First Person - September 8, 1999

John Kennedy, at ease
The offices of George had nothing of Camelot about them

by Edward Tenner '65

When George magazine appeared in 1995, I had just arrived in Washington as a Woodrow Wilson Center fellow. The New York-based glossy alarmed some D.C. journalists who saw the debate about issues dissolving into fashion and image-as though George were to blame for a decades-old trend. But I never bought a copy to see for myself. Learning the ropes of the Center left little time for a publication combining two things I don't write about: celebrities and electoral politics.

Few authors could have been less prepared for the invitation that arrived on a sunny autumn afternoon after I returned to Princeton a year later. The telephone rang and the caller identified himself as "John Kennedy at George magazine." He told me he had read my recently published book, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. And he asked me to contribute to a special issue on the future. A practical joke? I knew nobody that inventively malicious. Besides, a would-be hoaxer would have used a more plausible alias. So it had to be John F. Kennedy, Jr. His simplification of his name had to be a code, a kind of bridge bid, and it could only mean that he was not editing the magazine, or calling me, as a dynastic figure.

Of course, Kennedy was not just an editor but a political heir, rumored candidate, de facto leader of a great family's younger generation, object of veneration and voyeurism-and a wealthy businessman. He was said to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the market test for George alone.

I never met this John F. Kennedy, Jr. And I never knew the Kennedy of his close acquaintances, let alone his real friends. But I did know John Kennedy, the editor. We met at the offices of George, a place that had nothing of Camelot, or Architectural Digest, about it. There was a standard institutional New York reception area with a friendly woman at the desk. Meeting John-everybody called him that-was a surprise, though. In person he looked exactly as he did in photographs. Whether this was because his features were ideal for the lens, or mainly because so many candid images of them had appeared, I still cannot say. But no picture could capture his manner. He had a quality that 18th-century etiquette writers called ease, an affable naturalness once considered the essence of gentlemanly bearing.

 With two other editors we walked a few blocks to one of the theater district's high-ceilinged, muraled Italian restaurants. Kennedy must have eaten there often, but his presence clearly still affected the staff - I've never had more attentive service. Early in our lunch, Kennedy told me he had found Why Things Bite Back in a bookstore while he was considering a proposal for an article on the paradoxes of warfare. For about an hour and a half we brainstormed about unintended consequences and politics, not just about tape recorders and electronic mail, but about the ironies of platforms, programs, and policies: how to be careful what you wish for. Kennedy was a delightful, intelligent conversationalist. His mix of iconoclasm and professionalism made me eager to contribute.

As we returned to the office, I noticed again how the four of us were moving in Kennedy's magical force field or bubble, cutting through the crowd, attracting glances (direct and intermittent) and whispers but otherwise left undisturbed. Instead of trying to build an imperfect security wall, Kennedy had plunged into the flow of the city and found his protection in the surge of crowds. Not far from the building, he dashed through traffic across the street. It did not surprise me to read, among neighbors' tributes, that he left the key to his apartment in a hiding place near the door. He fit the classic pattern of the risk-seeking later-born child.

After that lunch, I did two pieces for George, an interview with the Yale futurist Wendell Bell and an article on a now-obscure shipwreck (caused partly by the destabilizing effect of lifeboats added after the Titanic sank) for an issue on disasters. When the editors needed a picture for the contributors' page, the art director sent a French fashion photographer and her assistant from New York to my house in New Jersey in a Town Car.

A score of other writers must have had similar calls, and luncheons, and photo sessions. John Kennedy brought out the celebrity in all of us. Reason enough to celebrate his life.

Edward Tenner, who has contributed to The Wall Street Journal and other publications, is working on a new book.

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