I feel a bit bad for Carl Bernstein. After years of work to produce 600+ well-crafted pages about Hillary Clinton, sex still sells. Three television interviews and three times now he has had to say there is no sex act in the book. It must be somewhat frustrating. As usual, we need the print media to go beyond the superficialities of television.
A Woman in Charge was published today and Bernstein gave some morning interviews. On CBS, Harry Smith delved a bit deeper than NBC’s Matt Lauer did on Friday (see Publicity Rarely Hurts) but not by much; at least with Smith I had the feeling he’d actually read some of the book. The clip and an excerpt can be found here.
He also gave an interview to Canadian TV, whose presenter had done some homework by reading yesterday’s laudatory review in The Los Angeles Times. Even Bernstein seemed taken aback, but delighted, by the review, which struck me as nearly hyperbolic. (”It is difficult to imagine the need for another book on the first five decades of Clinton’s life.”) The CTV interview and another excerpt link is here.
The influential New York Times was not as impressed. Michiko Kakutani said the book will please neither Hillary’s friends nor enemies, was criticial of the lack of information about her Senate career and concluded by calling it “a portrait largely made up of incidents and descriptions and theories any regular follower of the news already knows…that seems unlikely to find all that many eager readers.” The Permalink for this review is not available, so try here and you’ll also find a link to another excerpt. There is a second Times review of both of this week’s biographies for the Sunday Book Review; the Permalink is here. 6/8 Update: Also coming up Sunday, reviews of both books in The Washington Post, already online here.
7/14 Update: With neither book setting the world on fire in terms of sales, The Times re-reviews both tomorrow (”Good Hillary, Bad Hillary”) in the Sunday Book Review. Permalink already available here. As biography, reviewer Jennifer Senior prefers Bernstein’s, saying he “attempts to write a genuine biography, describing and interpreting the life Hillary has led and the varieties of forces that shaped her.”
For another international take, see the AFP and there’s a very good piece at AllAfrica. For the Bloomberg review, highly critical of both the book (”craven, nasty”) and of Bernstein — it sounds like a grudge — go here. For an especially readable and enjoyable, but mostly negative, review (6/16) see the Guardian of London. For a print interview that goes beyond sex, turn to Reuters. For my earlier links to excerpts see here.
It takes about 15 minutes to watch all three video clips, but afterwards you’ll be certain of one thing: there’s no sex act in this book.
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