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I AM CHRYSTIE by Chrystie with Patricia Wood Jenner

I AM CHRYSTIE

By

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 1977
Publisher: Les Femmes

Chrystie Jenner is attractive and famous and, not least, she knows Bruce, but this is not the story of her life as the wife of an Olympic champion. That's described too, but only to further the tale of an all-American co-ed's search for her own identity through years of supporting her husband's amateur athletic career. Chapter 1: Teen-age Chrystie decides she'll forgo a promising future in a department store to return to college, purely because of a guy she's interested in, a phys. ed. teacher-to-be named Bruce. And, once she's grabbed us, intentionally or not, by identifying herself with the people who'd never read a book by NOW's president, Chrystie can proceed to lay it on. She mentions everything from marital sexual problems, masturbation, and Bruce's prior sexual experience (or lack thereof) to her psychotherapy, introduction to NOW, and confrontations with those who try to treat her as less than an equal during her days as a stewardess. She can even instruct us in the scoring, garb, equipment, and procedures of the decathlon, and we keep listening. Once the Jennets have become a magazine cover item, Chrystie takes us to a movie set, where she acquitted herself well, and a chummy dinner at the White House--meanwhile sharing her empty feeling during so much of the post-decathlon razzmatazz. True, many of her triumphant steps toward a higher consciousness are in the category of the train ride she takes without Bruce, exulting that for an entire afternoon her whereabouts will be unknown. Or her teaching Bruce to handle his own business affairs, to share the housework, and to refrain from jumping into the driver's seat of her car. He does adamantly include her in his triumphs from the start to the explosive climax at Montreal, when she scrambled onto the track to stand at his side. In its own wide-eyed, ingenuous fashion, I Am Chrystie delivers the title's promise.