Book Review
Like author, like book: Clinton memoir is charming, long-winded

By Melinda Bargreen
Special to The Seattle Times

PAUL HAWTHORNE / GETTY IMAGES Bill Clinton's "My Life" sold 400,000 copies its first day, according to its publisher, Knopf, setting a record for nonfiction formerly held by his wife.

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Bill Clinton's "My Life" has been leaping off the bookshelves, if anything this huge can be said to leap: at 957 pages, this memoir is also suitable for bench pressing and sailboat ballast. Clinton's publisher, Knopf, reported that 400,000 copies sold the first day — doubling the sales of the formerly fastest-selling nonfiction book, Hillary Clinton's 2003 "Living History."

Bookstore crowds who lined up after midnight Tuesday morning to buy the former president's autobiography got exactly what you'd expect of this author: The book is charming, chaotic, well-reasoned, self-indulgent and exceedingly long-winded.

Churned out in longhand in more than 20 large notebooks at his study in Chappaqua, N.Y., Clinton's "My Life" may be uneven, but it's consistently fascinating, with more detail than a Breughel canvas. Some of you may be enthralled by Clinton's accounts of his childhood used-comic-book stand or his later attempts to win a tomato-eating contest, or perhaps his high-school yell (which begins "Hullabloo, Ke-neck, Ke-neck, Hullabloo").

"My Life" by Bill Clinton Knopf, $35

But most readers are probably going to head straight for the index to find out what Clinton has to say about the nadir of his presidency, his involvement with That Woman, Miss Monica Lewinsky. Here we find both concealment and candor. Clinton categorizes their relationship only as "an inappropriate encounter" repeated "again on other occasions."

"I was disgusted with myself for doing it," he confesses.

"What I had done with Monica Lewinsky was immoral and foolish. I was deeply ashamed of it and I didn't want it to come out. In the deposition, I was trying to protect my family and myself from my selfish stupidity."

Finally, with the truth of the scandal about to break, Clinton told Hillary, who "looked at me as if I had punched her in the gut, almost as angry at me for lying to her in January as for what I had done." He was exiled from the bedroom and slept on the couch for an extended period. Couples therapy was to follow.

Though there have been persistent rumors of other "bimbo eruptions" during Clinton's career, he doesn't mention any of those (apart from dismissing the allegations about Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and the four Arkansas state troopers who claimed to have procured women for him during his governorship of that state).

What he does divulge is his theory of the "parallel lives" he has lived: serene and successful on the surface, tormented by unresolved anger and demons underneath. The hidden life took its toll, Clinton reports, in occasionally self-indulgent, self-destructive behavior, such as the Lewinsky episodes.

Local Clinton signings Issaquah Costco, 1-2:30 p.m. next Wednesday, 1801 10th Ave. N.W., Issaquah. Customers can buy or bring book (bring receipt). Costco members only. One signature per membership. No signing of memorabilia. 90 minutes (425-313-0965). Elliott Bay Book Co., 8 p.m. next Wednesday, 101 S. Main St., Seattle. Must buy book there to get free ticket for autograph. The 1,500 tickets were expected to go quickly. One signature per customer. No signing of memorabilia. (206-624-6600). Tyrone Beason, Times staff reporter

"My Life," too, reads like a double book: the opening chapters telling in colorful detail about his childhood, and the majority of the book reading like an expanded diary that recounts his later political successes and failures month by month. Over and over again, he calls himself a "fat kid" who was "uncool" and so uncoordinated that he couldn't ride a bicycle until he went off to England as a Rhodes scholar.

Clinton gives readers a real sense of place with his descriptions of rural Hope, Ark., during his early childhood, and his later home, the more lively Hot Springs, which boasted gambling spots, alligator and ostrich farms, and a whorehouse. The author's specific accounts of all sorts of characters and events are heavy with foreshadowing: an early encounter with a ram helped toughen him up for the battering he was later to get in politics. Clinton seems eager for us to know that he's not only "just folks" (one of their homes had an outhouse), but also politically correct (many African-American friends, for example).

More harrowing are his descriptions of his stepfather, Roger Clinton, whose addictions to both alcohol and domestic violence led to some horrifying scenarios. When Clinton's mother wanted to visit her dying grandmother in the hospital and Roger didn't want her to go, he fired a gun in her direction, and the bullet hit the wall between young Bill and his mother. The police took the older Clinton off to jail in handcuffs.

By age 14, Bill grabbed a golf club to defend his mother during one of his stepfather's beatings. It's not hard to see how this miserable homelife, filled with the "secrets rooted in Daddy's alcoholism and abuse," became the hidden "parallel life" to the public successes of this brilliant youngster. Even as an adolescent, his résumé was impressive; he won medals for his saxophone playing, earned top marks for his writing, and shook President Kennedy's hand during his Boys' Nation experience.

At 16, Clinton's political ambitions were already clear. "I knew I could be great in public service. I was fascinated by people, politics, and policy, and I thought I could make it without family wealth, or connections, or establishment southern positions on race and other issues. Of course it was improbable, but isn't that what America is all about?"

His college years are rendered in incredible detail, right down to specific exam questions and one professor's propensity for such withering marginalia as "capricious little bilge pump." Life at Oxford University, travels in Europe, the courting of Hillary (who repeatedly turned him down before accepting), and the dawn of his political career all make intriguing reading. So do Clinton's "dumb mistakes": raising car-license fees as Arkansas governor, and as president, going along with his staff consensus to request a special prosecutor in the Whitewater issue.

Clinton's own case against prosecutor Kenneth Starr, and his subsequent fight against impeachment, are clearly and convincingly set forth. He also dispenses some salvos in other directions: President Reagan's involvement in the Iran-Contra affair "might have led to his impeachment had the Democrats been half as ruthless as Newt Gingrich." The former President Bush's dispensing of pardons to six who had been indicted in the same scandal, plus a Cuban the FBI blieved guilty of several murders, meet with Clinton's disapproval as well.

World leaders figure prominently in "My Life," especially in Clinton's accounts of his efforts to bring together Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin (the latter reluctantly agreed to shake Arafat's hand, but insisted on "no kissing").

Ultimately, Clinton's zest for politics is very clear. When his term was over, he wrote, "I was going to miss my old job. I had loved being President, even on the bad days." But you have to wonder why, because there were lots and lots of bad days.

As Clinton grapples with Bosnia, tries to broker peace in the Middle East and in Ireland, deals with the disastrous FBI raid on the Branch Davidians at Waco, battles the NRA and a slew of political enemies at home, tries to advance an economic stimulus plan and a health-care package, and rushes to the rescue of Boris Yeltsin (who is "up to his neck in alligators"), the presidency doesn't look so enticing.

Melinda Bargreen is the Seattle Times music critic: mbargreen@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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