Review: The rock and roll president

Joe Eszterhas' 'American Rhapsody' rants, raves, and recaps the Clinton era

"American Rhapsody"
By Joe Eszterhas
Alfred A. Knopf
Current Affairs
448 pages

In this story: Brief and furtive encounters 'The Night Creature' RELATED SITES

By L.D. Meagher
Special to CNN.com

(CNN) -- What would have happened if Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had hired Hunter S. Thompson to ghostwrite his report on President Clinton? The result might have been "American Rhapsody" by Joe Eszterhas.

Eszterhas, like Thompson a product of Rolling Stone magazine, is best known as a screenwriter, with credits ranging from "Jagged Edge" to "Flashdance," "Music Box" to "Showgirls." His book juxtaposes the same qualities of perceptive observation and leering voyeurism that define his movie scripts. He preaches and rants by turns, often shedding an interesting light on the well-known events of the Lewinsky affair.

"American Rhapsody" doesn't necessarily damn Bill Clinton for his human failings. But it's not particularly sympathetic either. Instead, Eszterhas looks for a way to understand why Mr. Clinton did the things he did. He begins by examining the Southern postwar culture that produced the president and his near-contemporaries, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

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Excerpt: 'American Rhapsody'

"All three learned to play their instruments in proximity to that corrupt, exhilarating and life-giving red neon glow," he writes. "Jerry Lee had his piano, Elvis had his voice, and Billy Clinton had a silver tongue."

If, as Eszterhas concludes, Bill Clinton is the first "rock and roll President," why should the country be surprised by his behavior?

The writer has obviously immersed himself deeply in the trivial and not-so-trivial details of the Lewinsky scandal. He recounts each brief and furtive encounter between the president and the former intern as if he had witnessed it himself.

And he goes further. Eszterhas insinuates himself into the minds of some key players, and writes -- often in the first person -- what they're thinking. He employs this device to scour the psyches of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ken Starr, Al Gore, and people who had only tangential contact with the scandal, including George W. Bush and John McCain.

Even when following a more traditional narrative track, Eszterhas is often venomous. He heaps scorn on the Republican leadership that pressed for the impeachment of the president. He vilifies the human conduits of the scandal, calling Linda Tripp "the Ratwoman," Lucianne Goldberg "the Bag Lady of Sleaze" and Matt Drudge "the Scavenger of Cyberspace." He is particularly contemptuous of that other scandal-ridden chief executive, Richard Nixon.

Eszterhas elevates Nixon -- who died before Monica Lewinsky began her internship -- to a major figure in the rise and fall of Bill Clinton. The young Arkansan had organized protests against Nixon's Vietnam policies. Hillary Rodham worked on the staff of the committee that drafted articles of impeachment against the 37th president. Nearly two decades later, the 42nd president actively sought out Nixon's advice and counsel.

Even in death, Eszterhas sees the shadowy hand of Nixon, "the Night Creature," pulling the strings that would push the Clinton presidency to the brink of extinction

Through the chain-smoking Goldberg and her friend, the chain-smoking Tripp, the Night Creature was loose in the world again, out of the grave again, smearing, clawing, drawing blood ... making Bill Clinton pay ... for sending Vernon Jordan to the funeral of Pale Pat, his cancer-ravaged wife ... for the sixties, for the protests, for Watergate, for his resignation, for his disgrace."

Eszterhas makes other arcane connections. He is probably the first to weigh the impact actress Farrah Fawcett had on the public perception of the scandal. He dishes some Hollywood gossip -- about actress Sharon Stone, actor Warren Beatty and many others, including himself -- in pursuit of the question "What does it all mean?" He may never arrive at a definitive answer.

But along the way, Eszterhas provides an entertaining take on the scandals of the Clinton years. "American Rhapsody" is more than 400 densely written, profane and scatological pages long. It is occasionally didactic, sometimes hysterical, often grating. But it is rarely boring.

Random House

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