Book review of “JFK Jr.” by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil

The oral history offers detailed recollections from a friendly chorus of classmates, colleagues, close friends, roommates, historians, several girlfriends, and a National Park Service ranger who declined Kennedy’s request to rappel from the summit of Mount Rushmore to promote a book associated with his magazine, George. Pamela Anderson shows up to remember Kennedy fondly, as do Garth Brooks, Brooke Shields, Jeffrey Sachs, and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

“JFK Jr.” is a sprawling and fascinating novel, obviously written and peopled by people who love him. Terenzio’s closeness to the couple was virtually unprecedented. She was staying at their Tribeca apartment the weekend of their deaths; she was the one everyone called in a panic, the one who called Ted Kennedy’s house to tell him his nephew’s plane was missing, the one who packed the couple’s belongings into boxes.

Her access to Kennedy’s inner circle and the candor of her memories are remarkable. In the first few years after Kennedy’s death, few of his famously protective friends spoke to the press, and then they seemingly all did it at once, producing a flood of memoirs and documentaries. Terenzio himself has done both before.

The book benefits from its distance from the gold rush, as Kennedy’s friends no longer have to jealously guard their memories. But it also suffers from the fact that so few secrets remain. While JFK Jr. is almost certainly the most complete portrait of Kennedy ever written, and is packed with delightfully gossipy details, it offers few real scoops.

Wisely, the film doesn’t dwell on the Camelot years or on the famously strained relationship between Jack and Jackie Kennedy. “I’m not so sure he didn’t love her in the end,” says one of Jackie’s confidants with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

The image of John-John (a name he hated) saluting his father’s casket became a symbol of the nation’s grief. It was his third birthday, and he had practiced the salute with his Secret Service staff. From then on, John F. Kennedy Jr. belonged to everyone.

Jackie, portrayed here as loving but strict, eventually moved to Manhattan with her children in the hopes of giving them a normal life. Classmates remember Kennedy as a largely normal boy, albeit one who went dancing with his friends at Studio 54 and refused to talk about the Warren Commission. “There was something sad about him,” recalls one of Kennedy’s teachers. “He was a more complicated person than people think.”

Friends describe him as absent-minded – always late, constantly losing things, including cars and bicycles – and an indifferent student whose admission to Brown University surprised everyone. He later failed the bar exam twice. “We never thought he would be very smart,” admits Secret Service agent Clint Hill.

When Kennedy was 27, he was named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, which apparently both embarrassed and secretly delighted him. “He knew he was beautiful,” recalls a gossip columnist who knew him. “He spent hours and hours at the gym. I never saw him shower with the shower curtain closed.”

Kennedy developed a disturbing thirst for adventure that led to several near-death experiences; he once lost his way and was lost in the African jungle. He had been fascinated by flying since he had ridden in the presidential helicopter with his father. In the air, he was free from the earthly pressures that came with being Kennedy, says his friend William Cohan. “He did a lot of crazy things, but I don’t think he had a death wish. I think he thought he was invincible, which is pretty crazy considering his father and uncle were murdered.”

Under Terenzio and McNeil’s deft direction, a portrait of Kennedy emerges: he was a loyal friend, unpretentious and effortlessly likeable, who knew how to put ordinary people at ease with his ridiculous fame. He was always the biggest star in any room and never knew anything else. Ordinary New Yorkers would approach him on the street to tell him what his father meant to them (he usually loved it). Women, even supermodels, would swoon, sometimes literally.

But when he met and married Calvin Klein executive Carolyn Bessette, the spotlight became unbearable, at least for her. Kennedy’s friends speak of Bessette with a mixture of affection, trepidation and resentment. They remember her electric personality, her alternating tendencies toward hostility and warmth, her maternal instincts.

The more detailed they are described, the more inscrutable she seems. (Despite rumors to the contrary, Terenzio says she never saw Bessette-Kennedy take drugs, although her husband smoked marijuana every day.) She was chased by paparazzi who hurled insults at her to provoke a reaction. At one point she even chased them away. Towards the end she was reluctant to leave the apartment. She seemed to be losing her mind.

Kennedy, who shared his family’s famous determination to get things done, was largely uncomprehending. It didn’t help that the photographers who tormented Bessette-Kennedy pretended to be nice to her when he was around. “He could have done more to help her,” notes a friend. “He was brilliant at dealing with the deep end, so he thought Carolyn could do the same.”

If JFK Jr. reveals anything surprising, it’s that the tabloids were right about the tensions between the couple in their final days, their likely extramarital dalliances, and the fact that Carolyn, who was less than thrilled at the prospect of putting on a brave face at Rory Kennedy’s wedding that terrible weekend, almost didn’t go.

On the day of the crash, Kennedy was, according to a friend, “struggling to get his life back together.” His marriage was falling apart, his best friend and cousin Anthony Radziwill was dying, and he was estranged from his beloved sister Caroline. Neither sibling liked the other’s spouse, and Caroline, who was not mentioned in the book, is portrayed throughout as cold and distant.

According to acquaintances, Kennedy began to cautiously embrace his political destiny. The evening before the crash, he told a friend that he wanted to challenge New York Governor George Pataki, the first stop on his likely unstoppable path to the White House.

It had always been obvious and necessary that he would inherit the Kennedy family’s legacy – he was its last charismatic member. When he died, he was still struggling to find his own way there. “He wanted to be his own person,” recalls boxer Mike Tyson, a friend of Kennedy’s. “But how do you become your own person… when you belong to almost everyone?”

Allison Stewart writes about pop culture, music and politics for the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. She is working on a book about the history of the space program.

An intimate oral biography

By RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil