She never wrote a memoir, but she did do this…

Jacqueline Kennedy:
Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy: Interviews with Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr., 1964

It’s a book, it’s an audiobook, it’s one of the coolest things ever.

This is exactly the kind of historic record that I’ve been know to
pray will appear on the scene during
my lifetime. And it’s fabulous.

Arthur Schlesinger was part of JFK’s brain trust, and it sounds
from these recordings, like Jackie was reasonably comfortable with him. At any
rate, she’s rather candid, and there are things she talked about that later she
said she didn’t want to have shared.

Of course, these are the good
things.

Such as: There were kids’ bath toys lined up along the edge of the
bathtub in JFK’s bathroom—the one their visitors to the family quarters would
use—because John, Jr., would hang out in there while his dad was in the tub.

And, of course, when she speaks of her husband, Jackie idealizes
him completely unrealistically. Of course
this is what a wife would do. It was up to her to set the tone for his
legacy. And besides, the man had just been assassinated mere months before. So
of course she’s going to make him sound like a saint.

But, beyond the perfected version of things that she presents, there
are some little glimpses of both of them as real humans, such as when she says
he’d sometimes call her “Kid,” and when she describes how he wept after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. And that he ate breakfast in a
t-shirt and underwear, on a tray in his bedroom.    

These tapes are also completely fascinating as a relic of the-way-(some)-marriages-were.
She provides a very clear view of how she saw her role as a wife, and it’s
old-fashioned-y stuff: Don’t ask your husband about his work day unless he
offers information; Make sure the children are in a good mood when your husband
gets home; First and foremost, provide a comfortable home life for your
husband.

The intimacy of listening to the actual interviews is pretty darn
amazing—of course, there’s her famously breathy voice, but there’s all kinds of
wonderful background noise, too: ice cubes clinking in a glass, cigarettes
being lit, airplanes overhead, and John, Jr., tearing into the room.

This is good enough stuff that probably even the Normal (non-Kennedy-obsessed) out there will
find it worth a listen.

Also—it comes with a book that has helpful footnotes (to remind us
who Douglas Dillon was) and some good photos.

(Coincidence? Or not? Today is the 51st anniversary of John, Jr.’s birth. Just realized that when I looked at the date.)