(2 of 3)
What sets her apart from competing fast-buck writers is her extraordinary show-business savvy and an almost unlimited fondness for self-promotion. When it comes to flogging the product personally, the others are plodding dilettantes by comparison.
With a natural merchandiser's instinct, she pushed her first book Every Night, Josephine!—a bonbon about walking her poodle—by putting it on display in Manhattan restaurants and even a delicatessen. Today, helped by her publicist-manager-husband Irving Mansfield, she is still at it. With inexhaustible energy and boundless enthusiasm, she assaults and attracts the public in a succession of day-by-day, city-by-city publicity campaigns. A typical day recently began at 8 a.m. It included a TV show, four radio talks, two newspaper interviews, a general press conference, and a visit with Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono.
As the most public of authors, "Jackie " makes most of the network gab shows. Her picture appears on London buses and in New York subways. Raven-wigged and smoky-eyed, she gazes down from between the Preparation H and mail-order-diploma ads like an Egyptian love goddess who was unfortunate enough to have been caught with her head turned full front.
Fortunately, Jackie's other qualities include a thick skin and the killer reflexes of a mongoose. In a recent taped TV interview—later judiciously edited —she drew first and last blood from a female reporter.
Interviewer: Don't you ever wake up in the middle of the night and realize you haven't done anything that is really artistic?
Jackie: Do you wake up and think you're not Huntley-Brinkley? Interviewer: Look at your competition. Updike. Roth.
Jackie: Do you believe in masturbation? Interviewer: But the point of Roth to me was the language. Jackie: Yes. Shlong. That's a new word to me. You're so uptight. Why are you uptight? I'm relaxed. Life is fun. Great fun is high art. What do you read? Interviewer: Well, I just read I Am Mary Dunne, by Brian Moore. Jackie: I am what? Mary Hun? Never heard of it. Do you have children? Interviewer: I have three. Jackie: I know your type. You have French records on while you're feeding the baby and someone else telling you about the opera. But I'm glad you have three children because now at least I know you've done something.
Secure in the publicist's truth that out of the mouths of stars comes hot copy, Jackie strews absurdities, inconsistencies, generalities, banalities and wisecracks with calculated sincerity: Critics. Egghead-doubledomes! There are about eight influential critics and all they want is books that only they can understand.
Novels. There is no room for literature in the novel today. The competition is too great. People want to read a novel in bed at night, and there's Johnny Carson and great old movies on The Late Show.
Vladimir Nabokov. I'm in his league, and I see myself as the best man. Philip Roth. I liked the book but I'd hate to shake his hand. Fashion. My favorite designers are St. Laurent, Valentino and Pucci. But I can't wear Pucci's op prints. My boobs are too big.
Reviews. I've had a lot of bad reviews and I honestly don't mind them as long as they're witty and don't give the plot away.