NYT Book Review: Good Hillary, Bad Hillary

[DeepModem Mom]

Good Hillary, Bad Hillary
By JENNIFER SENIOR
Published: July 15, 2007



A WOMAN IN CHARGE
The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
By Carl Bernstein.
Illustrated. 628 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.

HER WAY
The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
By Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.
Illustrated. 438 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $29.99.

A thought experiment: What would Hillary Rodham Clinton have been like if she hadn’t decided to be a political spouse — or lead a public life? Would she have been the kind of gal who invited other women into her office for a late-night Scotch, regaled them with a dead-on impersonation of the firm’s managing partner (though she’d probably be the managing partner) and actually complained about her husband? If you’re an admirer, this vision seems entirely plausible. If you aren’t, your ideas about the private Hillary are probably a good deal more baroque (sharpened knives, purloined files, etc.).

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? After 16 years on the national stage, Hillary Clinton is still a bafflement — a formidable building that appears, no matter how many times you circle it, to have no door. This impenetrability doubtless accounts for the wide range of feelings she generates (absent knowing what’s inside, voters can ascribe motivations both good and evil). And it’s this impenetrability that doubtless explains why so many journalists can’t stop writing about her, even though she’s a biographical subject who appears, at both first and 50th blush, to offer few rewards.

In the last month and a half, three extremely well-respected journalists have come out with two books that attempt to divine who the real Hillary might be. One, Carl Bernstein’s “Woman in Charge,” is plainly sympathetic, while the other, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.’s “Her Way,” is more severe. (If there’s any doubt as to which is which, just consult the two book covers — Gerth and Van Natta’s shows Hillary in, quite literally, a much harsher light.) Both go off the rails at the moments their grand unified theories can’t quite accommodate the facts, and both practically narcotize readers when they descend into rote recapitulations of the Clinton scandals. But it’s Bernstein who ultimately makes the sharper, more lasting impression, despite the soft-focus portrait of the junior senator from New York on his cover. While he plows some of the same emotional terrain as previous Hillary biographers — notably Gail Sheehy in “Hillary’s Choice” — his book holds together as a piece of writing, and he keeps the psychobabble to a merciful minimum. He also attempts to write a genuine biography, describing and interpreting the life Hillary has led and the varieties of forces that shaped her. Gerth and Van Natta are more apt to treat the former first lady as a supercomputer — unfeeling and cool to the touch, mutely calculating in binary code.

Bernstein opens “A Woman in Charge” by taking a close and ultimately useful look at her father, Hugh Rodham, “a sour, unfulfilled man” who made regular sport of humiliating not only his children but also his wife, Dorothy. Like Hillary, Dorothy Howell waited years to marry her husband, suspecting he was involved with another woman, and like Hillary, she soberly tolerated her husband’s excesses, prompting not a few people to wonder why on earth she stuck by him. “By the time Hillary had reached her teens,” Bernstein writes, “her father seemed defined by his mean edges — he had almost no recognizable enthusiasms or pretense to lightness as he descended into continuous bullying, ill humor, complaint and dejection.” Much has been made of Hillary’s marital stoicism over the years. It’s one of the reasons people distrust her. But it’s possible she comes by it honestly....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/books/review/Senior-t.html?pagewanted=all

[Captain Hilts]

1. Men writing about a woman's life. And Gerth is in the shits with his colleagues...

No matter who you believe - Bernstein or Ephron - I don't want to read anything he has to say about marriage.

[regnaD kciN]

2. So, does that mean that no woman should be allowed...

...to write biographies about a man??? :wtf:

[Captain Hilts]

3. Not at all. I noted Ephron as well.

But these books on HRC have all been written by men and most often reviewed by men. When dealing with some personal topics, such as marital issues, I don't really want to read anything that Bernstein - has to say.

The field of biography - even women's biography - is dominated by men. Interesting.