Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden

Wendy Burden has certainly put the fun back in dysfunction!  My god, Dead End Gene Pool was a disturbing, hilarious, and utterly fabulous memoir about a famous and extremely wealthy family we’ve all heard about – The Vanderbilts. 

Memoirs always have a special place in my heart, but this one … well, I just loved it, for more reasons than I could possibly list here.  Wendy Burden really knows how to tell a story, and she was unlucky (or lucky, depending on how you look at it) enough to have a family that was so wacky and dysfunction that you have to laugh along (rather than cry as you should) with her for the entire length of this novel.   You just can’t help yourself but laugh, because her life was full of crazy-ass people and despite all of it, she learned how to make fun of it rather than complain.  Sure, there are plenty of moments in this book that aren’t pretty, but that’s life – messy, tragic, and you survive it by finding the humor in it.  I laughed my butt off today when I was looking for a picture of the book cover, and I noticed many reviews referring to her life as ”tragically flawed.”  Everyone has flaws, and the tragedy in that is that most of us try to hide them rather embrace them and get over them.  If Ms. Burden had written a book that watered down all the family dysfunction, you wouldn’t be reading a review of her book on this blog, because who wants to read a non-tragically flawed life in a memoir?  Not this girl, which is exactly why I asked to review this book.  I HATE IT when other book reviewers write things like “in the tradition of so-and-so famous author” or “in the style of,” so I promise you that I wouldn’t dare to compare Wendy to another fabmous memoirist that I love.  Let me say this – she’s good, she has her own story, and that’s that.  I will say that I enjoyed the hell out of this book, and if Wendy had any other memoir in print, I’d certainly want to read them (and review them) as well.   

Ms. Burden is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and her family was one of the richest blue-blood families of New York society.  But, the heart of her story isn’t their money and the ridiculous ways they spent it (or began to lose it), but the pure craziness of her modern-day relatives in all their glory, such as her grandmothers massive flatulence problem.  Somehow, farting has never been funnier to me than in this book.  Let me give you the most subtle fart-related quote from the book - “Thirty guests each weekend!” said my grandmother with the tiniest brfft.  (She was in a car, after all.)  I mean, can you just imagine it?   The wealthy New York society tooting nonstop, next to priceless works of art, playing with grandchildren and pet poodles, during mealtime, bedtime, cocktail time, and all the while calling their own granddaughter by the name of Toots.  When you look at this picture, do you see a pair of dysfunctional alcoholics, or do you see them for their wealth, health, style and beauty?

Wendy’s grandparents became a more prominent part of Wendy’s life once her father blew his head off when she was just a little girl.  Shocking enough already that he killed himself, the real horrifying part of this story was when her mother, in the traditional old-school form of avoidance of talking about anything unpleasant, doesn’t bothered to tell Wendy or her older brother about their father’s suicide and simply sent them to school the next day.  Wendy only learned the real truth years later after snooping, when she found a statement given by her grandfather about his sons suicide.  This, I can totally relate to.  Just the other night my stepson was asking me about my parents, and I had to tell him that all I ever knew about my father was his name and the city he grew up in (until my BFF begged me to hire a Private Eye to find him in my twenties), and that the only way I even knew this information was because I had been eavesdropping on my mom and our next door neighbor one afternoon while hiding outside the window in their yard.  My people didn’t talk about anything, and when I read that Wendy’s people were the same I knew exactly what that was like.  I grew up semi-believing Mick Jagger or Steven Tyler was my father, since my mom grew up in LA and knew a few famous people, plus the fact that I used to have big lips.  Wendy and I lived in the same world, despite hers being on Fifth Avenue, and mine in the ghetto. 

Once her father died, her grandparents insisted on visitation with their grandchildren several times a year, which was actually a bit of relief to their mother.  Mrs. Burden, like all bad mothers, was busy living her own life and couldn’t be bothered to raise her own children, so for three years, she ran off to beach vacations and left her three children (Yeah, another thing, Mrs. Burden was a week or so pregnant when her husband killed himself, and a relative confirmed the boy was indeed a Burden by the size of his balls) in the care of the house staff and their grandparents.  It is truly hard for me to say they were better off with during the time they spent with their grandparents over their mother, because all of them had their issues and couldn’t really be bothered with the children, especially Wendy, who was a girl, which made her undesirable (Not an heir) to her grandparents, and chubby and borderline unattractive to her beautiful mother.  It’s no wonder Wendy turned to the dark side and idolized Wednesday Adams.  (I was a little more partial to the Munsters myself at her age.)

By now, you’ve heard why I’ve enjoyed the book, so let me tell you why I think you will enjoy it – plenty of sibling rivalry; a family with many forms of illness and dysfunction; a step-father from hell who was a gun-nut, who fired all their staff and forced the kids (Ok, mainly Wendy) to do all the work while insisting they call him Master and Commander; a brief time spent living in London, which somehow causes Wendy’s mother to spend a lifetime using the English pronunciation of S, as in shodomy rather than sodomy; and one hell of an enjoyable history lesson of one of America’s most-famous families.  I’m going to let you discover poor Hammy all on your own, but rest assured, if you like dysfunction, then you are going to LOVE this book.

To purchase your copy of Dead End Gene Pool go here.

To visit Wendy Burdens website, click here.

To be a fan of the Dead End Gene Pool and Wendy Burden on Facebook, go here.

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