Note: I read this memoir because my reading in 2021 has been filled novels about unhappy families, such as Howards End by E.F. Forster, Murder Once Being Done by Ruth Rendell, The Mahe Circle by Georges Simenon, The Worm of Death by Nicholas Blake, The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy, and Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family by William Makepeace Thackeray and way too many stories starring family tyrants by Ivy Compton-Burnett. I just had a yen to read about a non-fictional dysfunctional family.
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man - Mary L. Trump
Mary L. Trump is a clinical psychologist and niece of the former president of the United States (hereafter, Former). She is the daughter of Fred, Former's older brother, a figure who always lived in the baleful shadow of his father, Fred Senior. Fred Sr calls to mind a monster in the Dickens manner, like Mr. Murdstone. We are totally persuaded that this cold, insensitive, cruel and stingy man, full of self-importance and no humor or imagination, could establish and maintain an emotionally dysfunctional family climate all his life. The only values he honored were money and endless attention to work. For lots of people, their self-worth hinges on the money they make and the assets they hold and for Fred Sr, it seems as if monetary value merged with human value.
Fred Sr thought being a commercial pilot for TWA was the same as being a bus driver in the sky. Feeling betrayed that his oldest son Fred turned his back on the family business, Fred Sr did his best to blight Fred’s existence, to the point that ridden by alcohol Fred had to give up a fine career as a pilot to return with his tail between his legs to the family business.
Former, on the other hand, was the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree. The author makes the argument that Fred Sr was a sociopath and this rubbed off on Former, who saw being a “killer” would win his father’s love and approval or at least shield him from his father’s blaming and shaming. Former demonstrated as much ambition and showmanship as to fill the void where a sense of fairness, courage, and respect for people should have been. There are such people who have nothing – zilch – nada - where a sense of right and wrong exists in most people. Such people with no conscience are sociopaths.
The author was a witness to all this, and her contempt for Former her uncle and for her paternal side in general fuels this memoir of her family. The tipping point for her in deciding to write the book, too, was the treatment of children and families at the southern border during Former’s regime. Anyway, the book is in fact more about Fred Sr and the damage he did to his wife and kids than about Former. If she sounds angry at times, one forgives it since her father was ruined by Fred Sr’s mindless brutality and part of Fred Sr’s legacy was denied to her and her brother. But because she is a psychologist, I think her suppositions rang true on what makes her father’s side of the family tick.
Anyway, I have the same horrified if mild interest in Former as anybody else interested in the pathology behind tyrants, I guess. I’ve found that when I think about Former, I catch myself to respond to my own anger and disgust and then I wish and pray, “May you be happy, Former. Because maybe if you are happy, you will be content in retirement and leave us alone in 2024.”
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