Such personality characteristics hardly mark her as exceptional in politics - indeed, they are the tools of the trade. Seneca himself caved under pressures far lighter than those generated by the revelations of Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinski, not to mention Travelgate, Whitewater and the Vince Foster suicide. While Clinton certainly has access to first-rate material - both in terms of politics and in terms of a one-handed read - her entire public persona is built upon obfuscation, privacy and stoicism in the face of public humiliation.

More to the point, though, is this: Spellbinding memoirs, especially by political figures, are based on revelation the form is inherently confessional. As Thomas Pynchon and others could tell you, long-awaited, blockbuster publishing events rarely pan out the way they're supposed to. This is more typically a sign of a horse that needs to be flogged across the finish line than of a confident thoroughbred that will win the race with ease. So why will Clinton's White House memoir be a boring, dull disappointment? (Remember, you read it here first.) Early indicators include the publicity mill that is cranking up to speed (hence Wednesday's news). 'It's not meant to be a history, it is a memoir, and I tried to express my feelings about everything that happened during those eight years.' 'My publisher kept saying you can't say that much,' she told the Post, figuratively hiking up her skirt while trying to hitch a ride by the side of the road. And the New York Mets - (or is it Yankees?) - loving Clinton herself knows a thing or two about selling suspect product to a skeptical public. 'We think the book is absolutely fantastic and we are convinced that there is a tremendous public appetite for this book based on our advance orders,' David Rosenthal, head of Simon & Schuster's trade division, told The Washington Post. The initial print run of 'Living History' will be a stunning 1 million copies.

To be sure, Clinton's publisher is wearing a poker face - and putting plenty of chips on the table, too. That Clinton won a Grammy for a spoken-word version of the book is an indicator of just how rotten it really is. This last volume was aptly dubbed 'It Takes a Police State' and 'It Takes a Bureaucracy' for its insistence that child-rearing should be every bit as rule-bound and soul-sapping as working for the Internal Revenue Service. Dalloway' meets 'Advise and Consent') and, most famously, 'It Takes a Village' ('Baby and Child Care' meets 'Lord of the Flies'). (As she did with her previous books and her god-awful and thankfully never-seen newspaper column, Clinton claims that she personally wrote her own memoir - a claim which if true is perhaps the most stunning admission of literary moonlighting on the taxpayers' dime since William Faulkner ran the Oxford, Miss., post office while perfecting his writing and drinking skills.)īut there's every reason to believe that this book will simply be the latest episode in what's shaping up as Clinton's tedious, hectoring and ultimately unreadable roman fleuve that already includes 'Dear Socks, Dear Buddy' (think 'Cujo' meets 'Millie's Book') 'An Invitation to the White House' ('Mrs.

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