at present, my jackie as fictional character studies come down to this: the january 1971 issue of MOTION PICTURE.

you guys, it is SO RICH, i can’t even.

Continue reading →

John Kennedy’s victory in the 1960 presidential election raised interest in his wife to a fevered pitch. But, Jackie was adamant that she would do things on her own terms. She detested the  prying and made a preemptive move to thwart conjecture about her private life.

At her mother’s suggestion, Mrs. Kennedy appointed Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer— Janet Auchincloss’ friend and a former editor of the Washington Post—as her authorized biographer. The (flawed) thought being that if an authorized version of her life were presented to the public, it would be taken as pure fact, the public curiosity would be saited and interest would wane.

As her authorized biographer, Thayer was given exclusive access to Mrs. Kennedy’s voluminous scrapbooks, photo albums, and letters, as well as access to the future First Lady herself. And though it was Thayer’s name that appeared on the book’s jacket, Jackie was closely involved in its production and the final product heavily bore her imprimatur. Mary Bass Gibson, who later purchased the serialization rights for Ladies Home Journal, recalled that Mrs. Kennedy “did a lot of the writing in bed and then Molly [Thayer] would take it over and rewrite it.” Thus, the resulting text, published in the winter of 1961 as Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, remains the closest we have ever come to having Jackie’s memoirs. Jackie herself is believed to have penned the first draft.

So why isn’t Thayer’s book beloved by millions and in its 8,000th edition? Here’s why…

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy is an authorized biography in the strictest sense—meaning it is totally safe. In accordance with Jackie’s wishes, Thayer produced a saccharin treatment of the Kennedys’ life that breezily glossed over any unpleasantries and laid the foundation for the myths that followed. It says very little that people didn’t already know about Jackie in 1961. Much less things we don’t know about her now.

(Jackie was obviously pleased as she rehired Thayer in the mid-1960s to write a companion book on her White House years.)

But there is one passage that’s worth mentioning. The Kennedys’ marital struggles were an open secret in Washington by this point, and Thayer makes a brief nod of acknowledgement towards them, presumably with Jackie’s tacit approval. She writes of Jackie, contemplating marriage to Jackie Kennedy in 1953:

[S]he realized that here was a man who did not want to marry. She was frightened. Jacqueline, in this revealing moment, envisaged heartbreak, but just as swiftly determined such heartbreak would be worth the pain.

Peel back the language of Harlequin romance and this statement tantalizes. I think it also plays up the element of Jackie’s character that is so often overlooked and yet one that her children evoked time and time again: her spirit of adventure.

She knew he didn’t want to marry. She knew it was going to be difficult. And yet, she picked the challenge— the adventure— nonetheless.

the first legit biographer to ever read jackie was a pulitzer prize winner with whom my only in-person interaction had been the observation that there should be more stalls in the women’s restroom at the national press club.

because, during a panel, she had expressed liberal views about what constitutes a biographical liberty, i shipped eight questionable pages of jackie off to her to see if, in her estimation, i had sinned.

it’s hard to summon momentum. to keep up your energy over the long haul. because this- writing, biography, life- is a mighty long haul. what you need is some galvanizing force that- even if it leads nowhere, even if it’s fleeting at best- gets you going. it gets words on the page.

the pulitzer prize winner wrote back. her email opened with this line: “well, i must say i enjoyed that…”

as though she hadn’t expected to. as though she were genuinely surprised.

i’m tempted to print out this email and frame it as a reminder. because this is the response i’m writing for, this is the response jackie should get.

you think you know her story. you don’t. i’m going to tell it, though i do not yet know how.

(photo by milton greene)

in the spring of 2004, with the confidence one can only have as a graduate student straight out of undergrad, i wrote the eleventh chapter of a non-existent book.

because i had to read anna karenina in five days and my longing to compare the use of the first person plural narrators in a rose for emily and the virgin suicides never gained any traction, i wrote about jackie. i knew her life like the back of my hand. i figured writing about her would be a breeze.

it wasn’t. to this day, it isn’t.

i might’ve been a nicer person in graduate school had i known then that i would be wrestling that same chapter for that nonexistent book now. might’ve been less prideful, less hee, hee! you’re all trying to apply hegelian theory to the grapes of wrath while i’m reading tabloids and revising a chapter that i’ve finished three weeks before our thesis is due!

eight years later i am still revising that chapter. admittedly, it’s changed. there’s better characterization and structure, and it’s gone from the middle of the book to the beginning. but the guts are the same. and, much to my chagrin, it’s gotten a little dated.

way back in 2004, i made a mistake all rookie writers make. i assumed my book would be published immediately, to great fanfare. because of that, i opened with this sentence: “the fallout was instantaneous, the response was shock and awe.”

in my innocence, i didn’t realize an allusion to the war strategies of george w. bush might not be the way to go.

read THIS and then let’s talk.

i will now answer a series of questions you have not asked:

(1) did lyndon johnson kill JFK and have a love affair with a movie star as the sentence structure of this headline would lead us to believe? no.

(2) was lyndon johnson ever governor of the state of texas? no.

(3) did jackie gave arthur schlessinger a deeply revealing interview that was not to be released until 50 years after her death? yes.

(4) was this interview in any way ever “secret”? no.

(5) are the tapes “explosive”? YES!!!! or no.

(6) did jackie have a love affair with william holden? she cut her hair like audrey hepburn’s in sabrina, so the answer is obviously yes.

(7) did jackie find the panties of jfk’s teenaged lover in her white house bedroom? this has been a set-piece scene in every single kennedy made-for-tv movie of all time, so it’s clearly totally true.

the theory on which i’ve based nearly everything i’ve ever written about jackie is that we are all of us reading tabloids all the time. yes, you may not subscribe to u.s. weekly and you may not know jessica simpson’s age and the name of her hairdresser, and you can pretend you’re above this, but if you do, you’re sorely underestimating the american celebrity-industrial complex.

we’re all in this together. if you read a snippet of gossip anywhere online this morning, you are reading u.s. weekly just as good as if you subscribed.

the tabloids are everywhere. they are on fox news and cnn. they are usually cited, but their information is presented within a news report so it’s hard not to take it as truth.

case in point- on sunday, a british tabloid recycled a story that, in america, has fronted the national enquirer time and again. by monday, it had traveled across the pond into the american mainstream press and we were all wondering if jackie was sleeping around and promoting conspiracy theories better peddled by oliver stone. never mind that every article sourced the daily mail and abc promptly denied the reports- the story had wings and it took off.

and, as much as i love tabloids, this is what i hate about them: i hate that this is the narrative people will remember. people who have never read a book about jackie and will not listen to the “secret” “explosive” jackie tapes in the fall, people who won’t listen then and hear her say whatever it is she’s going to say in that crazy strange voice of hers, they will remember this.

they’ll remember her as that woman who slept around to get even, who thought a man that was never governor of texas did her husband in.

that’s what they’ll remember though it’s not who she was.