Product Description

A brilliant, irreverent, penetrating and wholly original deconstruction of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, American icon. In an eclectic gallery of fantasies and tableaus, Wayne Koestenbaum explains the late First Lady's mesmeric hold on America by discovering the myths and metaphors that have been associated with her.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1401619 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The same kind of serious play that distinguished Koestenbaum's earlier book, The Queen's Throat, a highly regarded study of opera and homosexuality, shapes the Yale English professor's scrutiny of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis?and, more exactly, of the highly charged gap between the private woman and the public icon she became. In brief chapters, her signature sunglasses and scarf, her coiffure ("battle gear of a woman of means"), even the "O" of her name occasion manic, inventive and sometimes wildly funny ruminations. In "Silent Jackie," Maria Callas is quoted as saying that Onassis "spoke like Marilyn Monroe playing Ophelia"; in "Jackie as Housewife," Onassis is at once the devoted helpmate of powerful men and the star whose allure obscured them; "Exotic Jackie," always conscious of her public role, was "in exile from herself, a bemused visitor to her own body." Though some will undoubtedly find the book hopelessly irreverent, those fascinated by the cult of celebrity will find Koestenbaum's analysis of an enduring American icon a compelling contribution in cultural studies. First serial to the New York Times Magazine; Readers Subscription Book Club selection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A different look at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis from the author of The Queen's Throat (LJ 1/93).
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Customer Reviews

Great Riff on an American Sphynx
I loved it. It has a way of getting to the underlying reasons we Americans are so fascinated with the late Mrs. Onassis. Perhaps, a bit much for some and Auntie Mame-ish, but fun. A totally different take then the usual bio and could be read aloud at some spoken word event, it has that kind of melodic tempo. She was a work of art, so perhaps it takes great art to get to the heart of her allure. I loved the chapter on her "pillbox hat". Check it out. Definitely worth a read.

Narcissism on parade
What a waste of paper! It would be hard to imagine a more self-indulgent exercise than using literary critical skills to analyze your own gushy fantasies about a celebrity--at times it veers from mere triviality into being deeply offensive in its presumptions about how one can "dissect" someone's private pain. What's been most appalling has been to see how the example of this work has given license to other young scholars to write their own equally flimsy and self-congratulatory works on their own private dream worlds (such as Kevin Koppelson in his recent book on Nijinsky).

Who is this guy kidding?
A little of this self-serving ode goes a very long way. I cannot imagine anyone reading it straight through; but rather, it is excellent bathroom reading, to be opened and shut quickly. One gets the feeling that the author wishes he were Jackie O. himself, and that by writing this he has somehow possessed her or claimed her. It is, quite simply, a sick symptom of the celebrity obsession of our culture, being passed off as East Coast intellectualism. There is nothing intellectual about it. The fact that it is written by a male makes it even creepier. I had to dispoae of my copy, which I found at a yard sale.