Tuesday, September 27 at 6:00 pm in the Marc Jacobs Reading Room
Join author and artist Brenda Pizzo as she shares her historical fiction novel,The First Lady & The Writer, Provincetown 1961 and discusses what motivated her to capture the real-life, “fly on the wall” account of Jackie Kennedy and Gore Vidal spending the day together in Provincetown the last day in August 1961. The event will take place at the Library’s Marc Jacobs Reading Room on Tuesday, September 27 at 6:00 pm.
There are some world events that imprint on us, that forever change us and become part of who we are. The author was ten years old in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated. Being a child, the event magnified the world being turned upside down. Jackie became larger than life for the author as well as the world, as a figure whose interest in her never waned, but made her careful, cautious, protective. No one could argue after the horror of what Jackie Kennedy, the widow, had experienced. But before the world had been turned upside down, here was a story, a snippet really, of the most famous woman on earth spending the day with famous author Gore Vidal, hiding in plain sight in Provincetown. It’s an event that was never written about in depth and it came as a revelation that it actually occurred. It did.
After researching both Jackie Kennedy and Gore Vidal, Pizzo explores that day in depth and has as characters perhaps the two most fascinating people of the 20th Century. The book elegantly delves into Jackie’s and Gore’s distinct personalities and glimpses the journey each traveled to arrive at this particular point in time. Their conversations are lively, introspective, and peppered with enough real facts to lend credibility, enough imagination to make it interesting and with an equal measure of cattiness to make it fun. The 1960s world created is when they were at their zenith and attempts to peel back the layers to reveal what they were really like. The backdrop is Provincetown in 1961, which in a way is also a character, recognized for charming architecture and foremost for lending a sense of freedom people have felt for decades to be themselves.
Author, Brenda Pizzo, is retired and lives in Boston with her husband of more than 40 years, she is also the author of two other books, Mr. Porter’s Birthday Surprise and Jo’s Art School Portfolio, 1940s Fashion, a tribute to her 96 year old mother-in law who studied fashion design at Massachusetts College of Art.
