Dumbfounded, indeed.
20 November 2008
It's been a really weird week, book-wise.
Every book that I've picked up expecting to love has left me underwhelmed (hello, A.A. Gill's Previous Convictions) while books that I didn't expect to read past the first twenty-five pages have floored me. Case in point? Matthew Rothschild's memoir Dumbfounded.
It's the story of Rothschild's childhood, which was spent in affluence on New York City's Upper East Side, but which wasn't really comfortable by any stretch of the imagination (or, as he puts it on his book's cover: "Why having it all isn't for sissies."). Left with his grandparents at a young age while his socialite mother took off for Europe, Matthew found himself living with a very unique couple in their seventies--meaning he was largely left to his own devices to figure out how to get along in school (or not--he got kicked out of every school he attended), how he felt about Judaism, and whether or not he was gay.
But, hands down, the best part of this story is Matthew's grandmother, who refers to her husband's affluent family as "that damn cult" and very rarely minces words. This is one of my favorite passages:
"My grandmother was not the kind of woman who waited for cocktail hour before she started drinking, and I knew that sometimes she carried a sliver flask with her to events for support. My grandfather, on the other hand, rarely drank anything stronger than coffee, so it's a wonder why it was his health that was the issue.
'I'll tell you why he's so sick,' my grandmother informed me confidentially. 'He was the first one in that damn cult he calls a family not to marry his cousin.'
'That's gross,' I said.
'You're preaching to the choir, little man. And you know they're all insane. Seriously.' She leaned in and lowered her voice, as if we were co-conspirators, and recited her favorite joke about my grandfather's family. 'We're talking about people who've had so much shock therapy that if they held hands, they could provide enough electricity for New York City.'" (p. 53.)
Later on in the book she tells a younger relative who asks if she has any hobbies: "I'm a hooker." I don't think I could have lived Matthew Rothschild's childhood. But I definitely wouldn't have minded knowing his grandmother.