me (maybe a family tree or a chart would have helped), but it's possible that I wasn't paying close enough attention because the stories and asides were so engaging. My only regret was that there was no explanation of the picture on the front of the book. Show Less
LibraryThing member bookerTB
Great for 3/4 but gets tiring toward the end. Excessively dysfunctional family of mind boggling wealth.
LibraryThing member readingwithtea
“Sepulchrally dismal, she was the three-dimensional equivalent of woe.”
My third memoir for the year, Wendy Burden’s Dead End Gene Pool is a dizzying ride through the lives of the ultra-rich descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, starting briefly with her grandparents’ antecedents, focussing
The first half of this book was highly comic – Wendy recounting the tales of her forebears, over-moneyed, over-sexed and often under-endowed with sanity. Similarly the stories of her early childhood, mostly revolving around her grandparents and their staff at the New York mansion. As Wendy grows older, though, the anecdotes get a bitter edge and the book becomes one of those ubiquitous misery memoirs of growing up with an alcoholic single parent. The grandparents become senile and sadly dependent, rather than amusing.
Memoirs are clearly a form of non-fiction that I am coming to enjoy, though – I very much enjoyed Sleeping Naked Is Green and The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance (when I wrote that review, I hoped I’d never have to write the title again. It seems to be following me).
Worth reading if you are interested in rich American people. Otherwise, there’s funnier material out there.
My third memoir for the year, Wendy Burden’s Dead End Gene Pool is a dizzying ride through the lives of the ultra-rich descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt, starting briefly with her grandparents’ antecedents, focussing
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for quite some time on Wendy’s childhood, which was heavily influenced by her paternal grandparents, and moving into her teenage and student years.The first half of this book was highly comic – Wendy recounting the tales of her forebears, over-moneyed, over-sexed and often under-endowed with sanity. Similarly the stories of her early childhood, mostly revolving around her grandparents and their staff at the New York mansion. As Wendy grows older, though, the anecdotes get a bitter edge and the book becomes one of those ubiquitous misery memoirs of growing up with an alcoholic single parent. The grandparents become senile and sadly dependent, rather than amusing.
Memoirs are clearly a form of non-fiction that I am coming to enjoy, though – I very much enjoyed Sleeping Naked Is Green and The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance (when I wrote that review, I hoped I’d never have to write the title again. It seems to be following me).
Worth reading if you are interested in rich American people. Otherwise, there’s funnier material out there.
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LibraryThing member kraaivrouw
This belongs firmly to that family of memoirs where the story is driven by the weird people in the writer's immediate family. Everyone wanders around sort of goggle-eyed and mad, as if they were permanently trapped in a Wes Anderson movie. Auguten Burroughs famously does this in Running with
Burden's book is well done. The picture on the cover nicely sums up the stories within - they are about family in all their variations - silly, crazy, irritating, hurtful, wistful, loving. The stories of the author's childhood are particularly well-related although the later stories as we watch her grandparents descend into dementia and death are also both chilling and heartbreaking. I felt a bond with Wendy, perhaps because I also used to look at Charles Addams books when I was at my grandparents and while I didn't want to be Wednesday or a mortician I would've loved to have been Morticia.
This was a fun read filled with some lovely moments, both poignant and ridiculous. The author's childhood may not have been standard, but whose is? It is good to hear her story and good to see how much she loves her family and good to know that she understands that she wouldn't be herself without them. No axes to grind here, no revenge fantasies to work out, just stories.
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Scissors, but David Sedaris is also really good at it as is my personal favorite Gerald Durrell. Done well these are funny books, but also knowing books. It is essential that the author treat the people populating these books as just that - people - with strange, funny, maddening, and endearing sides. Done poorly and these are cardboard cutouts that read uncomfortably like an author working out their childhood revenge fantasies in print.Burden's book is well done. The picture on the cover nicely sums up the stories within - they are about family in all their variations - silly, crazy, irritating, hurtful, wistful, loving. The stories of the author's childhood are particularly well-related although the later stories as we watch her grandparents descend into dementia and death are also both chilling and heartbreaking. I felt a bond with Wendy, perhaps because I also used to look at Charles Addams books when I was at my grandparents and while I didn't want to be Wednesday or a mortician I would've loved to have been Morticia.
This was a fun read filled with some lovely moments, both poignant and ridiculous. The author's childhood may not have been standard, but whose is? It is good to hear her story and good to see how much she loves her family and good to know that she understands that she wouldn't be herself without them. No axes to grind here, no revenge fantasies to work out, just stories.
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LibraryThing member CDianeK
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
This memoir is delightful. It is more a serious 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.
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
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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, 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 serious 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.
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LibraryThing member echaika
I don't think I've ever stayed up until the wee hours so that I could finish a memoir. A novel, yes, but a memoir? Never.
However, not only is this written so that you feel that Wendy Burden is talking to you over some cups of tea, but the life she led as seen through her eyes, is out of the realms
This is not another "poor little rich girl" saga. There is no self-pitying. There is no lamenting her wealth. This is no tale of overcoming despite her privileged childhood. Indeed, despite the fabulous wealth she was surrounded by and the concomitant mistreatment she had (note I don't say suffered), she never overcame a thing. She took things as they came, dealt with them, and moved on.
Parts of this are laugh-out-loud funny. Others drily and matter-of-factually tell about tragedy. She is able to channel her childhood perceptions, as well as those of her adolescence and adulthood.
However, not only is this written so that you feel that Wendy Burden is talking to you over some cups of tea, but the life she led as seen through her eyes, is out of the realms
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that most of us have ever known. She maintains a delicious irony throughout. She doesn't present herself as a saint or a victim, just as a mischievous little girl who happened to have this kind of mother, these kinds of relatives. This is not another "poor little rich girl" saga. There is no self-pitying. There is no lamenting her wealth. This is no tale of overcoming despite her privileged childhood. Indeed, despite the fabulous wealth she was surrounded by and the concomitant mistreatment she had (note I don't say suffered), she never overcame a thing. She took things as they came, dealt with them, and moved on.
Parts of this are laugh-out-loud funny. Others drily and matter-of-factually tell about tragedy. She is able to channel her childhood perceptions, as well as those of her adolescence and adulthood.
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LibraryThing member girlsgonereading
In every memoir you have to decide: can I trust this narrator? Does this person remember her life clearly? Is she just trying to make her life look better/worse than it really was? Wendy Burden tackles this problem head on. Holding nothing back, Burden documents her deranged childhood with humor
After a brief family fascinating family history, Dead End Gene Pool takes us right into the depths of Burdenland-a world of the ultrarich and the ultradisturbed. Ironically, Burden handled all of this tragedy with satire. She mocked herself, and in that mocking I felt deeply sorry for her. My empathy for her and her life was not something I anticipated. I truly thought, “Oh, no. Here is another poor little rich girl story. Let’s hear about real tragedy.” But Burden’s use of comedy showed me that any life has tragedy. That sadness is sadness, and that (of course) money doesn’t make life better. In fact, it seems like lots of it makes life worse.
This self effacing comedy is best demonstrated in Burden’s comments about her absent mother. Some of these observations were so funny that I laughed out loud, despite the heartbreak of the situation. For example, after a three year absence, Wendy’s baby brother is stunned to see his long lost mother. To describe this event, Burden says that, “baby Edward was surprised to discover that he was not, in fact, the miracle child of a Scottish nanny and an African-American cook.” The tragedies continue (too many to mention, too sad to think about), but her likability stayed until the last page.
The neglect and the misfortune of these children would have been too much to handle without Burden’s humor, and her story would have been boring without the extreme excess. Swinging somewhere between indulgent and apologetic, Burden hit the nail on the head. I, unlike her mother, enjoyed my time in Burdenland. And I was happy to see they all got out alive, and I was very happy to give my normal, middle-class parents a big hug!
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and guilt about her situation.After a brief family fascinating family history, Dead End Gene Pool takes us right into the depths of Burdenland-a world of the ultrarich and the ultradisturbed. Ironically, Burden handled all of this tragedy with satire. She mocked herself, and in that mocking I felt deeply sorry for her. My empathy for her and her life was not something I anticipated. I truly thought, “Oh, no. Here is another poor little rich girl story. Let’s hear about real tragedy.” But Burden’s use of comedy showed me that any life has tragedy. That sadness is sadness, and that (of course) money doesn’t make life better. In fact, it seems like lots of it makes life worse.
This self effacing comedy is best demonstrated in Burden’s comments about her absent mother. Some of these observations were so funny that I laughed out loud, despite the heartbreak of the situation. For example, after a three year absence, Wendy’s baby brother is stunned to see his long lost mother. To describe this event, Burden says that, “baby Edward was surprised to discover that he was not, in fact, the miracle child of a Scottish nanny and an African-American cook.” The tragedies continue (too many to mention, too sad to think about), but her likability stayed until the last page.
The neglect and the misfortune of these children would have been too much to handle without Burden’s humor, and her story would have been boring without the extreme excess. Swinging somewhere between indulgent and apologetic, Burden hit the nail on the head. I, unlike her mother, enjoyed my time in Burdenland. And I was happy to see they all got out alive, and I was very happy to give my normal, middle-class parents a big hug!
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LibraryThing member countrylife
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
The back cover reminds us that “The rich are different”. But 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!
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
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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 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!
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LibraryThing member lahochstetler
If one was wondering what it's like to grow up in one of the United States's wealthiest families, Burden's memoir provides the answer. Descended from Cornelius Vanderbilt, Burden grew up among the super rich. If her autobiography makes anything clear, it's that the super rich are entirely
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dysfunctional. Burden grew up with little familial attention: her father committed suicide, her mother was rarely present. Burden spent most of her time in boarding school or with her distant grandparents, who clearly preferred her brothers. It's nearly impossible to overstate just how dysfunctional "Burdenland" is. Burden does a brilliant job highlighting the absurdity of uber wealth. For anyone who suspects that nobody actually needs that much money, this book will certainly reinforce that. This is a thoughtful memoir, Burden manages to highlight the absurdities of her family without any of the bitterness to which she is likely entitled. The Gilded Age that produced Cornelius Vanderbilt was alive and well in the twentieth century, at least for some. This memoir is both hilarious and poignant, and well worth the read. Show Less
LibraryThing member pwagner2
Funny satiric book ala David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. Snippets of her dysfunctional childhood and her whacko family. Actually, she was quite a whacko too, though not to the degree of the rest. It was sad how she was obviously crying out for help by her bad behavior, but ignored. Ignored too,
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when she should have been protected from lecherous people in her life. Show Less
LibraryThing member BookshelfMonstrosity
Author Burden takes what is in reality a sad family situation full of neglect and lacking any sort of parental direction, and spins it into a funny tale reminiscent of Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris. The cover of this book is definitely what reeled me in, and Burden hits the ground running
Although the book definitely has its witty moments, the jokes and the incessant effort to make a bad situation funny become tiresome after awhile. I also wonder at the accuracy of certain parts of the memoir. Nobody I know remembers this much about their childhood! I think I was hoping for more of the Vanderbilt family backstory, not just how messed up Burden's parents and grandparents were. Certain stories in the memoir that were supposed to make me chuckle simply made me cringe or shake my head. Needless to say, this one fell flat for me. If you want a truly funny memoir, check out Burroughs instead.
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with jokes about her flatulent grandmother and her jet-setting absentee mother.Although the book definitely has its witty moments, the jokes and the incessant effort to make a bad situation funny become tiresome after awhile. I also wonder at the accuracy of certain parts of the memoir. Nobody I know remembers this much about their childhood! I think I was hoping for more of the Vanderbilt family backstory, not just how messed up Burden's parents and grandparents were. Certain stories in the memoir that were supposed to make me chuckle simply made me cringe or shake my head. Needless to say, this one fell flat for me. If you want a truly funny memoir, check out Burroughs instead.
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LibraryThing member lorimarie
Dead End Gene Pool, the memoir by Wendy Burden, the great-great granddaughter of the Vanderbilts, is a funny and yet surprisingly sad story of poor little rich kids. Neglected by the adults in their lives, Wendy and her brothers are ferried back and forth between their Mother, Grandparents and
The prologue was a bit dry, more a family tree recitation than story, but the real fun started with chapter one and continued on throughout the book. Wendy seemed to get the short end of the stick for having the unfortunate gender of female. Maybe because she was a girl and her grandfather cared more about the males in the succession line, she was able to get away with more high-jinx. Because it’s her memoir, we see the world through her eyes, it would be interesting to see what one of her brothers thought of their childhood.
The stories are told with great wit and what seems to be brutal honesty. I loved the details about all the different mansions and grounds, vacation spots and fancy cars. The day to day lives of the very rich are so interesting! The planning of meals and parties and picnic’s - it’s all hilarious and a little ridiculous, but so amazing to imagine. One had to feel sorry for the endless numbers of servants and secretaries that had to endure these insanely rich and egomaniacal people and their grandchildren who had the run of it all.
My only question is how did Wendy go from being a goof ball who was fat, spotty and obsessed with death, to a seemingly normal person with a fantastic sense of humor? One would think with the way her mother treated her she’d have a pretty big chip on her shoulder.
It was sad in the end that all the old people died, but that’s what happens to people, they get old and die. I only wish that Wendy told a few more stories about what happened to her and her brothers to get them to this point. I guess the sign of a good book is if it leaves you wanting more. I’d like more please.
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boarding schools, so much that it seems she and her brothers don't even know one another. Or want to for that matter. Wendy seemed to be the only child in her immediate family that came out of childhood intact. The prologue was a bit dry, more a family tree recitation than story, but the real fun started with chapter one and continued on throughout the book. Wendy seemed to get the short end of the stick for having the unfortunate gender of female. Maybe because she was a girl and her grandfather cared more about the males in the succession line, she was able to get away with more high-jinx. Because it’s her memoir, we see the world through her eyes, it would be interesting to see what one of her brothers thought of their childhood.
The stories are told with great wit and what seems to be brutal honesty. I loved the details about all the different mansions and grounds, vacation spots and fancy cars. The day to day lives of the very rich are so interesting! The planning of meals and parties and picnic’s - it’s all hilarious and a little ridiculous, but so amazing to imagine. One had to feel sorry for the endless numbers of servants and secretaries that had to endure these insanely rich and egomaniacal people and their grandchildren who had the run of it all.
My only question is how did Wendy go from being a goof ball who was fat, spotty and obsessed with death, to a seemingly normal person with a fantastic sense of humor? One would think with the way her mother treated her she’d have a pretty big chip on her shoulder.
It was sad in the end that all the old people died, but that’s what happens to people, they get old and die. I only wish that Wendy told a few more stories about what happened to her and her brothers to get them to this point. I guess the sign of a good book is if it leaves you wanting more. I’d like more please.
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LibraryThing member JBJ2110
Not very good--didn't finish. A little tedious
LibraryThing member akh3966
I may be in the minority here, but I really did NOT care for this book. I couldn't find anything of lasting interest in this memoir. It may be that the only reason it got published was because the author, Wendy Burdens, is descended from THE Vanderbilts. That wasn't enough to make it interesting to
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me. I was left wondering if she has any relatives left that even acknowledge her. Show Less
LibraryThing member Sarahfine
This is an odd occasionally off-putting memoir, which was nevertheless riveting. Wendy Burden, the great-great-great-great-grandaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, devotes the majority of her lively memoir to her childhood, which is spent largely in the company of her filthy-rich grandparents, and
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debauched, appearance-obsessed mother, all of whom indulge liberally in alcohol. Wendy herself is often a cruel, spoiled brat, a fact she doesn't shrink from, but she usually has good reason to lash out, not least because she is openly snubbed as an unwelcome girl child in a family of coddled male heirs. The narrative is oddly disconnected, jumping around in time, and it is often difficult to keep bloodlines straight, but this is a riveting read, and voyeuristic peek into how the wealthy live. Show Less
LibraryThing member SilverGirl
On finishing the book, I don't know how to describe Dead End Gene Pool except, to say, it was just plain odd. (For that reason alone, it receives a couple of stars). Some of this was absolutely hysterical--laugh out loud funny. There were parts I found very touching and sad. At times I just read it
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with a sense of disbelief. I have to say I gave up trying to keep (unnecessary) details of the family tree straight. That said, it was a quick and entertaining read. Congrats to Wendy Burden: for making it through such a convoluted set of personal life experiences...and then to write about those experiences in such a humorous and captivating way. Show Less
LibraryThing member pinprick
Do people really think that the wealthy are immune from family troubles? Is there anyone out there that thinks money buys happiness anymore? Because sometimes reading these tragic-family-memoirs involving the rich lead me to think that they think we're all putting them up on a pedestal as "model"
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families. However, it seems that growing up wealthy in an eccentric and dysfunction family is evidently reason enough to write a memoir. Strange family tales are all the rage these days, I understand, and Wendy Burden is a pretty good writer, so it wasn't terrible to read. It was actually pretty funny sometimes. Is it memorable? Not really. Is there some greater message being conveyed? Nope. She's not terribly angry at her family, or trying to reconcile her idea of them to the reality of them, or working out some deep-held emotional issues; she's just telling us some humorous, and sometimes tragic, stories about her wacky, incredibly rich family. I think the moral is this: you can have a lot of money and still have messed-up parents. Show Less
LibraryThing member 2chances
Turns out the rich ARE different, and not in a good way. SO not in a good way. Wendy Burden's memoir of her childhood in the prison of Vanderbilt riches and expectations is touted as hilariously funny, and perhaps it is, if you can overlook the sheer tragedy of a small child trying to cope with a
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parent's suicide, rampant family alcoholism, her mother's sex addiction and other miseries too numerous to numerate. Call me bleeding heart, but I have several daughters, and I found this memoir, satirical, yes; often clever, yes; but funny? No, no, no. I wanted to snatch little Wendy and her brothers away from these monsters masquerading as loving family. She must be in her late forties now, but her voice is still the voice of a defiant adolescent, covering with bravado the heartbreak of living in a world without love. Show Less
Original publication date
2010-04-01
Physical description
288 p.; 9.5 inches
ISBN
1592405266 / 9781592405268