American Adulterer

I didn't think I was going to like this book. At first, I didn't like the third person reference style (ie.,"the subject" is used instead of referring directly to Kennedy. However, the book developed into a profound and original work that covered aspects I hadn't thought of or heard about. Kennedy was a very complicated character; the epitome of saint and sinner. I never realized the level of Kennedy's pain and illness before I read this. His philandering seemed to be of a different nature than merely gratuitous desire. He is shown at once to be the very epitome of moral conscious while being a man of many side "interests." What is truly bizarre is Kennedy's apparent lack of emotional connection to any of his side interests. He doesn't always know their names or even remember if he "had sex with that woman." At the same time, he is shown to truly love his wife and be very close to her and his family. Even stranger is the fact that Kennedy is so debilitated that the women must "take care of him" because he can't really be an active participant. Well, I could go on but I need to save plenty for the reader. This book is far more than a book on Kennedy's women. He often does what he sees as the right thing to do without concern for re-election. He was often hated for choosing the right thing over politics. The book has astounding insight into how close we were to the actual brink of nuclear war and how Kennedy's role was crucial to us even being here today. If we had known what he was facing, none of us would have slept in those days. The book claims to be a novel but I suspect it isn't fiction. It just has to be called a novel because many things known by reputable people cannot be proven as fact to the legal standard of proof. This is a look at President Kennedy in a way like he has never before been portrayed. Some books talk about the gossip and others have him as a great statesman. Mercurio dares to demonstrate one doesn't have to be either good or bad and the world isn't so black and white as many might think.

Starting on the very first paragraph, author Jed Mercurio quickly sets the stage for his new book, American Adulterer. The reader quickly sees that the primary character in the book is observed as a case study. The forensic style was to this reviewer at first almost irritating, but the flat tone of the narrative actually adding to the ensuing drama. To anyone who is even a basic follower of American history, it doesn't take long to figure out who the main character is, though it's not until page 23 that we read of the new President being sworn in: "I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This is a gripping novel, a work of fiction that surrounds President John F. Kennedy's personality and life as US President. It focus is on JFK's tremendously high libido, catered to under often chancy circumstances, and all the while with the President suffering from a range of almost unbearable illnesses while managing to maintain a flawless public image. Kennedy's actions define the term womanizer. Marilyn Monroe heads the seemingly limitless list of his conquests and included Angie Dickinson, and Judith Campbell Exner, all while his elegant wife pursed her lips. The President bedded actresses, society beauties, a variety of call-girls, White House junior staffers with stars in their eyes, as well as the foreseeable intern or two. This is Jed Mercurio's third novel, following Bodies and Ascent, and it's in a different style from his earlier writings. Author Mercurio portrays Kennedy's proclivities as 'sex addiction', and tells his story in the wording of a psychiatrist's private notes. JFK becomes ' the Subject', and we learn much about his anxieties and ailments, as well as his private rules regarding adultery. Like many great political leaders, Kennedy possessed a libido that matched his political ambition. He tells a he tells a bemused Harold Macmillan, "If I don't have a women for three days, I get terrible headaches." Fictionalizing the lives and penchants of presidents and politicians is nothing new. Joe Klein did it quite well with his book Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics, in which he satirized Bill Clinton's successful first campaign. Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife imagined a First Lady Laura Bush that might be hidden behind her unusually serene public mask. Robert Penn Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for his landmark book All the King's Men in 1947, a loosely fictionalized account of populist political demagogue Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation's most astounding politicians. These are all fictionalized accounts of real people involved in real events of American politics, as is this one. Author Mercurio's writing is good enough to create long episodes of prolonged dramatic tension, even when you're aware of the outcome, as happens with nov

Mercurio's "analytic" study of the physical side - both medical and erotic - of John Kennedy's life is quite interesting. It's "fiction", but with a healthy dose of actual facts about Kennedy, his marriage, and his Presidency. Mercurio writes with a "removed" voice; he's presenting his story of Kennedy as he would a scientific study of a man - conflicted in so many ways - as a "subject" of a report. John Kennedy was a man with almost ingrained carnal urges, that were not satisfied within the bounds of marriage. Early in his life, he recognised that he would always have sexual needs. He married Jacqueline Bouvier - herself the daughter of a charming philanderer - who seemed to be the only woman he was interested in maintaining an out-of-bed relationship with. He expected her to go along with his blatant bedding of other women and she appeared to do so, occasionally even seeming to abet the deeds by giving him the room and time he needed to make conquests. Of course, that quid-pro-quo didn't come cheaply as her often insane spending on furniture, clothes, jewelry and other personal items suggest a passive/aggressive relationship with her husband. Kennedy also had many physical frailties, some evident from childhood and others obtained during difficult war-time service in the Pacific. He had a staff of doctors at the White House, who were often at odds with each other over the on-going treatment of his Addison's Disease, back injuries, and other ailments, which often kept him in physical agony. And, then, there was of course, "Dr Feelgood", given the nickname by those patients - including Kennedy and his wife - to whom he gave injections of feel-good narcotics to keep going. As an aside, I have always found it difficult to understand how Kennedy could have kept up such an - ahem - "active love life", what with all the physical pain he was in. Anyway, Mercurio's book is a novel recounting of Kennedy's years in the White House. The part about the FBI's Hoover coming to Kennedy in the months before the assassination with private accounts of the President's extensive philandering and "suggestion" (read: "demand") that Kennedy step down from office, is the only part I think is probably made up. Everything else Mercurio writes seems to be backed up by historical fact, including the tie-in in 1963 of the Profumo scandal in England that brought down Harold MacMillan from power. It's a good read. If you liked "American Wife", as I did, you'll like this book, too.

It's confession time. I will buy and read any book, fact or fiction that involves the Kennedy family. I am steeped in Kennedy trivia. I've read all the memoirs. People like me will love this book, the way Gone With the Wind fans wanted to read about Scarlett after Rhett left her. A reflexive fan is a forgiving fan. I can see that Jed Mercurio picked trivial facts from JFK's life and wove them into the writing, example, JFK's habit of digging for change to make payphone calls, the yarn about how he first asked JBK on their first date 'he leaned across the asparagus and asked me out' is the story, in this book Mr. Mercurio writes "he asked her to pass the asparagus and then asked her on a date". So, the story is littered with little facts culled from the numerous memoirs written by Kennedy insiders and that's satisfying. You feel like the fiction has a legitimate foundation. Nearly everyone that worked with JFK wrote about him, so it is easy to recreate the day by day details of his life in the White House, adding the overlay of a adulterous mindset and speculating on the intimate nature of his marriage were constructed in a fine and well done way. JFK's health problems are well documented but in this work of fiction the author had the liberty to twine the frailty with the vigorous drive of the man. It's fascinating to get drawn into JFK's lifestyle. This book is absorbing and at times very funny. I love the idea of taking a famous person and creating fiction. I think this book compares very favorably with American Wife by Curtis Settenfeld, another book I enjoyed very much. I think this book qualifies as both worthy and guilty pleasure. A treat. I loved it.

Mercurio, Jed. "American Adulterer" A Novel", Simon and Schuster, 2009. A New Look at JFK Amos Lassen Jed Mercurio has written a novel about John Fitzgerald Kennedy that takes us places no one has gone before. He looks at the past president as a philandering sexual being. We see him as a liberal hero, a man for the time in which he lived, a political visionary. Mercurio maintains that Kennedy's tragic flaw was the fact that he loved women but there is so much more to the man than that. Mercurio recreates many of the qualities of Kennedy--his wit and his grace, his vision for peace and his kindness and his cool judgment. He was a pain who lived in pain but was able to rise above it, Mercurio treats history with the eye of a historian. Here was a man who was trapped by the weight of the office that he held and Mercurio shows us that brilliantly. We see JFK not just as a president but as a man and as a man who move politics into the status of celebrity. Looking at Kennedy as a womanizer, we see a man who had to be selective in his choice of the women he slept with and he had to know how to hide these affairs from his wife, his rivals and the public. He was not just a man who committed adultery; he was the president of the United States and as such was on public display. Compounded with this were his popularity and the way he changes the concept of the highest office in the land. Yet the book is intimate and we get quite a provocative picture of the man. In fact the book is moving and sensitive. We learn more about the crippling pain that he suffered yet he still served his office effectively. His private affairs led him astray and we learn that he was afraid of losing his wife and children. He loved them dearly and as he was dedicated to his office, he was devoted to his family. His womanizing was his vice and he seemed to have no control over it. This is a book that can cause a great deal of controversy so we must keep in mind that first and foremost it is a novel and is therefore fiction. It certainly will reignite the arguments about the way we look at private lives today and the issues of monogamy, family values and marriage. Mercurio is quite a writer and his prose is extremely readable. There were times that I had to remind myself that I was reading a novel; everything seemed so real. This is going to be a big book and undoubtedly people will be talking about it for a long time.