Too Much and Never Enough, Mary L. Trump
Simon & Schuster, 2020, 225 pages, C$37.00 hc, ISBN 978-1-9821-4146-2
Dunbar’s number, for the lucky ones encountering the concept for the first time, is roughly 150. What it refers to is, quoting Wikipedia’s pithy summary, “A suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.” Or, loosely reformulated, the number of people in your life that you know well enough to, well, care for them. This does not necessarily mean liking them—for various reasons, some people included in your Dunbar number’s gallery of rogues are people you don’t like, but need to understand in order to organize your life—maybe bad bosses, unpleasant uncles, dour neighbours or other people with impact or authority over your life. The number stays roughly the same, but the people included in the group change as your life changes.
As with many pieces of sociological research vulgarized for lay audiences, Dunbar’s number can be used and interpreted in a number of ways. I would suggest that, with weaker interpersonal ties in modern life, our 150 spots are often filled by parasocial relationships—celebrities we obsess about without them knowing about it: actors, authors, public personalities and… politicians.
(Speaking of politicians—From various tales and my own infrequent meetings with them, I’m convinced that many career politicians have brains that can handle a much higher Dunbar number than 150 as part of their “tribe,” which they develop by training their memory—Bill Clinton, for one, was famous for recalling trivial facts about people years after briefly meeting them.)
Where I’m going with this is simple: I utterly loathe that once-President Donald J. Trump currently occupies one of the 150 slots of my own personal Dunbar roster.
It makes no sense for this to happen. I’m not even American. Trump is a miserable person who would, in an alternate timeline when he stayed real estate “mogul,” usually be dismissed as being unworthy of notice. I should have more friends in that 150-person group. Instead, I’m stuck with a mental model of someone who rants in ALL CAPS on social media. Sad!
But the truth is that Trump now occupies a slot in the Dunbar’s roster of millions of people. He was a man of considerable power, and wielded this power unpredictably, making seat-of-the-pant declarations that weren’t even always understandable. It’s normal that millions of people (probably hundreds of millions of people) spent a considerable amount of time creating a mental model of him in order to understand, predict and maybe even encourage his actions.
But all of us stuck in this abusive parasocial relationship with Trump have a marked disadvantage over his niece Mary L. Trump, author of the family history Too Much and Never Enough: we don’t really know him. Even those of us poor souls who spent most of his presidency devouring political news for every twitch and tweet of his administration weren’t there. We don’t know what was filtered, made up, mythologized or exaggerated about him. But Mary was present during Donald’s formative years. She celebrated holidays at the same house. She saw him grow up. Furthermore, she obtained a psychology degree, making her far more of an adept observer of human nature than most of us. (And the family link means that her adherence to the Goldwater Rule isn’t as necessary as for others.) As for the rest, remember that Mary was essentially excommunicated from Donald’s circles due to shenanigans surrounding the estate of Trump’s father—dubious actions that led to her filing a lawsuit, and plenty of discovery documents ending in her possession. What’s more, it’s safe to say that Mary doesn’t agree with Republican policies. You say disgruntled—I say clear-eyed.
I have spent dozens of hours trying to understand Donald, poring over his biography, his actions, and the reactions of those who were closer to him than I ever will be. But Too Much and Never Enough still had a lot to teach me.
If you’re expecting a full psychological portrait of Donald, you can be reassured that the book is more subtle than that—at its best, it’s a chronicle of the Trump family, taking us in the New York City mansion that acted as the gathering place of the family, the life of Fred Trump (father of Donald) and the tumultuous history of the family through the decade. Mary has a special space in the narrative for her own father, Fred Jr., who died prematurely in 1980. But it’s the twisted family dynamics of the Trump family that hold our attention—a mixture of wealth and regrettable psychological traits, an overbearing patriarch (Fred Sr.) whose pattern of selectively doling and withholding affection set a toxic example for the rest of the family.
It’s a unique tell-all glimpse at the formative influences of Donald at a far more basic level than most biographers manage to create—it’s like spending Christmas with Trump, and seeing him at his worst when threatened by people formerly close to him. How nasty were the Trumps? Well, how about cutting off health insurance to an 18-month-old baby nephew with serious medical conditions? The book is damning in detailing Trump’s wealth (or relative lack thereof) but it’s at its best in its family portrait.
As I write this, I still haven’t managed to fully purge Donald from my Dunbar gallery—obstinately, he clings to the spotlight and may even rise again as the Republican nominee for the presidency. I suppose that’s the other side of the coin: How can you stop caring about a narcissist who keeps turning the spotlight toward him?