Customer Reviews

American Rhapsody

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I'm all for satire and a good wicked read -- especially when it comes to hollywood or politics. But this book never quite rose to all it's hype and expectations. Claiming to be a gleeful "tell-all" book about the Clintons and other such scandels, AMERICAN RHAPSODY wants to be a scathing satiric review of political limelight. Instead it's a good idea with no consistent sense of direction. There are moments of hilarity and occasional comic insight but mostly this is a predictable, over the top book featuring segments like "Willard Comes Clean" (translating to: the confessions of the president's penis.) A little disappointing.

Wow...this book gets on a roll from the first chapter and absolutely does not let up. It is a hilarious, scandelous romp through the Clinton years, from D.C. to Hollywood. If you have followed the turbulent career of Eszterhas the screenwriter and wondered what kind of a book he might conjure, this is it.

I was as bored as everyone else during the Lewinski scandle, but if you thought there was nothing else to say about it, you must read this. Eszterhas breaths new life into a subject that before seemed as dead as Dillinger. In his own style, part narrative, part Hollywood tell all, part essay, he shows us a new side to this, one rarely seen under all the intense media glare that surrounded the time.

If you want an entertaining read that is also an interesting look back, pick this up. You will not be disapointed.

Sure it's sleazy and overemphasizes the gory details (and that's putting it mildly!). But Eszterhas can write in a way that is not immediately apparent from having seen Showgirls et al. This books is SATIRE and like it or not captures a spirit of a generation that puts the whole Lewinsky fiasco in the proper perspective. This book reminds me of Wolfe's "Radical Chic", Thompson's "...Hell's Angels" or even Roth's "Our Gang".

I actually felt sorry for Clinton after having read this book. He's a creature of his own appetites and is unfortunately all too representative of his own cross-section of society. Eszterhas makes the observation that Clinton's true peer group is the rock-n-roll, far left set that ended up invading hollywood, music and almost every other segment of society---why not the white house, too?

You gotta love the "Rat Woman" caricature. It sums up many people's feelings so well. My personal favorite was his not-so-subtle characterization of Nixon as "The Night Creature". I liked his Nixon much better than Oliver Stone's.

I might be smoking something (without inhaling, of course), but I think that this book shows real talent and a deft hand at skewering that has been absent from the literary scene for a couple of decades.

I enjoyed it very much, even though I was prepared to sneer. It did however, need some serious editing and would have been a much, much better book if about 25% of it had been cut.

I saw the author, interview with Charlie Rose, and ordered the book. I just finished it, today, and have already passed it on to a good friend. I found the book fascinating, titilating, and profane. I am a 66 year old woman, and not a member of the sixties generation. Much of the book contained information I wasn't aware of. Many times I was shocked. However, I could not put the book down! I am so glad that I read it, and will recomend it to my friends. For me, it was good to find the balance between so much sexual information about Bill Clinton, and new information about so many other politicians of both parties. I, for one, am tired of hearing so many people act horrified at what we have learned about this president. I remember FDR, and nothing was ever printed about his personal life, until long after his death. I really don't need to know about anyone else's sex life. But,if we must be informed about one of our politicians, then let's know how frequently so many others share those habits. Reading this book, has left me with the feeling that no one in political life, is exempt of that power going to their head, and areas below their waists! I will be working to help elect more women to high level, political positions. Perhaps when there is a more equal balance between men and women in the Congress, these school boy practices will diminish. Thanks Joe, for my enlightenment.

THIS WAS A ROLLERCOASTER RIDE FROM HOLLYWOOD TO WASHINGTON D.C. WITH A SIDETRIP THROUH HELL.I THINK ESZTERHAUS IS THE MOST ORIGINAL HUMOROUS VOICE IN AMERICA TODAY.I ALSO BOUGHT THE UNABRIDGED AUDIO WHICH IS OVER TWENTY HOURS LONG..I HAVE LISTENED TO THE FIRST HALF AND NEVER LAUGHED SO HARD IN MY LIFE.I THINK IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN BOOK BECAUSE IT INCLUDES MATERIAL THE PUBLISHER DID NOT USE.THIS BOOK/TAPE IS THE MOST FUN I HAVE EVER HAD WITH MY CLOTHES ON.

Wotta hoot! I received this book today and have already plowed through the first sixty or so pages of this aging baby boomer's diatribe against the Big Boomer who's soon going to be out of a job! I fully expected Eszterhas to be a Clinton Apologist, and while that may yet happen, the first few chapters are devastating as all-get-out, delivering disturbingly hilarious 'blow-by-blow' accounts of what Bubba's been up to. Warning...unless you leave copies of Hustler lying around the house in full view of your toddlers, pre-schoolers, grade school children, pre-teens or post-pubescent kids, DO NOT LEAVE THIS BOOK UNATTENDED! There's a boatload of funny, yet truly salacious material in this and if innocent hands open 'American Rhapsody', randomly to any page, those innocent hands will quickly grow hair upon the palms. But for the rest of us, two thumbs up! Now, I gotta go. Where's my cigar...and, why're my hands itchy all of a sudden...what's wrong with my eyesight...?

Eszterhas may have had a point to make in writing this book unfortunateley one has to wade through page after page of his own self inflated, name dropping, ultra left wing, pretensious posturing to ( hopefully ) find it. The subject of the book - Clinton/Lewinsky ramifications ( I assume ) - seem to be more a handy facade for the projection of Joe's personal, so called liberalistic, axe grinding.

If you already know that the Handsome/Sweetie saga was symptomatic of the present Dark Age we've entered then don't waste your time on this book.

I mean Joe seems to be under the impression that Showgirls ( he was the screenwriter ) is a worthwhile film. Need I say more?

This book contributes no REAL enlightenment on it's subject matter. An F grade re-hash of the Starr Report.

Do yourself a favor skip this and buy yourself buy anything by PJ O'Rourke instead.

Living in the Washington, D.C. Metro area, I venture to imagine that we are inundated with Washington's news even moreso than the rest of the country. I imagine that the rest of the country is just as tired of it as are we.

And then came Eszterhas. With chapter after chapter of useless information, cynical quip and satirical prose, American Rhapsody is guaranteed to tickle the funny bone of anyone who enjoys laughing at ourselves or better yet, laughing at those who present themselves as above reproach.

I will never be able to look at Farrah Fawcett again without envisioning the aging Charlie's Angel defecating on a lawn at a party. With an audience.

Only in America would we have a ninety-six year old senator known as "The Sperminator".

Does it delight you or does it enrage you that alone, Larry Flynt defeated if not defamed the Christian Coalition, the Moral Majority and the Republican Party?

Does Eszterhas, when describing President Clinton as "jacking off all over the White House" mean literally, figuratively or metaphorically?

No matter your party affiliation, sexual orientation or gender, if you enjoy tongue-in-cheek remarks, political trivia, Hollywood gossip and find humor in irony, you'll find American Rhapsody an entertaining read.

Joe Eszterhas certainly suffers from what the hippy/baby boomer generation are accused of suffering from: self-absorption. Good God, does he love his own opinions! He reminds me of Geraldo Rivera here: they both talk about all the women they used to sleep with, pretending to be ashamed and repentant, when the subtext the whole time screams, "Ain't I a stud!" They are pretending to be "confessing," when all they're doing is bragging. He takes Clinton to task, but he also accuses Americans of being too puritannical. (The French think we are too puritannical about Clinton. But then the French said, "In France, Watergate would have been forgotten in three days.") And read NO ONE LEFT TO LIE TO by Christopher Hitchens. You'll see that Linda Tripp saved Monica Lewinsky by taping her and urging her to save the blue dress. The Clinton White House was just starting on a smear campaign accusing Lewinsky of fantasizing it all, and stalking Clinton...when that blue dress appeared, that made the campaign stop before it started. It's absolute sacrilege to say so, But Linda Tripp saved Lewinsky's butt. Not the opinion in this book. Eszterhas reminds me of Norman Mailer. He's a dirty old man who pretends to be preoccupied with sex for intellectual reasons...when in fact he's just a lech. Read Harry Stein's HOW I ACCIDENTALLY JOINED THE RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY AND FOUND INNER PEACE before you read this one. It gives the best take on Clinton I've read yet.

For all the hype surrounding the celebrity revelations in "American Rhapsody", its biggest shock is the excellence of its writing. This book will not languish on a shelf; the pages turn themselves as the narrative gains its thrilling, roller-coaster momentum. Form follows function: Joe Eszterhas has produced a deleriously self-indulgent read about the most self-indulgent public figures of our time.

Eszterhas's language is more than bawdy, but thanks to characters like Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and even Sharon Stone, so are the events it narrates. The minutiae of the Lewinsky scandal is made surprisingly fresh when written over with Eszterhas's super-snide commentary, as he parses the contents of the "Starr Report" to produce vivid character studies of all the players. It is soon difficult not to regard the actual historical players as mere sock-puppets, only capable of speaking freely through the mouth of Eszterhas.

Eszterhas has an extraordinary gift for appearing to voice the cynical subtext behind the most famous political utterances of the 1990s. Bill Clinton is Eszterhas's alter-ego, he believes, a fellow rock-n-roller who concealed just enough of his nature to make it to the White House. Nicknaming Linda Tripp and Lucienne Goldberg "The Ratwoman" and "The Bag Lady of Sleaze", Eszterhas plumbs the Clinton years for a whole new depth of black comedy. (Indeed, given Goldberg's wealth, I'm not even sure what "The Bag Lady of Sleaze" means, strictly speaking, but this new appelation locks in with the permanence of a well-chosen middle name.)

Reaching into Election 2000, Eszterhas's outrageous portrait of George W. Bush as a rattlesnake, Alpo-male version of his father is unforgettable. You will never see W. Bush the same, once you have seen "com-pay-ssionate conservative" printed as it is spoken, which is an act of startling subversiveness that none of the zillions of Campaign 2000 journalists dared to perform. A single, Texan-accented word becomes the keyhole through which we peer into W.'s "philosophy". As W. is fond of saying, perhaps we should "take him at his word".

Fact or fiction, in the final analysis? Who cares, when the reading is so diverting. Eszterhas taps into some deep poetic truths yielded from his close study of the American political scene. These poetic truths are larger than those yielded from any single historical text, hewn of majestic, marble fact. In a solitary volume, Eszterhas brings us all the essentials of the politics of our time.