No One Can Be This Stupid
A family that is greedy, tasteless, criminal -- and incompetent.

Reviewed by Carolyn See
Sunday, November 11, 2007

NEVER ENOUGH

By Joe McGinniss

Simon & Schuster. 358 pp. $25

Readers have a real treat waiting for them in Joe McGinniss's latest book. Besides providing all the requisite gore of a true-crime narrative, Never Enough suggests that no matter how tasteless, mindless and incompetent we may be, we're perfect Einsteins in comparison to the Kissel family, which is capable of committing any maleficence known to man, but utterly incapable of doing it properly.

McGinniss has always excelled in writing about people who get themselves in trouble. His first nonfiction work, The Selling of the President, about Nixon's 1968 political campaign, landed him on bestseller lists at age 26. He hit big-time true-crime with the publication of Fatal Vision, Blind Faith and Cruel Doubt, all of which were made into TV miniseries.

But before long, he began to get into trouble himself. Jeffrey MacDonald, the convicted murderer from Fatal Vision, sued McGinniss for pretending to be his friend when it turned out that the author had thought all along that MacDonald was guilty. McGinniss settled out of court for $325,000, and Janet Malcolm wrote a long piece for the New Yorker called "The Journalist and the Murderer" in which neither one came out well.

When The Last Brother (a Ted Kennedy tale) appeared, McGinniss was accused of making up thoughts in Kennedy's head, and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (who had, herself, recently been accused of plagiarizing) alleged that McGinniss had stolen her words. Then McGinniss sat through the O.J. Simpson trial intending to write a book, but something (the acquittal, or maybe just an attack of good sense) soured him on the project. He gave back a million-dollar advance and went to the stone-poor Italian town of Castel di Sangro to hang out for close to a year with the local soccer team. The Miracle of Castel di Sangro may have interested soccer fans, but it was surely a disappointment to his true-crime following.

Clearly, McGinniss is well advised to pick his topics carefully now. If a convicted killer can get a settlement in a suit against him and Goodwin can point a finger of shame, then his best bet is to focus on characters who have no redeeming social value. Which is where the Kissel family comes in.

By calling this book Never Enough, the author implies that materialism led to the Kissels' downfall. But even more than greed, the family's main traits seem to be natural-born criminality and stunning incompetence. It's refreshing to read about these humans-from-Hell, because we're bound to think, "I may not own a $15,000 wristwatch, but at least I feed my kid fresh vegetables. And if I did kill my spouse, at least I'd go about it more intelligently than Nancy Kissel!"

Here's the unsavory cast: Bill Kissel, the patriarch whose wife dies early in the story, is incapable of decent thought, word or deed. He cares only about money. He has three kids: Andrew, whom he writes off as lazy; Rob, the "good" son who internalizes the idea that money is the only thing that matters; and Jane, who wisely moves out of the family's orbit at the earliest opportunity.

Andrew marries, becomes the treasurer of his Manhattan condo and starts embezzling as fast as he can. He's scorned by all; he's only a supporting actor in this sleazy drama, though he will come to a scorchingly bad end. The main plot revolves around Rob, a mathematical genius but emotional automaton who is a whiz at investment banking. He reaches adulthood in Manhattan in the coke-fueled '80s but in the midst of his feverish work decides he needs a vacation on a nude beach, where he meets the woman who will become his wife, the mother of his three children and his eventual nemesis, Nancy.

Nancy Kissel is portrayed here as blond, beautiful, vicious, sloppy, obsessed with material things, jealous of her maid of honor, neglectful of her children and crazed by shopping. She seems to have a serious problem with her wiring. Bill, the monster parent, despises her (confirming the rule that it takes one to know one). Rob is oblivious; he just wants to make money and then some more money after that.

Together, the extended Kissel clan -- Awful Bill, Oblivious Rob, Larcenous Andrew and the witchy wives -- appears to have no more common sense than a family of inbred ferrets. Rob and Nancy marry. (Lesson: Think twice before you wed someone you first met in the nude.) Rob is transferred to Hong Kong. Nancy, without an inner resource to her name, hates the place. She has a third child and isn't happy about it. Even with an amah and housekeeper she can't keep up with her responsibilities. Rob snaps up more companies; the kids gorge on junk food and pitch fits; Nancy shops. When Rob finally notices that she can't stand him, instead of asking her about it, he has a surveillance system installed in the vacation home they're building in Vermont.

Then a handsome lug comes to the Vermont place to install an entertainment center, and that's pretty much it for Nancy. She falls for him, gets some tattoos and starts searching the Internet for drugs that can induce heart attack. Rob knows all about this; he knows, for instance, that his wife is poisoning his scotch. But he's preoccupied with his job! Nancy turns to television for do-it-yourself murder advice but finds that, really, you shouldn't try this at home. And that's just the beginning of the plot.

There are object lessons aplenty here: Be nice! Especially to your family. Don't kill anybody. And if you do, for goodness sake, think it through! Anyone who reads this rancid drama will be smarter than its protagonists. That's the appeal, and Joe McGinniss knows it well. *

Carolyn See is Book World's regular reviewer on Fridays in Style. She is also the author of numerous books, the most recent of which is the novel "There Will Never Be Another You."