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Summary
Summary
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never wrote a memoir, but she told her life story and revealed herself in intimate ways through the nearly 100 books she brought into print during the last two decades of her life as an editor at Viking and Doubleday. Based on archives and interviews with Jackie's authors, colleagues, and friends, Reading Jackie mines this significant period of her life to reveal both the serious and the mischievous woman underneath the glamorous public image.
Though Jackie had a reputation for avoiding publicity, she willingly courted controversy in her books. She was the first editor to commission a commercially-successful book telling the story of Thomas Jefferson's relationship with his female slave. Her publication of Gelsey Kirkland's attack on dance icon George Balanchine caused another storm. Jackie rarely spoke of her personal life, but many of her books ran parallel to, echoed, and emerged from her own experience. She was the editor behind bestsellers on the assassinations of Tsar Nicholas II and John Lennon, and in another book she paid tribute to the allure of Marilyn Monroe and Maria Callas. Her other projects take us into territory she knew well: journeys to Egypt and India, explorations of the mysteries of female beauty and media exploitation, into the minds of photographers, art historians, and the designers at Tiffany & Co.
Many Americans regarded Jackie as the paragon of grace, but few knew her as the woman sitting on her office floor laying out illustrations, or flying to California to persuade Michael Jackson to write his autobiography. Reading Jackie provides a compelling behind-the-scenes look at Jackie at work: how she commissioned books and nurtured authors, as well as how she helped to shape stories that spoke to her strongly. Jackie is remembered today for her marriages to JFK and to Aristotle Onassis, but her real legacy is the books that reveal the tastes, recollections, and passions of an independent woman.
Author Notes
WILLIAM KUHN is a biographer and historian. He is the author of three previous books, including, most recently, a controversial biography, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli . His Henry and Mary Ponsonby: Life at the Court of Queen Victoria was a BBC Radio Four Book of the Week read by actor Geoffrey Palmer.
www.nanatalese.com
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
During the last two decades of her life, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis worked on nearly 100 books with varying degrees of responsibility as an editor, first at Viking-she resigned after being castigated by the New York Times about a Viking thriller with a Ted Kennedy-like protagonist as an assassination target-and then at Doubleday, which promised to avoid any similar embarrassments. Her love of dance led to Onassis publishing a biography of Fred Astaire and autobiographies of Martha Graham, Judith Jamison, and Gelsey Kirkland. Kuhn (The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli) is particularly dismissive of Kirkland and her then-husband/collaborator Greg Lawrence's bestselling tell-all accusing George Balanchine of cruelties; not coincidentally, Lawrence is the author of a competing book, Jackie as Editor. With biographies of Clara Bow and Jean Harlow, the quietly feminist Onassis insisted on getting beyond publicity photo images to tell a woman's true story, says Kuhn. Being seen as royalty herself as the widow of JFK, the often imperious Onassis commissioned more than a dozen books on the royalty of India, ancient Egypt, Versailles, and Romanov Russia. Although this lucid, amply detailed catalogue of Onassis's publishing projects offers a window into her passions and opaque personality, it is far from what Kuhn dubs "the only autobiography she ever wrote"-most readers will not find it revelatory. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
In his prologue, Kuhn quotes John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s statement that his mother, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, was at the time of her death surrounded by her friends and her family and her books. Building on the theme that Jackie's love of books and words helped define who this intensely private woman really was, he provides a biography of Jackie via the books she read and loved during the course of her richly complex personal life, and, more important, the books and authors she championed and nurtured as an editor in her professional life. The theme is an interesting one, though Kuhn perhaps takes it a bit too far, asserting that her books are the autobiography she never wrote. Hyperbole aside, analyzing Jackie's editorial choices does provide a fascinating albeit limited glimpse into what moved her soul and motivated her choices. Voracious readers will relate to Jackie's love of literature and appreciate this quasibiographical booklist.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Two biographies survey Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' career in publishing. SIXTEEN years after the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, she remains indelible and yet unknowable, a glamorous, mysterious icon forever hidden behind oversize sunglasses. The subject of endless scrutiny, from schlocky best sellers to academically astute studies, her 64 years of life have seemingly been dissected hour by hour. Yet this season brings two new biographies that deal with the very same period: the 19 years she spent in publishing as an editor for Viking Press and then Doubleday. "Reading Jackie" by William Kuhn and "Jackie as Editor" by Greg Lawrence represent a rebranding of the legend, a strenuous effort to burnish her literary legacy. Scorned as a dilettante trading on her name when she joined the publishing world in 1975, Onassis turned a sinecure into a serious career, editing or initiating nearly 100 books. Other than her post-college stint in the early 1950s as the "Inquiring Camera Girl" for The Washington Times-Herald, she had very little conventional work experience. But at the age of 46, widowed after her unhappy second marriage to Aristotle Onassis and financially secure, she found herself restless and unmoored in Manhattan, unsure how to fill her days. Two friends - her former White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, and the newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin - suggested she consider a career in publishing. Thomas Guinzburg, a family friend who was also the publisher of Viking Press, eagerly signed her up at $200 per four-day week as a consulting editor, hoping she would use her prestige to land name-brand authors. In "Jackie as Editor," Lawrence describes the frenzy that erupted on Sept. 22, 1975, when she reported for her first day of work and "a mob gathered on the sidewalk." As Guinzburg recalled, "There were bomb threats, security people and press people dressed up as messengers." At Viking, Onassis charmed and impressed colleagues with her low-key style and commitment to learning the business. Known for her fashion extravagance, she initially played to her strength by working with Diana Vreeland on two coffee-table books ("In the Russian Style" and "Inventive Paris Clothes, 1909-1939") that accompanied exhibitions Vreeland organized at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute. But Onassis also sought out the former Chicago priest Eugene Kennedy, encouraging him to write what became his award-winning biography, "Himself! The Life and Times of Richard J. Daley." She encouraged Barbara Chase-Riboud to write her groundbreaking novel about Thomas Jefferson's slave mistress, "Sally Hemings." Onassis quit Viking in 1977 after the firm published a novel by Jeffrey Archer, "Shall We Tell the President?" which centered on a plot to assassinate a fictional president based on Ted Kennedy. Although not directly involved with the book, she was apparently aware of its contents. What drove her to resign was John Leonard's review in The New York Times, which referred to the book as "trash," adding that "anybody associated with its publication should be ashamed of herself." With reassurance from Nancy Tuckerman, a confidante dating back to their prep school days, Onassis joined Doubleday, the publishing house where Tuckerman was already employed. At Doubleday, she worked on an eclectic array of books: commercial best sellers (Michael Jackson's "Moonwalk"), glossy coffee-table volumes (five celebrating Tiffany's wares), upmarket children's books (by the Czech émigré Peter Sis as well as by her friend Carly Simon), dance memoirs (by Gelsey Kirkland and Martha Graham) and books delving into French royal history (Olivier Bernier's "Secrets of Marie Antoinette"). Her most noted coups were arranging for the American publication of Naguib Mahfouz's celebrated novels in the Cairo Trilogy and persuading Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers to turn their TV conversations into "The Power of Myth." Delving into her publishing career, Kuhn and Lawrence deliver interesting anecdotes but suffer from a worshipful tendency to overhype Onassis' accomplishments. They interviewed many of the same people and cite similar source material, but their books vary radically in style, tone and perspective. Kuhn, the author of "The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli" and "Henry and Mary Ponsonby: Life at the Court of Queen Victoria," apparently never met his subject, but benefited from Doubleday's cooperation. While he is a deft writer, the fundamental premise driving his narrative smacks of overreaching. Although Onassis declared large parts of her life off limits to the public, Kuhn declares in eureka fashion that "all along, however, the most revealing information has been hiding in plain sight." She made her feelings explicit, he theorizes, by virtue of the books she chose to work on, as well as her editing suggestions and conversations with authors. As Kuhn chronicles her career, he performs textual analysis and hypothesizes about her motivations (presuming, for example, that her interest in Sally Hemings reveals her "sympathetic" view of the "dependent" position of a presidential mistress). As he tries to imagine the inner workings of this very private woman's mind, he uses hedge wording like "perhaps," "seems likely" and "it's possible." Kuhn goes out of his way to savage Lawrence, an author who worked with Onassis on three Doubleday books. Competing writers trash-talk one another in private, but it's rare to see a hatchet this publicly displayed. Lawrence, an admitted former drug addict, was the co-author of Gelsey Kirkland's autobiography, "Dancing on My Grave." He met her courtesy of their mutual drug dealer; rehab, marriage and divorce followed. Kuhn gleefully writes that "Dancing" received "uniformly hostile reviews"; quotes Steve Rubin, an executive at the book's publisher, as saying of Lawrence, "He's always been the problem"; and piles it on with an unattributed quotation calling the writer "a very difficult man." PERHAPS - to borrow a word - Kuhn was worried that the unauthorized version might be spicier. Indeed, Lawrence includes funny and entertaining tales (like Onassis' cutting put-down of a colleague's clothes, or her inadvertently comic effort to ignore her own fame, telling another editor, "You know, I lived in Greece for a while"). But the reader has to slog through a swamp of words to get the goods. Writing as if racing the clock, Lawrence has delivered a notebook dump, including lengthy chunks of unredacted quotations, as if he couldn't be bothered to differentiate between the deadly dull and the delicious. Only Jackie obsessives are likely to read one, much less both, of these books. Tucking into them with curiosity and anticipation, I came away unsatisfied. Their subject remained elusive. Many of those who knew her well are still refusing to grant interviews, but the dearth of new material is unlikely to deter writers from strip-mining her life in search of a new angle and publishing gold. Onassis edited an eclectic array of books, from Michael Jackson's 'Moonwalk' to Gelsey Kirkland's memoir. Meryl Gordon, the author of "Mrs. Astor Regrets," is the director of magazine writing at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.
Kirkus Review
A clever, surprisingly substantial take on the life of Jacqueline Onassis (1929 1994).Kuhn (History/Carthage Coll; The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli, 2006, etc.) admiringly portrays this American icon as a bookish creature born to uncertain privilege who embraced her more wealthy, connected husbands for security rather than a meeting of artistic minds. "Jackie," as the author calls her throughout, came into her own as an editor only after second husband Aristotle Onassis died. Kuhn asserts that through her publishing list of nearly 100 books, first at Viking, then at Doubleday, this most private public person truly revealed what she cared passionately about. The author's brisk, officious, often repetitive narrative moves quickly over Jackie's early career, characterized by the thwarting of her earliest desires to be a ballet dancer and then a writer. Landing a job at Viking in 1975 fulfilled a kind of dream postponedshe had won Vogue's Prix de Paris for her essay as a 21-year-old college student, gaining her an internship at the magazine's Paris office, only to be forced by her mother to decline. She also found an important new mentor in formerVogueeditor Diana Vreeland. Through Vreeland, Martha Graham and Bill Moyers, she developed her first successful books. The author traces Jackie's professional development, from a "shy celebrity recruit" to a macher who could bring in big names via books by Michael Jackson, Naguib Mahfouz and Gelsey Kirkland. Kuhn argues that Jackie touched on forbidden themes in her own lifeher husband's adultery, the humiliation of marriage, political machinationsonly through her list, including such books as Barbara Chase-Riboud's controversial novelSally Hemings (1979) and Elizabeth Crook's novel about Sam Houston and Eliza Allen,The Raven's Bride (1991). In between chronicling the titles shepherded by Jackie, Kuhn offers delicious tidbits of gossip, such as Jackie's evident glee and pride at her salary increase and promotion to senior editor.Both respectful and scintillating.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Kuhn (history, Carthage Coll.; The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli) has previously written about historical figures from royalty or public life. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was both to most Americans. Kuhn examines her life not through her connections to famous men, but through her own editorial legacy. During the last 20 years of her life, Onassis worked as an editor at Viking then Doubleday, helping to bring into print nearly 100 books. Kuhn aims to show how her work on these books created a record that reveals a great deal of her personality. Straight off, the concept just seems right. This approach is not only more hands-off than traditional methods but also highlights the part of Onassis's life that was fully her responsibility. Kuhn conducted extensive interviews with people who worked with Onassis on her books and provides rigorous footnotes. He also includes a complete list of titles she edited and a list of her own published work. VERDICT This is a revealing, readable, and insightful book. Readers of biographies of iconic figures will eat this up, as may 20th-century American history or women's studies buffs. Kuhn's respectful approach would probably have met with Onassis's approval.-Audrey Snowden, Sunset, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
