The Kennedy Curse
Edward Klein
(Reviewer - Dr. Alma Bond)
2003 St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 031231292X

Why America's First Family Has Been Haunted by Tragedy for 150 Years.

Exploring the underlying pattern that governs the curse & examining the many influences -- historical, psychological, & genetic -- that have shaped the Kennedys' character & has led to their self-defeating behavior.

Sr. Reviewer Dr. Bond writes:

The Kennedy Curse, as Edward Klein tells it, is the story of a family who flew too close to the gods, & were destroyed for their arrogance. A quote by Edith Hamilton says it all (p.1). “It was an ill-fated house...A curse seemed to hang over the family, making men sin in spite of themselves and bringing suffering and death down upon the innocent as well as the guilty.”

The Kennedy family themselves were the first true believers of the curse:
Jackie Kennedy said (p.9), “I sometimes feel as though I'm a kind of Typhoid Mary. If I had known Jack was going to be killed, I never would have named our son John F. Kennedy, Jr.”
Robert Kennedy also raised the specter of a family curse. After his brother was assassinated, Robert began to read Greek tragedies, & wondered if his family, like the Greeks of the classics, had not overreached, & dared too greatly. He found that one had to go back to such legendary figures as Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes, & Electra to find a family that has been subjected to so many horrendous tragedies.
Teddy Kennedy (p. 11) told a TV audience after the frightful Chappaquiddick drowning that he sometimes wondered if “some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.”

The idea of a family curse goes far beyond the Kennedys, & the United States. To the present day, many Greeks believe that Jackie Kennedy brought the Kennedy curse with her when she married Onassis, resulting in the deaths of Aristotle, his son Alexander, & the suicide of his daughter Christina.

In the 40 years since the assassination of President Kennedy, tragedy has struck the family on an average of nearly once every two years. The sad saga began one hundred & fifty years ago in the Irish immigrant experience of poverty & humiliation, &, according to Klein, developed into an obsessive lust for power & dominance over others at the expense of ethical behavior.

The list of tragedies is almost unbelievable. Some of the most terrible are:
1858: 35-year-old Patrick Kennedy died of consumption, exactly 105 years to the day before JFK's assassination.
1873: Rose Kennedy's future mother, 8-year-old Josie Hannon, was responsible for the death of her 4-year-old sister & her friend.
1936: Rose's sister Mary Agnes Gargan at 43 was found dead by her six year-old son.
1941: Joe Kennedy ordered a lobotomy on his daughter Rosemary.
1944: Joseph Kennedy, Jr. died at 29 in a plane explosion on a secret mission in World war 11.
1948: Kathleen Kennedy died at 29 in a plane crash.
1955: Ethel Kennedy's parents were killed in a plane crash.
1961: Joseph Kennedy suffered a massive stroke, which robbed him of the ability to speak.
1962: Marilyn Monroe, lover of both John & Robert Kennedy, died at 35 of a sleeping pill overdose.
1963: Patrick, son of Jackie & John Kennedy, died two days after his birth.
1963: John F. Kennedy was assassinated at the age of 46.
1964: Edward Kennedy was injured a plane crash, in which the pilot & an aide were killed.
1969: He drove his car off a Chappaquiddick Island bridge in Massachusetts in which Mary Jo Kopechne drowned.
1991: William Kennedy Smith was accused of raping a woman at the family's Palm Beach estate.
1994: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of cancer at 64.
1997: Michael Kennedy was accused of having an affair with his children's 14-year-old baby sitter. He died later that year on a ski slope in Aspen, Colorado.
1999: John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn, & his sister-in-law Lauren Besette died in the crash of a plane, he was piloting.
1999: John's cousin & best friend, Anthony Radziwill, died of testicular cancer.
2001: A son-in-law of Maurice Tempelsman, the longtime companion of Jackie Onassis, died aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon after being hijacked by terrorists.
2002: Michael Skakel was convicted of the 27-year-old murder of Martha Moxley.
2003: Kara Kennedy, Edward's daughter, was treated for lung cancer.

Klein believes that the Kennedys, by their reckless, narcissistic behavior, unrestrained sexuality & hunger for power brought tragedy down onto themselves. Klein is surprisingly unsympathetic to the men of the family, describing them as power-hungry devoid of human feelings who spent their lives carousing for sex & power. According to Klein (p. 23), the curse “is the result of the destructive collision between the Kennedy's fantasy of omnipotence -- their need to get away with things that others cannot -- and the cold, hard realities of life.” The Kennedys “felt immune to mortal laws and somehow divinely protected from the inevitable consequences of their deeds and misdeeds. In their hunger for unlimited power, they saw themselves as superior beings who resided above the common herd. They felt special -- omnipotent and worthy of being worshiped.”

Several other “explanations” for the curse are given. In old Ireland, it was believed that the murder of a near relative was a ‘fionghal’ or fratricide, & that anyone who violated this taboo was likely to bring “geasa” or curses upon himself & his family. Many people concluded that the Kennedy Curse stemmed from an excess of “geasa.”

An anecdote quoted has a different rationale, concerning Joseph Kennedy, who was a notorious anti-Semite. According to a story told in mystical Jewish circles, Kennedy who was then ambassador to the Court of St. James in London, was returning to the United States on an ocean liner that was also carrying a poor Llubavitcher rabbi & six of his students. Kennedy complained to the captain that the Jews were upsetting the first class passengers by loudly praying on the High Holy day of Rosh Hashanah. In retaliation, the rabbi put a curse on Kennedy, damning him & all his male offspring to tragic fates.

According to an old Irish legend, the Earl of Desmond, head of the Munster branch of the Fitz (meaning “son of”) Geralds erected a beautiful castle with a secret room in which the Earl performed magic spells. One day, he invited his wife to watch him on condition that she remain silent. But when the Earl assumed a different shape, his terrified wife let out a shriek that broke the taboo of silence. The castle sank to the bottom of the lake, & the Earl was said to dwell there waiting for the proper moment to return & restore his resplendent reign. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was particularly fond of the story, & we suspect, hoped to restore the golden age of his ancestors by his reign in Camelot.

The book does not have much original material about the Kennedys, mostly reorganized materials we have been told before. It is well done, however, it becomes a bit monotonous & repetitious, as Klein keeps reminding us of the theme of the book -- the Kennedy Curse.

Klein wrote the book because he was asked to do so by his agent who also supplied the title. In the opinion of this reviewer, a writer should follow his passion & not his pocketbook. Otherwise it is merely a routine assignment. Nevertheless, The Kennedy Curse is recommended for those Kennedy lovers, who, like this reviewer, enjoy recapitulating the Kennedy Saga, even if we don't completely accept Klein's conclusions.

More from Edward Klein:
All Too Human:: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie.
Just Jackie:: Her Private Years.
Parachutists: Editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine and winner of the first Pulitzer Prize in its history. He also has had many articles in Vanity Fair & Parade.

Other Kennedy book reviews are:
The Kennedy Women
The Kennedy Men
An Unfinished Life
Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years
Janet and Jackie
Mrs. Kennedy Goes Abroad
(11/02/03)

Dr. Alma Bond
2003©Alma Bond
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Reviewer's Bio:
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of ten published books, including:
The Deadly Jigsaw Puzzle;
The Tree That Could Fly;
Tales Of Psychology (2004);
I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde (2000);
The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel (1998);
On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery (1994);
Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1998);
Profiles of Key West (1996).

She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age Is A Terminal Illness, as an audio book.

She is also the author of a just published children's picture book called The Tree That Could Fly.

Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.