Louis Bayard, JACKIE & ME
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[1:29]Lewis Bayard is the author of Jackie and me a novel
[1:32]He is the critically acclaimed best-selling author of nine historical novels
[1:36]Including courting mr. Lincoln and the pale blue eye which is being adapted into a Netflix film starting Christian Bale
[1:42]Byards articles reviews and recaps have appeared in the New York Times the Washington Post
[1:47]Salon and the Paris review
[1:49]Welcome Lewis. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss Jackie and me and so much else
[1:55]It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Sure. I was very interested to see you over zoom because I read your essay about your author photo and how
[2:05]Everyone I've been telling you you look so young and handsome in the photo and you didn't really and I was like well
[2:09]Does he really look like
[2:11]You look like just like the photo
[2:14]Well, thank you. I'm I'm a ever-grained specimen and so I have to keep changing my author photos to keep up with that
[2:22]But the essay you're referring to was inspired by somebody who stopped me outside of the local coffee joint and said wait
[2:28]That's such a young-looking picture of you on your cover. It's like uh-oh
[2:33]I've heard change this author picks are kind of the one piece of vanity that authors are allowed
[2:38]So so it's the same glamorous lie that you know actress and actor would do do it with the head shots thing
[2:44]We did we get we get one moment out of the year to be a little bit glamorous and a little bit fake
[2:52]I have to say I well, I loved that essay and it's been funny because I've been meeting so many authors over the last few years and
[2:58]Sometimes there is such a huge divergence from the author
[3:01]Especially when I meet people in person. Oh my gosh, okay. All right. You just don't know you don't know
[3:07]I know I know there was a very well known British author
[3:09]I will not name her but she clearly hadn't changed her author photo in about 20 years because I saw a TV interview was like oh my gosh
[3:16]Wow
[3:18]There was a little bit of a doctor who quality to her at that point. I think you're better off like with a less flattering author photo
[3:25]You see people in real life. They're like you look great
[3:29]Yeah, you know what people doing a double-take when they look at you as like wait. Yeah. Oh, that was your college picture
[3:35]Exactly. Is that your yearbook? Yeah, exactly
[3:39]But here we are and despite the essay look very true to life in the most positive
[3:44]I was not one of these disconnects. So there we go
[3:48]Okay, your book Jackie and me can you tell us and I was a little about what it's about and how you arrived at
[3:55]Writing a book from the point of view of Lem and all of that like where did this all come?
[3:59]All that could step. Yeah, I'll just start yacking and cutting me off when I'm going if I'm going too long
[4:03]So Jackie and me is basically a novel about Jackie before she was that Jackie and by that Jackie
[4:10]I could be talking about the the glamorous first lady in the pillbox hat
[4:14]I could be talking about the grieving widow with the beautiful children. I could be talking about the the wife of the Greek
[4:20]tycoon
[4:21]the enduring style icon the
[4:24]Paparazzi magnet familiar generations of tabloid readers the professional book editor
[4:29]She has so many identities of the course of her life so many avenues into this enduringly mysterious woman
[4:37]But I chose as my avenue to Jackie before she was that Jackie so when the we first meet her in the course of the book
[4:44]She is a year out of college and she is
[4:48]Making a go of it as a career woman. She has a job for the Washington Times Herald and her job title is
[4:56]Encliring camera girls. So she she goes at every day in the streets of Washington DC and she's very dressed up
[5:02]She's got that still dress in the and the stockings and pearls and high heels and then this heavy really heavy
[5:09]Gravelx camera and she buttonholes people in the street. These are man on the street interviews and effect and ask them some
[5:14]Pre-determined question takes down their answers takes her foot or if goes back to the office and it's the stuff down to 500 words
[5:22]Develops the pictures and then does this six days out of the week
[5:25]So it's a real it's not a pull surprise winning gig
[5:28]But it's a real journalistic job and isn't keeping with someone who said in her high school yearbook that her going life was quote
[5:35]Not to be a housewife. So she's she's kind of serious about creating a career in journalism
[5:40]But at the same time she's a woman of her time and she's getting some pressure from her mother to find the right husband
[5:45]Because that's what a well-bred young woman in the early 1950s is supposed to and then she goes to a dinner party in Georgetown
[5:53]meets this handsome young
[5:55]Congressman already famous probably America's most famous bachelor at the time and his name is of course his Jack Kennedy and
[6:01]Suddenly all her plans are kind of thrown for a loop and she has to figure out
[6:06]If there's room in her life for this guy
[6:08]What would it mean to be with this guy and that whole thing?
[6:11]And so she turns for for help to Jack's best friend who is
[6:15]Lem feelings and
[6:17]Lem is the narrator of the book and he's really the reason that I wrote the book some years back
[6:21]I saw an issue of my college alumni magazine and there was this picture of two young
[6:26]1930s undergraduates in the cover
[6:28]I immediately recognized that one of them was this very young
[6:31]John F. Kennedy
[6:32]But I my I was drawn to the the other guy was larger and as at this big green on his face and this air of hilarity and
[6:40]Spectacold and it's like who is this guy and I learned all that all about Lem billions
[6:44]He was Jack's best friend from high school through the end of life
[6:48]He was a regular he visited the White House every weekend had his own
[6:51]Room there and was just his job in life
[6:54]He had an actual career in advertising
[6:56]But his job in his own mind and everybody else was was to be Jack's best friend
[7:01]And so the novel is about what happens when that role conflicts with his new role as
[7:07]Jackie's friend how how can he how can he serve both of those interests or both of those people
[7:13]Still be a friend of both of them when frankly their interests begin to collide
[7:17]So in the book and I didn't cross-check this or whatever
[7:20]But was it true that Lem his father died and he was at choke with Jack and that's how they
[7:25]Yes, okay, he came friends. Yes. So yeah, Lem's father died
[7:28]So he was a scholarship student one of the things that he and and Jackie had in common was they both grew up amidst great wealth
[7:35]And of course the candies were enormously wealthy
[7:37]But they didn't have a lot of personal wealth of their own Jackie for instance
[7:40]lived with her mother and her stepfather who was a standard oil air
[7:44]But she wasn't going to inherit any of that standard oil money
[7:47]She was she was going to be sort of on her own so they had that weird outlier
[7:52]status and common among other things that helped to bind them together
[7:57]Interesting and I feel like part of it is also
[8:01]Coming to terms with the person you're marrying and all their foibles that you often know ahead of time and like you decide to do it anyway
[8:07]And then are you allowed to complain
[8:10]Exactly
[8:11]Exactly
[8:12]Yes, marrying Jack Kennedy came with lots of a baggage first of all the Kennedy family
[8:17]You had to be kind of go through the initiation initiation right of meeting them and their high-end support
[8:22]birth and being hazed by the the Kennedy sisters and then
[8:26]But then you had to be sort of prepared for a different sort of marriage Jack Kennedy had no
[8:33]Intention of being faithful to anybody he married he had no real desire to be married in the first place this whole marriage
[8:39]Process was driven by his father Joe Kennedy because of political ambition
[8:43]He just he reasoned that
[8:45]Nobody would vote for a presidential candidate and he always imagined Jack as a presidential candidate
[8:51]Who was not married and it is interesting to think about that because even today
[8:55]I think we have problems
[8:56]We'd have problems with a
[8:57]A bachelor candidate or any kind of unmarried male or female candidate at the national level
[9:02]It's like why aren't they me what's what's going on with them and it's it's significant to that unless we turned it into like
[9:08]The bachelorette meets the White House
[9:12]Right
[9:14]Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's significant
[9:19]The only bachelor president we've ever had is as James Buchanan and he of course was rumored to be gay so anyway
[9:25]I also loved your piece on
[9:27]The list of the likelihood of different presidents being gay and
[9:32]Likely and unlikely that was hilarious
[9:34]Yeah, yeah
[9:35]Buchanan is the but far away the most likely and Lincoln is not too far behind in fact
[9:39]I wrote a whole book about Lincoln and his his dear friend Joshua speed the nature of their relationship is still being
[9:46]Discussed and debated among historians
[9:48]But this is one of the first novels I'm aware of that really talked about what that would have looked like what what that kind of
[9:53]Love would have looked like in the context of Lincoln at the same time meeting Mary Todd and and going through that whole court
[10:00]ship ritual with her, so it's a love triangle of its own.
[10:03]And the same way that a Jack gave me
[10:04]is a kind of triangle, really, with Lem and Jack and Jacky.
[10:08]So where did this fascination with political figures
[10:12]come from?
[10:13]Or I'm assuming you have some, where did the idea
[10:17]for this to course do some of your books come from
[10:19]in case you're not actually fascinated?
[10:21]Well, that's a really good question
[10:23]because I don't know that I am necessarily a classic.
[10:26]Well, but it's, but I think there
[10:28]must be something subconscious going on here
[10:31]because I live in Washington, D.C.
[10:33]I came here to take a political job.
[10:35]I was a congressional press secretary for a few years.
[10:38]And then I worked for some nonprofit groups here.
[10:41]But I really came to realize that a politics is not my love
[10:44]and I haven't really done any political work
[10:48]for hire in many, many years.
[10:50]So I thought of myself as despite living
[10:54]in the nation's capital as being, yeah, all right,
[10:57]whatever.
[10:58]But then I look, I turn around.
[11:00]And as you say, I've written three books about presidents
[11:04]or future presidents.
[11:05]And it's like, where did that come from?
[11:07]I don't know.
[11:07]So maybe there's something subconscious going on there
[11:09]that I'm not aware of.
[11:10]I will say the next book, which I'm not
[11:12]allowed to discuss yet, does none of all
[11:14]of any presidents at all?
[11:16]And in fact, it takes place in England.
[11:18]So it'll be a slight pivot, anyway.
[11:21]Is it involving the monarchy in any way?
[11:25]I kind of, I don't know what you say.
[11:27]City, don't push me.
[11:29]Don't press me, City.
[11:30]Don't.
[11:31]All right, all right.
[11:34]Well, before you came to DC and everything,
[11:38]did you always want to be like when
[11:41]you were being the press secretary?
[11:42]Like where did you come from?
[11:44]When did this come into it?
[11:45]Oh, I think since high school really,
[11:48]I kind of wanted to do that.
[11:51]I mean, I want to do other things as well.
[11:53]But they got sort of paired away.
[11:55]And that's what was left.
[11:56]Of course, I realized very early on
[11:58]that I couldn't make a living writing fiction, not immediately.
[12:01]So of course, in the usual manner, I got my day jobs
[12:05]and tried to smuggle some time out of my schedule,
[12:09]an hour each day to write stuff.
[12:12]And then, starting in 1995, I became a freelance writer,
[12:15]kind of cobbled together, a freelance writing career,
[12:17]writing for different organizations
[12:19]and just kind of finding jobs where I could gigs.
[12:22]And that kind of gave me a little more free time.
[12:25]And I just carved out an hour a day,
[12:27]it's sometimes an hour and a half, two hours.
[12:29]A great day was when I could get three hours.
[12:32]And that way just kind of put together the first book,
[12:35]which found an agent but not a publisher.
[12:37]And I thought, well, that's it.
[12:38]I'm done with this is very discouraging
[12:40]then two months later I'm writing another one
[12:41]which didn't find an agent but found a publisher.
[12:44]And so I've done about it not the art Orthodox way,
[12:49]you know, you're supposed to, but you're not your,
[12:51]but it wound up working out in the end.
[12:54]And now one of your, one of your books
[12:56]is being made into a movie or a TV show or something.
[12:58]That's correct.
[12:59]It's a Netflix movie called The Pale Blue Eye.
[13:02]The original book is about,
[13:03]and the movie too is about,
[13:04]is a sort of Gothic murder mystery set in West Point,
[13:08]in 1830 featuring a young Edgaron Poe,
[13:11]who was actually a cadet at that time.
[13:14]And he joined his forces with an older detective
[13:17]to solve a mystery involving cadets
[13:19]with their hearts carved out of their bodies.
[13:21]So it's very gothic and very Poe.
[13:23]The movie stars Christian Bale and Harry Milling plays Poe.
[13:27]And then also Jillian Anderson's in it,
[13:29]Robert Duvall.
[13:30]It's really a wonderful cast to pack
[13:32]a lot of British actors in it.
[13:33]So it's, I'm looking forward to seeing it myself.
[13:35]I've seen bits and pieces,
[13:37]but it'll be out in December in the theaters
[13:38]for four weeks and then streaming thereafter.
[13:41]Exciting.
[13:42]That's huge.
[13:43]It's exciting.
[13:44]It's neat and everything.
[13:45]I mean, that's, I know.
[13:46]I know.
[13:47]Funny is this option business is interesting
[13:49]because a lot of times you know how this works,
[13:52]but a lot of people don't mean that realize
[13:54]that when someone takes an option on your book,
[13:57]it doesn't really mean that much.
[13:58]It means they're gonna take the book
[13:59]and try to make something happen.
[14:01]99% of the time nothing does happen.
[14:04]And it just so happened that the stars align
[14:06]for this one.
[14:07]I waste stars.
[14:08]I mean the star Christian Bale,
[14:09]I think something fell out of his schedule.
[14:12]And he'd worked with this particular director
[14:14]two times before I think.
[14:16]So it just, it just aligned.
[14:19]But most of the time it doesn't.
[14:20]So I feel, I feel very fortunate.
[14:22]Hey, interviewed Garth Stein,
[14:23]who are at the art of racing in the rain this morning.
[14:25]Do you remember that book?
[14:27]Anyway, it was the movie ended up being
[14:28]with like Mila Ventemiglia and Kevin Cohen.
[14:31]Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[14:32]Anyway, he was like, it was options
[14:35]and literally 10 years later,
[14:36]I got a call from a director being like,
[14:38]hey, I'm directing your movie.
[14:39]He's like, that way.
[14:40]Yeah, yeah.
[14:41]It was 15 years for me from the time it was first option
[14:44]to the time it actually happened.
[14:45]Oh my gosh.
[14:46]Yeah, and whoever wrote the Queen's Gambit,
[14:48]Walter Tevis, was dead like 30 years before that was
[14:53]because like for Walter,
[14:55]he couldn't even enjoy that one.
[14:56]So it was crazy.
[14:58]And I've always been advised by agents that are
[15:00]as don't spend any time imagining a movie.
[15:03]Because as I said, 99% of the time it won't happen
[15:06]but the stomach for some reason it did.
[15:08]So it's pretty cool.
[15:10]The cool one it does.
[15:11]Yes, it is nice.
[15:12]Did you go on set or anything?
[15:14]I went and set for one day.
[15:16]I was going to go back
[15:16]and then they had a COVID lockdown.
[15:18]This was being filmed in right in the middle
[15:20]sort of the COVID quarantine.
[15:22]So that was interesting.
[15:23]And but I was also consulted on the script.
[15:25]They showed me successive drafts,
[15:26]which they didn't have to do
[15:27]to actually another very kind
[15:29]to kind of enlist my feedback.
[15:31]And yeah, it's been, it's actually been,
[15:33]I don't have a single yet
[15:35]have a single Hollywood horror story
[15:37]which is only problematic
[15:39]because nobody's going to buy you a beard
[15:41]to tell you that I was, it's been a lovely process.
[15:44]I need, I need something with a little more.
[15:48]Yeah, try to rum the jobs and the terribles in the next year.
[15:51]Yeah, yeah, let's see what happens.
[15:54]Oh my goodness.
[15:56]And what about Jackie?
[15:57]Like, did you, have you ever met her?
[15:58]Like, did you actually see her in the East Village one day
[16:00]or anything?
[16:01]No, I never did.
[16:02]That, the first, the meeting I referred to
[16:04]is how the book begins.
[16:06]Lem is telling the story of the perspective 1980.
[16:08]So he's an old man now.
[16:09]And Jackie has gone through her, all her stages
[16:13]of the stations of the cross.
[16:15]And he just runs into her by accident in the East Village.
[16:19]That comes from a picture that was taken
[16:21]of her, a natural picture that's taken over the time.
[16:23]There are all these Jackie sightings.
[16:25]And of course she was being followed by paparazzi.
[16:27]All the time, in fact, one guy, he just died.
[16:29]His name was Ron Galilo.
[16:31]And he was legally enjoined
[16:33]from getting anywhere within like 50 feet of her,
[16:35]because he would just follow her everywhere.
[16:37]He'd take pictures of her kids, something.
[16:39]So she was just this enduringly fascinating figure.
[16:42]And so these interesting pictures, snapshots come up
[16:46]every now and again.
[16:47]Did you read Stephen Raleigh's book, The Editor?
[16:49]I love that book.
[16:50]Yes, Stephen did a blurb from my book, which I appreciate.
[16:53]Yes, yes, I love that.
[16:55]And I love Stephen he's a very sweet guy.
[16:57]And that, of course, is about when she was
[17:00]this professional book editor.
[17:01]So sort of her career pivot.
[17:04]I think it started in the 70s, right?
[17:06]So mid to late 70s, yeah.
[17:09]It's like the continuation.
[17:10]It's like, if you can't get enough after this book,
[17:12]move on to that book.
[17:13]Yes, exactly.
[17:13]Oh, there's so many.
[17:14]There's so many Jacky books as we know.
[17:17]So the challenge really is just finding something
[17:19]that somebody hasn't kind of plumbed all the way down.
[17:23]And so I realized that a lot of people didn't know
[17:26]what Jackie did before she met.
[17:27]She actually didn't know kind of what her life was like,
[17:29]or what she was like.
[17:30]And one of the fun things about catching them at a young age
[17:33]is the same thing happens with Lincoln
[17:35]and quoting Mr. Lincoln, is they're not quite that person.
[17:39]So they're this liminal specimen
[17:41]and they're still finding themselves.
[17:43]And they're surprising in some ways.
[17:45]I think people would be surprised to know that Jackie
[17:47]is walking around the streets of D.C. grabbing strangers
[17:50]and asking them random questions.
[17:51]I don't think that comports with how we think of her.
[17:53]We think of her as being the pursuit one,
[17:55]but not her as pursuing somebody else
[17:58]for the purposes of her job.
[18:00]But of course, as soon as she became engaged to Jack,
[18:02]she became the pursuit.
[18:03]She became the object of the camera,
[18:05]rather than the operator of it.
[18:08]I mean, it's almost like, you know,
[18:09]there's that whole line of stories of famous people
[18:13]when they were like little kids,
[18:14]like Ken, how they grew up to be a cameraman,
[18:15]I'm not little, just like like Brad Meltzer's specs,
[18:18]you know, the whole series.
[18:19]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[18:20]You should like brand this other swath of the,
[18:23]like the young people.
[18:24]The word they were blank, yes, before they were blank, yes.
[18:28]But when they were close, you know,
[18:29]when they were close exactly.
[18:30]So you see the elements,
[18:32]they just haven't quite come to fruition.
[18:34]So the Jackie of my book, for instance,
[18:36]is still trying on different fashions,
[18:38]still trying on different looks.
[18:40]She has this poodle, then fashionable poodle cut,
[18:43]which she's trying to figure is it?
[18:44]Is this how I really want to look?
[18:46]And is this how it,
[18:47]so she's still, you know, kind of like the girl
[18:51]in front of the teenage girl in front of the mirror,
[18:52]trying things on and seeing how they work.
[18:56]But also has a really practiced and innate eye,
[19:00]when she applied for this vote magazine,
[19:02]a scholarship at the Preeta Pari,
[19:04]which very prestigious, she won.
[19:05]And one thing she said,
[19:06]she won to be art director of the 20th century,
[19:08]which sounds that insanely ambitious.
[19:10]But in a way, she sort of became that, right?
[19:12]We, she created this sense of style that still lives today.
[19:17]And she's still a very classic, this look to her.
[19:21]Yeah.
[19:22]Interesting, I love it.
[19:23]Okay, so aside from the ultra secret book
[19:25]that you're working on,
[19:27]what else do you have going on these days?
[19:28]Like, what do you like to do when you're not writing
[19:29]and everything?
[19:31]Well, I'm always working, what are you talking about today?
[19:34]I never, I never stop.
[19:36]No, let's say, well, I teach a class at George Washington
[19:40]University, which by the way is where Jackie graduated from
[19:42]and that's where she got her diploma from back in 1951.
[19:46]And I teach a fiction ranked class.
[19:47]We just started up our semester today.
[19:50]And I write kinds of other things.
[19:52]I write a lot of book reviews, some stories,
[19:54]some articles.
[19:56]And just this past summer, I had my first ever play
[19:59]mounted here in D.
[20:00]to see at the Washington French Festival, which was great fun.
[20:03]And I'm just trying to keep stories flowing.
[20:07]I'm talking to somebody about writing podcast dramas,
[20:10]possibly, yeah, which I enjoyed myself
[20:13]when I'm listening to podcast.
[20:14]So anyway, so I'm always just trying to keep moving
[20:18]and keep telling stories.
[20:21]I'm 50, I'm gonna be 59.
[20:24]And I sort of feel like my window,
[20:27]who knows how long the window will be.
[20:28]So I wanna just keep telling stories as long as I can.
[20:31]That's so depressing.
[20:33]That's the terrible way to like that.
[20:34]Oh, no, I think it's great,
[20:36]because it imparts urgency to it.
[20:38]Okay.
[20:39]So I gotta keep telling stories while I can.
[20:42]That's my feeling.
[20:43]So yeah.
[20:44]I do always have this like ticking time clock
[20:46]in my head, this racing track.
[20:48]I do feel that it's important.
[20:49]I think it's important.
[20:50]I know writers who don't have that ticking.
[20:52]And it takes them a long time to push stuff out.
[20:55]I have a friend who's been working on a memoir
[20:56]for some like six years now.
[20:58]and it's like, okay.
[20:59]Yeah, no.
[21:00]Yeah.
[21:01]I already came out.
[21:02]I'm done.
[21:03]I'm ready for the day.
[21:05]No time to stare.
[21:06]You never know it.
[21:06]Right.
[21:07]What's next?
[21:08]You come on.
[21:09]I know.
[21:10]Yeah.
[21:11]Well, you've got this.
[21:12]This is a nice time to wait to fill your days.
[21:15]You've got your meeting, meeting people like this
[21:17]and it's very cool on introducing people
[21:19]to new authors, new books.
[21:21]That's awesome.
[21:22]I have also publishing company, publishing my own books.
[21:24]Thank you.
[21:25]Really fun.
[21:26]Yeah.
[21:27]And so you're your own editor.
[21:30]You're your own everything, your own.
[21:32]Well, no, my books go from somewhere else.
[21:34]I can't edit my own books.
[21:35]That's like, it's like a different, yeah.
[21:37]But anyway, yeah.
[21:38]But yes, I love doing this.
[21:39]It's amazing.
[21:39]I learned so much every day.
[21:41]It's like a perpetual class.
[21:42]I was literally your time with my students.
[21:44]I'm like, oh, wouldn't that be fun?
[21:45]Do I go back to class instead of like all the emails
[21:47]I've been getting today from all the teachers
[21:49]of my various kids?
[21:50]And I'm like, oh my gosh.
[21:51]But like to be a student again, I love being a student.
[21:54]I don't know.
[21:54]I know what you mean.
[21:55]I know what you mean there.
[21:56]I see some classes on the curriculum.
[21:58]It's like, oh, I want to take that Virginia Woolf class.
[22:00]Or I want to, you know, it would be fun.
[22:03]I don't know that I want to write essays again.
[22:06]I think I remember being glad.
[22:08]I didn't have to write any more essays.
[22:09]But I do write a lot of book reviews, which is similar.
[22:12]I don't think I'm, I don't mind essays.
[22:15]I'd prefer not to do like wrote memorization.
[22:17]I can't remember anything anymore.
[22:19]Oh, yeah.
[22:19]I know, especially as one gets older,
[22:21]that becomes a little bit of a young, barely find words.
[22:24]But anyway, all right.
[22:28]Well, thank you so much.
[22:29]Thanks for coming on Mom's Don't Time.
[22:30]Thank you.
[22:31]This has been great fun.
[22:32]I'm really enjoying meeting you.
[22:33]You too.
[22:34]All right.
[22:34]Take care.
[22:35]Bye-bye.
[22:35]Bye-bye.
[22:37]Thanks for listening to this episode of Mom's Don't Have Time
[22:40]to Read Books.
[22:41]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebioans,
[22:44]and at Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[22:46]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[22:49]and sign up for my virtual book club
[22:50]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[22:53]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[22:54]Take Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[22:57]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[22:59]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.