Jackie Under My Skin - by Wayne Koestenbaum (Paperback)

About the Book

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. Photos.

Book Synopsis

Jackie Under My Skin is a passionate investigation of the ways Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis transformed America's definition of celebrity, identity, and style. In a gallery of fantasies and tableaux, Wayne Koestenbaum explains the late first lady's hold on Americans by examining the myths and metaphors that we've attached to her. An exuberant paean to a great star, Jackie Under My Skin is also a meditation on fame, mortality, and the difficulty of defining desire.

Review Quotes

"Pop interpretation at its finest . . . and every bit of it is fun to read." --The Boston Globe

"Dazzling, exuberant . . . Koestenbaum writes with a heady lyricism that makes Jackie-watching an exercise of the soul as well as of the intellect." --New York Magazine

"Koestenbaum's explanation of the Jackie O phenomenon is as fresh and thought-provoking as they come." --Los Angeles Times

"Some of the most entertaining prose in years . . . A thoughtful and unexpectedly moving book." --Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Impassioned insight . . . By turns comic and elegaic, respectful and blasphemous...little or nothing escapes [Koestenbaum's] gaze." --Newsday

About the Author

WAYNE KOESTENBAUM has published five books of poetry, one novel, and six books of nonfiction. A graduate of Harvard and Princeton, he is a Distinguished Professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center and a Visiting Professor in the painting department of the Yale School of Art.