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American Adulterer by Jed Mercurio (view source)
Revision as of 18:42, 2 February 2010
, 18:42, 2 February 2010no edit summary
I've often wondered how history would have viewed Jack Kennedy if he'd died a natural death rather than by an assassin's bullet. As an extension of that I've also thought that he might not have lived that much longer had nature been allowed to take its course. He's one of the most-written-about Presidents of all time and finding a new angle – even a fictional one – is not easy, but Jed Mercurio has looked at Kennedy's adult life through the prism of his sexual peccadilloes and his health.
The details are too well-known to need much repetition, but few women were beyond his roving eyes. He famously said that if he went without a woman for three days he suffered headaches, but saw nothing abnormal in his high libido. Hollywood stars, employees at the White House and prostitutes all came and went. He went to took great lengths pains to conceal his affairs (although that vastly over-states the length of the relationship in many cases) and whilst it seems that his wife knew about his philandering it seems that she chose not to make an issue of it. Others were not so forgiving.
If you're looking for a sexually titillating book then this isn't for you. It's a book about sex but with no sex in it. In fact it's oddly, almost clinically distant from Kennedy, referring to him as ''the subject'' throughout the book. It's almost a report, but whom it's written for is never clear. Is it a medical report? There are certainly enough major medical problems to make him an interesting study. It could, of course, be for the security services as the continuing debate about who was behind his assassination makes it clear that there was no shortage of people who wanted to see him dead.