The First Lady’s Office May Be As Tiny As Yours

● Amanda Vaill, editor: When I got to Viking Press, it seemed like paradise. In those days, it was at 625 Madison Avenue. It had the three top floors, paneled in this kind of dark, mid-century-modern wood. It was all carpeted and quiet in the reception area. There were giant blown-up photographs of all Viking’s hotshot prizewinning authors: Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller.

Jackie Onassis had gone to work there shortly before I got there. In my interview with Tom Guinzburg, the president, one of the things I asked was “How are you managing to integrate Ms. Onassis?” He said, “She’s so lovely, she’s integrated herself wonderfully.” They had printed up these exquisite, beautiful engraved cards— I think they went to Tiffany or Cartier—that said something like “Mrs. Jacqueline Onassis is grateful for the submission of your manuscript. She cannot promise to consider it personally, but thank you very much for your submission.” Because all these bozos were sending books and notes, like, “My husband was killed in an automobile accident, and I understand what you’re going through.”

Jackie had a little, tiny office, no bigger than mine, just down the hall. She came in every day around ten o’clock. We all had silk shirts we got at Bloomingdale’s basement. Jackie had the ones from Bergdorf ’s or Bill Blass. There was a place she used to like to go to lunch on 56th Street—Sea Fare of the Aegean. Once, she had this lunch with Jann Wenner, and I’d gone along with her. He was running Rolling Stone, and she wanted to find out what was up, see if there was something they could talk about. In the middle of lunch, Wenner has this massive nosebleed, for obvious reasons. Jackie was so perturbed—literally fountains of blood were coming out—she says, “Oh, Jann, it’s terrible, I used to have nosebleeds all the time! Lie on the floor and try putting a piece of paper under your upper lip to stop the bleeding.” She had no idea what was going on. In that sense, she lived in a kind of bubble. [In response, Wenner says the story is “highly exaggerated.”]