Autobiography and memoirReviewKenneth Tynan and Elaine Dundy’s daughter delivers an astonishing family tell-all of narcissism and neglect
Here is one peep behind the curtain I wish I’d never taken. Tracy Tynan, daughter of Kenneth Tynan and the writer Elaine Dundy, describes an upbringing of privilege and privation that deals a death blow to the character of both parents. If the Joan Crawford takedown Mommie Dearest is the template for the awful-mother showbiz memoir, Wear and Tear goes one better, or worse: this is Mommie and Daddy Dearest. You may never again read a family tell-all of such narcissism, of such subtle cruelty, of such toadying to the famous. I didn’t doubt a word of it.
Ms Tynan had already laid the groundwork in 2001 by publishing her father’s diaries, which quickly became notorious for their candid revelations about his spanking and his sadomasochistic affair with a woman named Nicole. But his bedroom preferences now seem rather innocent compared with what we learn about him here. When Tracy was born in 1952 Tynan was already renowned as a drama critic and social dandy; Elaine was the novelist, and a gruesome match for him in attention seeking. Looking back to her childhood, Tracy recalls their Mayfair flat playing out a drama of its own – to smashing crockery and screaming matches. One night she saw her father perched half-naked on a window ledge. “I’m going to jump!” he yelled. Her mother replied, “Why the fuck don’t you?” and went off to bed.
Her father was perched half-naked on a window ledge. 'I’m going to jump!' Her mother replied, 'Why don’t you?'Trapped inside this parental “horror movie”, Tracy decided she must be the normal one, given “there was no other role available”. She became essentially an extra in a household regularly thronged with film stars and celebrities. She claims not to have a single memory of sitting down to dinner with just her parents: either they were out at restaurants or expecting guests – Larry, Marlene, Orson, whoever. Though we already know of Tynan’s love of “high-definition” performers – his magazine profiles remain models of the genre – this book exposes a celebrity obsession that can only diminish him as a man. Told by her mother to curtsy before their eminent friends (she soon forgot) Tracy later had to battle with Ken’s determination to remove her from school because “no one famous has ever graduated from Dartington”.
The centrepiece of the book is her 21st birthday party at the Old Vic, ostensibly thrown for her by Ken but effectively a present to himself. It’s instructive to compare Tracy’s account of the night – for instance, Max Wall’s dire routine of racist and antisemitic jokes – with Tynan’s in his Diaries, which is essentially a list of the great and good who attended. (Princess Margaret is a much-lamented absentee.) For Tracy, the highlight is the moment she and her father took cocaine, because she was proud to have introduced him to something new. “Not exactly a traditional father-daughter moment,” she admits.
Another poignant irony emerges: despite her sophisticated, sexually liberated parents, despite Ken being touted as the first person to say “fuck” on television, Tracy herself was naive, and at 19 still a virgin. (She suffered from vaginismus.) After Sussex University and college in New York, she moved to Los Angeles and became a costume director. The motif sewn into the book is her obsession with clothes, one item or another providing the memory trigger for each chapter. As she sublimates her filial dismay and confusion in a tour of wardrobes past, we come to admire her as a woman, if not as a writer – she is no more than competent. Her sanity and level-headedness are rather amazing in the circumstances, though at moments you note that she hasn’t entirely divested herself of the Tynan colours. After Ken’s death (from emphysema) in 1980 she is pleased to recall that his memorial service was “a star-studded event that included even royalty” – Princess Margaret made it this time.
Dundy, however, lived on, lost for the most part in a stupor of drugs and drink. When sentient, she was mean to people – doctors, waiters – and frightened them. “She frightened me,” Tracy admits. Like Ken, she would later move to Los Angeles to be near the daughter who had disappointed her, and hung on grimly until the age of 86. There is a horribly funny moment after Dundy dies and Tracy visits a Buddhist teacher: the first thing she says to him is, “Please reassure me that my mother’s not coming back.” The later parts of the book, dealing with her career, a premature baby and marriage to director Jim McBride, slightly fizzle after the fireworks of her parents’ misbehaviour. The reader misses their presence, even if the writer doesn’t.
There is a painful reckoning with Ken’s second wife, Kathleen, who takes sole charge of his diaries and alienates her further by refusing to include Ken’s middle name (and her own), Peacock, on his gravestone. Happily, she became friends with her two half-siblings, Roxana and Matthew, who after Kathleen’s death handed over the diaries to her. Tracy notes that, in the 10-year period they cover, Ken mentions his daughter eight times. “It was more than I had anticipated.” I don’t think there’s a sadder sentence in the book. To have survived her upbringing may be Tracy Tynan’s great achievement – greater certainly than Wear and Tear, which for all its honesty and courage stretches very thin in its second half. Her publishers have also let her down. The absence of an index is regrettable; the absence of photographs is unforgivable.
Wear and Tear: The Threads of My Life is published by Duckworth Overlook. To order a copy for £16.14 (RRP £18.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
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