He could charm, he could engage, and he could also rant. Some people who knew him thought that the ranting was an act, and to some extent it was: it was a calculated way of making a point. He spent the winter of 1961 living in the guesthouse of the novelist William Styron, in Connecticut, while he worked on a novel. “We’d feed him,” Styron remembered, “and he’d come around at night. We’d have these very liberal political people over, and Jimmy . . . used to stand in front of the fireplace and say, ‘Baby, we’re going to burn your motherfucking houses down.’ ” The liberals no doubt loved it. As he no doubt knew they would.