Jackie After O (20 page)

Beyond all that, Jackie had had a parade of intense book experiences. For more than a decade after the assassination, memoirs exposing almost every aspect of her life were written by those closest to her: the cook, who had disclosed that Jackie had dieted off twenty-five pounds; the nanny, who had broken the news to Caroline that her father was dead; her husband's longtime secretary, who complained about not getting a raise; and by journalists who had been reverent during the presidency but were crass—at least in Jackie's eyes—in their later books.

One of these men had been Jim Bishop, who had written
The Day Lincoln Was Shot
, detailing the assassination minute by minute. The book was a massive success when it was published in 1955, and it was later made into a movie. JFK was enamored with the idea of what Bishop could do for his legacy, and had given the writer complete access to the White House, resulting in
A Day in the Life of President Kennedy
. Kennedy was dead before the book was done. But Jackie had resented the author's presence in her life and did not think Bishop, who had dropped out of school in the eighth grade, was a good writer. In the days after Dallas, Bishop, a syndicated columnist, announced that he was going to write a new book,
The Day Kennedy Was Shot
, another moment-by-moment account that was published in 1968. Jackie, seeking revenge and needing to assert some control over a spiraling situation, tried to preempt him by handpicking her own writer, to whom she would divulge everything, and whose draft of history she would trust.
¹²

She asked Theodore White. He said no. She asked Walter Lord, who wrote
A Night to Remember
, a harrowing account of the
Titanic
sinking. He, too, said no.

Next on her list was Massachusetts native William Manchester, a tall, pipe-smoking Wesleyan University fellow who had received a Purple Heart in Okinawa as a marine. After the war, he had been a
Baltimore Sun
reporter and then he became an author, writing biographies of H. L. Mencken, the Rockefellers, and JFK, for which he, too, had had White House access. His glowing
Portrait of a President: John F. Kennedy in Profile
was published in 1962.

“I'd see Jack at the end of his last appointment for the day. We'd have a daiquiri and sit on the Truman balcony,” Manchester would say later.

Jackie had read every glowing word of Manchester's
Portrait
and loved it. On February 5, 1964, he was in his office in the Wesleyan library when the phone rang. It was Pierre Salinger, JFK's former press secretary, asking him to write an authorized account of the assassination.

“How can I say no to Mrs. Kennedy?” Manchester asked his secretary, who was sitting right there.

“You can't,” she said.

A few weeks later, Manchester, his literary agent Don Congdon, and Harper & Row's Evan Thomas (he had edited
Profiles in Courage
and RFK's
The Enemy Within
) met with Bobby, still attorney general, in his Washington office. To avoid the appearance that anyone was making money off of Jack's death, they capped Harper's profits and gave Manchester a $40,000 advance, agreeing that any additional proceeds would go to the JFK Library. Before they left, Robert produced a memo saying, among other things, that the book would not be published for five years, to give everyone enough time to heal, and that “the final text shall not be published unless and until approved” by him and Jackie.

Manchester went to work, leaving his wife and three kids in Connecticut to finish out the school year before they could join him in an inexpensive apartment in DC. His first of two long interviews with Jackie occurred in April 1964, at her house in Georgetown. She was wearing a black jersey and yellow stretch pants.

“She was beaming at me,” Manchester would remember. “And I thought how, at age thirty-four, with her camellia beauty, she might have been taken for a woman in her mid-twenties. My first impression, and it never changed—was that I was in the presence of a very great tragic actress.”

They sat. Manchester put his dictionary-size Wollensak tape recorder where she would not be reminded of its presence. They, too, drank daiquiris—she had too many—and over the course of several hours, she conjured wrenching, minute details of what happened in the Fort Worth hotel room on her and Jack's final night together, what bloody hell had become of the backseat of the Lincoln the next day, and what the scene looked like in Trauma Room No. 1 at Parkland Hospital.

For the next two years Manchester would work long days, seven days a week, interview a thousand people, walk the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, and watch the Zapruder film nearly one hundred times. He spoke with virtually everyone who had seen or heard anything between November 21, 1963, and the burial at Arlington. The only people who refused to speak with him were the Johnsons. The depressing subject matter, combined with stress and exhaustion, pushed him to the brink of a breakdown; he even called his wife, Julia, “Jacqueline.” Eventually, he was hospitalized. But within two weeks, Manchester was back at the typewriter. When he was done, the final manuscript was 1,201 pages.
¹³

Thomas, his editor, was ecstatic, believing it was the finest book he had read in twenty years. Bobby had agreed to an earlier publication date so as not to conflict with the election year of 1968, but he passed on reading it, not wanting to dredge up more sadness. Jackie did the same. The review fell to a handful of Kennedy aides, who thought the manuscript made the Johnsons look like boors, and Manchester divulged too many details that were private. They gave edits to Thomas. Manchester, desperate to know what was happening, received a telegram from Bobby on July 29, 1966, saying:

With that, Manchester's agent approached several magazines to publish an advance serialization.
Look
won the bid, offering a then record $665,000. But Jackie was furious that anyone should make that kind of money off the story. She asked Pamela Turnure, Baldrige's replacement as White House secretary, to read the manuscript. There was a great deal of emotional exposure for Jackie, Turnure said. Manchester even disclosed that Jackie smoked—supposedly a well-kept secret. And there was too much information about the children.

For months, Jackie battled Manchester and his team privately. She threatened to ruin Thomas. Ultimately, she filed an injunction against Harper and the publisher of
Look
—a move that blew the lid off the long-simmering feud. The drama was front-page news across the country,
JFK BOOK BATTLE: MRS. KENNEDY LEAVES MEETING WITH
LOOK
MAGAZINE IN TEARS,
one report blared. Manchester defended himself on
Meet the Press
. The situation had become, in the words of
Time
magazine, “the biggest brouhaha over a book that the nation has ever known.
¹⁴

In the end, Jackie, who had always been astute at public relations, lost on many levels. Some of the Kennedys' edits were made. But
Look
published its serialization. And by fighting with Manchester, she was drawing more attention to his work. Jackie, despite having the world's sympathy after the assassination, looked petulant and naive, saying, “I thought that it would be bound in black and put away on dark library shelves.” The book, which sold 600,000 copies within the first two months, generated more than a $1 million in royalties—all of which went to the JFK Library.
¹⁵

Eventually, Jackie sat down in her apartment to read the book. She stayed up through the night and when she was done, she had only one word to describe it: “Fascinating.”
¹⁶

Not long after that lunch with Baldrige, Jackie was back in New York and on a mission to find work in publishing. Harper & Row was not an option, not after the Manchester battle. However, her first call was not to Guinzburg, as her friend had suggested, perhaps because the “ask” seemed too easy at a time when she was looking to be challenged. Rather, she reached out to another acquaintance, Jason Epstein, the editorial director at Random House, which in addition to publishing Jim Bishop's book had also published Vladimir Nabokov, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, and Jackie's stepbrother Gore Vidal. Epstein, a classic New York intellectual and the founder of the
New York Review of Books
, knew Jackie well. They had a lot of friends in common. He was known to be shrewd and tough. His response might be more honest, making Jackie feel more certain of herself.

She invited him to lunch at the famed Lutèce, a three-star restaurant she knew he would like because the French food was the best in the city and it was around the corner from his office at Third Avenue and Fiftieth Street. Of course, Epstein said yes to meeting with her there a week later. But as he approached the door of Lutèce, he braced himself. Jackie's “gasping” and “breathless” manner of speech always unnerved him. He also remembered what his friend, the journalist Pete Hamill, had said: that taking Jackie out was like “taking King Kong to the beach.”

They met upstairs at the restaurant, in a private room. Epstein, with his editor's eye for detail, noted that she was wearing pink, one of her favorite colors, and one that looked very nice on her. They ordered the shad roe, a culinary symbol of the rebirth of spring, prepared in sorrel sauce. And then she said, “I'm looking for a job.”

Epstein was surprised not only to hear that she wanted a career in publishing but also that he was her first stop on the search. He knew she was smart. He knew she would be a good colleague and be fun to have around, that she had connections with lots of people and anyone would take her call. She had access and brains—and was a regular at all the best restaurants in town—which counted for a lot in the book business. He told her all of this.

But publishing was a very competitive industry. Young people arrived straight out of college to work their way in however possible, fetching coffee, securing theater tickets, answering the phones, filing, responding to unsolicited manuscripts—anything to get their foot in the door. It would take years of grooming before they could be rewarded with an editing position. Epstein had three or four such eager and loyal employees waiting for the next opening. How could Jackie cut the line? It would be like jumping the list at an exclusive country club.

He'd have to create a position, he told her. He had all of these young people working to advance.

Jackie, whose instincts and social graces were perfection, backed off immediately and changed the subject before he could even say that he'd like to discuss it with his colleagues. They chatted pleasantly for another hour. She left half the food on the plate—and skipped dessert. They walked out together and down a half block to the Random House office, saying good-bye on the sidewalk. Epstein, back at his desk, was just beginning to realize the enormous mistake he had made—one for which he would always be sorry.
¹⁷

Jackie was mortified. There was no way she was going to repeat the Epstein lunch debacle. But she needed to carry on with her quest. Instead of cold-calling Guinzburg, she asked Baldrige to do it for her, as if a friend were arranging a date in junior high school. Except it was for lunch at Le Périgord, yet another fine French restaurant.

Guinzburg was surprised to hear Baldrige's Julia Child—like voice asking him if he would meet with Jackie to discuss the possibility of employment. But the substance of her request was not without reason. He and Jackie had known each other for close to twenty years. He, too, knew she was smart. But more than that, publishing at that time was as much about the people you knew as what you knew. Not only did Jackie know some of the world's most intriguing people, but she could also get anyone to do anything. From Jackie's perspective, the house would be a good fit because it was informal and small, making it a great place to learn. Viking also had a division called Studio Books, which published high-quality art and photography by people she knew well: Jacques Lowe, who had chronicled the 1960 presidential campaign; Richard Avedon, who had photographed her, Jack, and the kids in Palm Beach; and Peter Beard, a guest on Skorpios and Lee's occasional boyfriend. It had also published books on topics associated with Jackie: Anne Lincoln's
The Kennedy White House Parties
(1967) and John Sweeney's
The Treasure House of Early American Rooms
(1963).

Guinzburg was a tall, smart man with big hands, a big smile, and literary chops. His father, Harold, had founded Viking in 1925, the year before Tom was born. As a boy, Tom Guinzburg had read children's book manuscripts for his father and made recommendations about which ones he thought should be published. After graduating from Hotchkiss, he enlisted in the marines during World War II, where, in addition to learning the importance of integrity, he received a Purple Heart at Iwo Jima. After the war, he was an English major at Yale, ran the paper there, and roomed with a young man named William F. Buckley. But as with many others interested in literature at the time, Paris beckoned for Guinzburg. And it was there that with a few hundred dollars in seed money he founded the
Paris Review
with four eager young Americans, including his other college roommate, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton, who was just launching a career as an experiential journalist. Guinzburg's French was adequate enough for him to get around the city at night, but his time running a newspaper in New Haven was hardly enough to make him a success as managing editor of this new magazine, in his own estimation. “I was a complete failure at the
Paris Review
,” he said years later.
¹⁸
So in June 1953, he returned home, to Viking. During those first years back in New York, he ran with the city's literati, was there in 1960 when Norman Mailer stabbed his wife, and had John Steinbeck as the best man at his second wedding. When his friend Jackie ascended to First Lady, he sent books to the White House—including Ludwig Bemelmans's children's classic,
Madeline
. Jackie loved the story of the French orphan girl so much she corresponded with the author and even considered writing a children's book with him. Bemelmans sent her a blank journal to encourage her to record her experiences in the White House but he died in 1962 before they could collaborate.
¹⁹
In addition to
Madeline
, Guinzburg also sent Jackie the art books she cherished. In return, she'd send him little notes scrawled with a special pen on a card.