Well, one of Andy Warhol's predictions didn't come true: "Seeing Alexandra was sad--a big rug-rat hanging off Viva--she'll probably turn out a mess." As it happens, Alexandra Auder--daughter of Warhol actress Viva and author of the diverting coming-of-age memoir Don't Call Me Home--turned out fine. Somehow.
Born in New York City in 1971 to Michel Auder, a French filmmaker with a drug problem, and Viva (née Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann), a maker and causer of scenes, Auder spent her earliest days at Manhattan's notorious Chelsea Hotel. She and Viva lived the vagabond life after her parents split up and before returning to the Chelsea, where Auder played out her shaggy childhood.
Although Viva is combative, emotionally needy, and oblivious to boundaries, Mommie Dearest this isn't. Auder reports bemusedly on, say, a bloody brawl between Viva and Auder's grandfather at the Hoffmann family home. And Auder was happy to play second parent at age 10 when the single and financially precarious Viva gave birth to a baby girl, Gaby. (Gaby Hoffmann became a well-regarded actress.) It's not so much Viva's life choices that infuriated Auder; it's Viva's harum-scarum parenting style. Don't Call Me Home includes affecting chapters set in the present, in which the octogenarian Viva visits the adult Auder and family, reigniting the author's concern that she hasn't charted a sufficiently un-Viva-like parenting path. Regarding her teenage daughter, Auder wonders, "I set boundaries, didn't I?" One hopes so, although as this memoir attests, sketchy parenting makes great copy. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer