American Rhapsody is a gleeful act of outrage, simultaneously an assault on the Clintons and a bridge-burning, tell-all Hollywood memoir in the wicked spirit of You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. Joe Eszterhas's narrative is a torrent of consciousness with no consistent sense of direction, but it all erupts from a plausible organizing principle best articulated in the chapter "Bubba in Pig Heaven": Hollywood is where Clinton really belongs. The author claims Bill watches Blazing Saddles six times a year, and says that Gennifer Flowers got him blazing by enacting a Sharon Stone-like crotch-shot scene years before Basic Instinct. When a sarcastic Clinton allegedly told a Hollywood producer that his enemies would soon be accusing him of coupling with a cow, the producer sent him Eszterhas's 1989 screenplay Sacred Cow, in which a president does just that. Eszterhas claims Spielberg dropped the film because of his friendship with Clinton. But he still thinks Clinton would be great in the role.

The Lewinsky saga really should be ho-hum by now, but American Rhapsody's Evel Knievel-like leaps of free association and mad brio breathe life into it. You've never been properly introduced to Linda Tripp and Lucianne Goldberg until you've read "The Ratwoman and the Bag Lady of Sleaze," its uproarious take on the pair. American Rhapsody gives dozens of stars time in the sweaty spotlight: Matt "the Scavenger" Drudge, heroic Larry Flynt (whose threat to report Republican scandals Eszterhas credits with quashing impeachment)--almost every big political scandal victim in memory. And there are lots of Hollywood types behaving badly: Bob Dylan, Warren Beatty, Ronald Reagan, Farrah Fawcett, Sharon Stone, Robert Evans, Sly Stallone (who wanted to portray Jesus onscreen), and even Joe Eszterhas. The fantasy chapters, printed in boldface, are sometimes funny (e.g., "Kenneth W. Starr Confesses"), but mostly they're both over the top and below the belt (e.g., "Willard Comes Clean," the confessions of the president's penis). What holds your interest is the main narrative, a heady mix of showbiz gossip, personal essay, and Lester Bangs-style prose mania. --Tim Appelo


From Publishers Weekly
A loud belch commands attention. So will this hyped, bombastic take on the Clinton presidency from Eszterhas, screenwriter of Showgirls, Flashdance, Basic Instinct and other scarlet highlights in film history. Eszterhas knows how to write. His prose sizzles and spits across these hot pages to the hip rhythms of the gonzo journalism pioneered by Rolling Stone, where Eszterhas made his name some 30 years back. Much of the book is outrageously funny, particularly to readers with a healthy inner snickering teen. It's also flagrantly self-righteous, a finger-wagging indictment of how the hopes of the 1960s-embodied, to Eszterhas, in Clinton, the "first rock and roll American president," "one of us"-went astray as the mind and heart of the chief executive were waylaid by the demanding presidential penis, which, according to Eszterhas (by way of Gennifer Flowers), the commander in chief refers to as "Willard." That bit of info, plus many others equally titillating but nearly as trivial, testifies to the prodigious research that apparently went into this volume ("apparently" because it lacks bibliography and footnotes; it also features explicitly fictional chapters from the viewpoints of assorted principals, including one voiced by Willard). As Eszterhas casts the past 50 American years as a battle between forces dark (Nixon, Reagan, Packwood-i.e., Republicans) and light (the counterculture, James Carville, Larry Flynt), he makes minor news: who knew that Clinton and Monica engaged in oral-anal contact? that Nixon also had a young assistant named Monica? that the same man shot both Vernon Jordan and Larry Flynt? He also sharpens some significant points and sledgehammers them home-points about the confluence of Hollywood (on which this book is also memoir/commentary) and Washington; about how, like a Don Juan with syphilis, the '60s carried in their very excess the seed of self-destruction; about how individuals can shape history (e.g., the role of Larry Flynt in saving Clinton from conviction by the Senate in his impeachment trial, and so the nation from what Eszterhas sees as a potential coup d'etat). But gonzo guy that he is, along the way Eszterhas not only names but calls them, as he thrashes a host of celebrities, from Sharon Stone to Bob Dole and Linda Tripp. It's as if every drop of bile and brain fluid sloshing through Eszterhas has dripped into this book-a manic, mouthy, self-indulgent, impossible to ignore lament for America. 200,000 first printing; first serial to Talk. (Aug. 18) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Political satirist Mark Russell pictures President Clinton being sculpted onto Mount RushmoreD"from the waist down." Eszterhas, the author of such fine screen plays as F.I.S.T. and Betrayed and such stinkers as Sliver and Showgirls, provides literary justification for Russell's vision in this farcical waist-level panorama of the Clinton years, in what could be the offspring of the mating of The Joy of Sex and Portnoy's Complaint. Readers are probably aware of the media hype surrounding this book, especially the role of Willard, the "longer than Willie" presidential phallus, which in a rousing climax reveals the true source of President Clinton's power. The author's probing analysis and extensive reading results in a novel that rings more true than many of the "nonfiction" accounts of the President and First Lady Hillary. Eszterhas and his coauthoring "Twisted Little Man" alter ego create often sidesplitting and frequently poignant dialog spoken by such characters as Richard "Night Creature" Nixon; Larry Flynt, the pornographer-in-chief who may have saved the presidency by threatening to blackmail right-wing attackers in no position to "cast the first stone"; presidential pal Vernon Jordan; one-time Republican presidential contender John "Wayne" McCain; Vice President Al Gore; and, of course, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. This political fable could have been nicely shortened if the author had left out his too many stories about his experiences in Hollywood and as a reporter for the Rolling Stone. Yet it is strongly recommended for public libraries as a painfully funny and all too excruciatingly real expos of Clinton's America.DKarl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with the unabridged AMERICAN RHAPSODY.] -- This audiobook defies category and convention. It is part journalism and part autobiography. Eszterhas describes his own political development and creates some fictional monologues by several contemporary political figures. Eszterhas reads the nonfiction portions and, for a non-actor, does reasonably well. His gravelly voice is sometimes flat, but his pace is excellent, and in many places his reading displays much emotion. Nearly all the other voices are excellent. Bill Maher is particularly good presenting Ken Starr's prayer. The voices of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Bob Dole are perfect, and the script is hilarious. Readers should know Eszterhas, screenwriter for many films including Basic Instinct, holds nothing back in use of language. One nice feature of the abridgment is that it does not contain the re-enactment of the conversations of Monica and Linda Tripp, which is presented in the full version. M.L.C. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Just when you thought the visual image of Clinton and his cigar was fading, and just when everything that needed to be said about Monica had finally been strained into gruel, along comes a book so gossipy, so irreverent, so witty, silly, and profound that it makes it seem as if the whole impeachment mess was nothing more than a dung heap made to grow this rose. The gardener is screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, best known for his hit film Basic Instinct (and his disaster, Showgirls). For Eszterhas, however, this is not just a story about the Clinton scandal. It's about the '60s and the Boomers, blacks and whites, drugs and rock 'n' roll. There's Clinton portrayed as the first rock president (and the first black president); there's lots about the Hollywood-Washington connection; and there's a tad too much about Eszterhas himself. The title is apt because Joe's prose--knowing, smart, dirty, veering off into filthy--is like music: rock, blues, musical comedy, even a little (soap) opera. And, of course, jazz, especially in a series of verbal riffs when the typeface changes and "the twisted little man" inside Eszterhas (as he puts it) takes over and writes hysterically from the heads of Dole, Gore, Lewinsky, both Clintons, McCain, and W. Bush ("Thanks to Bill Clinton's pecker, I'm gonna set myself up in the White House"). The denouement is a soliloquy spoken by Clinton's famous member itself--here named Willard--who explains it all. This readably outrageous romp will have everyone talking. Buy lots. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In American Rhapsody, Eszterhas combines comprehensive research with insight, honesty, and astute observation to reveal ultimate truths. This is a book that flouts virtually every rule, yet joins a rich journalistic tradition distinguished by such writers as Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe.

A brilliant, unnerving, hugely entertaining look at our political culture, our heroes and villains, American Rhapsody will delight some and outrage others, but it will not be ignored. What Joe Eszterhas has produced is a penetrating and devastating panorama of all of us, a fun-house mirror held up to our own morals, hypocrisies and desires.

About the Author:

Joe Eszterhas was born in Hungary, spent his first six years in Austrian refugee camps, and came to the United States in 1950. He lives in Point Dume, California, with his wife Naomi and their three children. He has two grown children from his first marriage.

He has been awarded the Emanuel Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award forwork dedicated to the memory of the holocaust in Hungary. He has also wonawards for attending every one of his son's Little League games and forwriting Showgirls (the Hollywood Women's Press Association's Sour Apple Award).

SYNOPSIS

A tale filled with humor, tragedy and romance; suspense, absurdity and high drama; and, of course, lots and lots of sex.

FROM THE CRITICS

Anthony Venutolo - Playboy

If there's one thing writer Joe Eszterhas knows how to do, it's how to push the envelope.

Best known for authoring such guilty pleasures as Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Flashdance, the Hungarian-born scribe might have some explaining to do after the public gets hold of American Rhapsody, a walloping 432-page uppercut that connects square on the jaws of Washington and Tinseltown.

If you like dish served on a big, flat, silver platter, look no further, because Eszterhas (after a significant hiatus from screenwriting) has returned to his journalistic roots. Only this time, instead of digging up compelling facts, he aims for the jugular in the guise of "news."

Ed Vulliamy - The Observer (London)

It's a hilarious and scandalous book, part-fact, part-fantasy, about a serious subject: Washington observed through the prism of Hollywood and vice versa.

Library Journal

Let's be honest. This review could be as negative as it wanted to be, and librarians brave enough to unleash this venomous item on their shelves would still watch it be devoured by every type of reader, from the elderly lady who wants to "tsk-tsk" over some of the seamier scenes to the political fanatics who believe Bill Clinton to be the Devil Incarnate. Eszterhas, a Hollywood screenwriter responsible for Basic Instinct and other movies and who has become the highest paid author in the industry, trains his well-turned phrases on the White House intern scandal and the diverse cast of characters who wander in and out of this sordid tale of political power gone amok. The guy can write, and he is viciously funny, but his work must be a rampant stream of free-flowing consciousness that could be difficult for some readers to follow. The audiobook solves that problem for them; actors such as Ed Asner, Susan Ruttan, and Nina Foch have worked hard on this version to corral that wandering prose thought and bring their skills to interpreting the random, disjointed text. What reads like gibberish now sounds like reality. It's not flattering to anyone, and there are some scenes that will have even the most jaded listener wincing, but the crudest, most disgusting, and degrading language is saved for Clinton and the now-famous "Willard." Eszterhas loves words and loves the damage they can do even more. Go ahead and order this program and then make certain you have a fresh supply of Customer Complaint Forms on hand.--Joseph L. Carlson, Lompoc P.L., CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with the unabridged AMERICAN RHAPSODY.] — This audiobook defies category and convention. It is part journalism and part autobiography. Eszterhas describes his own political development and creates some fictional monologues by several contemporary political figures. Eszterhas reads the nonfiction portions and, for a non-actor, does reasonably well. His gravelly voice is sometimes flat, but his pace is excellent, and in many places his reading displays much emotion. Nearly all the other voices are excellent. Bill Maher is particularly good presenting Ken Starr's prayer. The voices of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Bob Dole are perfect, and the script is hilarious. Readers should know Eszterhas, screenwriter for many films including Basic Instinct, holds nothing back in use of language. One nice feature of the abridgment is that it does not contain the re-enactment of the conversations of Monica and Linda Tripp, which is presented in the full version. M.L.C. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

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