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Summary: Blah Blah Blah
Review: This book just rambles on and on and never seems to end. I don't think I have ever been so disappointed in a book. Since I started to read it, I feel like I have to finish it. I am just praying for that day to come soon. I have to skip over entire paragraphs just to get through a chapter. It is overwhelming proof that hippies should NEVER write books.
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Summary: Witty
Review: This book is screamingly funny. Dont go into politics whilst Joe is still alive
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Summary: American Sleazefest
Review: By Dan MorelandThis book purports to rip the lid off the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and pull no punches. The problem is, like a barefisted 30 round fight from days of old, this book does not seem to end. The first half of "Rhapsody" is a quick and furious read as you learn about all the supposed dirty secrets there are behind Slick Willie. But then just as Bill Clinton is a victim of his own manhood, so is Esztherhas a victim of his own sexual-political self "fulfillment". Is "American Rhapsody" a brilliant recounting of the defining political crisis of the 1990s or a sweating Joe Esztherhas acting out his sickest fetishes over a typewriter? "Rhapsody" may be a bit of both. Some chapters are absolutely brilliant, especially the ones about Richard Nixon (or the "Night Creature" as Esztherhas calls him). But others are tiresome. There's puritan Ken Starr agonizing over writing the pornographic Starr Report. The "fictional" character repeats over and over again "I never cheated on my wife, Oh Lord!" as if the writer needed to fill more pages as specified in his contract. After about 200-250 pages, boredom wins over voyeuristic titillation. You get tired of hearing about how Clinton raped this woman, got sexual favors from another, and did this and that to himself in the Presidential washroom. Several times Esztherhas becomes his "evil alter ego" and writes "fictional" chapters by Al "Gorf" and Hillary Clinton revealing their innermost thoughts. On the surface this appears to be a brilliant literary device, but you quickly learn it's just an excuse for Esztherhas to ooze more filth all over the pages, and it gets real old real quick. AR is hard to classify; it's listed as non-fiction even though there are fictional parts in it. I hope Esztherhas can prove everything he is insinuating- Hillary Clinton may be bi-sexual and Arianna Ruffington is an evil black window, or "The Sorceress from Hell" as the book describes her. Truth or not, here's another tiresome aspect of this tome. After a while you realize in Joe Esztherhas' world no one escapes clean. Even heroes are subject to a few literary cheap shots by the screenwriter. Sorry Joe. James Ellroy brilliantly peers into the darkest cavity of human depravities. You just spout them off like you have tourets. In the end, you wonder what the point of all this is. To entertain? I guess. But usually when I am getting entertained, I enjoy good guys and bad guys. Eszterhas' good guys? People like Larry Flynt. Oh well. What else would you expect from a guy who wrote sleaze bag movies like "Jaded" and "Basic Instinct"? The author rips conservative spook Lucianne Goldberg as "the Bag Lady of Sleaze". That's funny he should write that. After reading this book, I turn to the back cover and see this gray, overweight longhaired failed hippie being photographed with his shirt wide open. Look in the mirror, Joe! The final "fictional" chapter is written by a part of Bill Clinton's anatomy. You can't help but wonder what part of the author's body ghostwrote that.
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Summary: 1 Cup Ego, 3 Tbs. Laughter and a Dash of Insight
Review: American Rhapsody purports to be a book about Clinton and the age of the "Rock and Roll President," and it is when the book sticks to this theme that it is at its most successful. From the prologue, however, Eszterhas serves notice that at its core the book is ultimately about Eszterhas. At times his ego overwhelms the story and the listener. He refers to himself as, in addition to a Hollywood persona, a Public Figure. His tales of Hollywood, scandalous as they are, all contain one theme: Eszterhaus as a key player. "I created Sharon Stone, I resurrected this director's career, I made that actress, etc., etc." In order to justify long asides from Clinton and politics to talk about Eszterhas, Hollywood, and Eszterhas, the author utilizes the device of "talking" to Clinton, punctuating the narrative with ill-fitting asides ("bet you never had that much trouble with Janet Reno, Bubba") that serve simply to annoy the reader and remind him that the asides are truly misplaced. If you want to write about yourself and Hollywood, go ahead, Joe. Just don't try to convince us that what you have to say is really pertinent to the political side, entertaining though it may be. Eszterhas himself is an absolutely dreadful reader. Doubtless he insisted on narrating his own book, but he does a poor job. He pauses in all the wrong places and his reading is somewhat wooden. The characters he introduces throughout the book, however, are an absolute delight. We are treated to John McCain, Ken Starr, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, and Bill himself paraded before us to tell their story. The actors who read these parts are wonderful, and truly sound (in voice and mannerisms) exactly like the character they mimic; the listener can easily believe that it IS Bill Clinton speaking. These monologues are always clever, often hysterical, and actually quite insightful, attempting to truly probe the psyches of the major political players. On the whole, these tapes are certainly worth a listen. They would have been greatly improved, however, if Eszterhas had been able to resist the temptation of tooting his own horn and instead focused even more on the politicos he parodies so well.
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Summary: Brilliant!!!
Review: Esterhas's Rhapsody is the Bonfire of the Vanities of the New Millenium! His pulse on Hollywood and Washington D.C. is simply astonishing! You must read this book if You really want the inside dope on Glittertown and D,C. politics!
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Summary: An intimate and comprehensive survey
Review: American Rhapsody is an intimate and comprehensive survey and history of contemporary American political culture, the personalities, conflicts, compromises, and events that held the popular (as well as political) attention of the American public over the past decade. Here are Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Al Gore, John McCain, Ken Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Warren Beatty, James Carville, Sharon Stone, Larry Flynt, Vernon Jordan, Linda Tripp, Matt Drudge, and a host of others who are viewed through the lens of fact, fiction and speculation. American Rhapsody is a superbly produced, unabridged, highly recommended, multi-cast audiobook featuring the talents of Ed Asner, David Dukes, Nina Foch, Melissa Gilbert, Arte Johnson, Bill Maher, Deborah Raffin, Susan Ruttan, Will Sasso, and Joe Eszterhas.
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Summary: Sordid Story from the Screenwriter of Sleaze
Review: The first novel from the screenwriter of "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls" is this lewd, lurid recounting of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Most of the book is a seemingly endless recounting of L'Affair Clinton, including every story, fact, rumor, lie, and God knows what else. Apparently Eszterhas basically stole most of this information from other people's books (Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, etc.). Very little of it is original. As I had feared, the author has nothing new to say about this saga. It's the same tabloid trash that you've heard a hundred times before. His only original contributions are composed of long imagined dialogues from Bill Clinton's penis, pornographic fantasies of Kenneth Starr, and similar failures at hilarity. "American Rhapsody" is not a boring book. It contains passages that will make you laugh, passages that will make you sick, and passages that will make you mad. This is inflammatory material and it's no great trick to make it provocative. It was, however, more of a trick to make it into a good book that Eszerthas could manage.
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Summary: Where has this author been hiding??
Review: Incredibly funny...but a dagger thru "President" Clintons heart...and his "willard"!! ! Haven't read a book as cynically funny since Catch-22. Tears rolled I laughed so hard, then found myself wondering if it could really be true? He borders on libel...and I understand a few people in the book have taken him to task over his insinuations. I passed this book up on several occasions because it was his (Joe Eszterhas') first; now I'm looking for his next one!! Who will be next?? He makes you wonder if what he says can really be true...or is it "Memorex".
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Summary: The Rat Pack Revisited
Review: The juxtaposition of a reading of this work of fiction? and a watching of The rat Pack on TCM was so-o-o-o unreal. You have to believe that this author has no further use for the Hollywood life that he's lived for the last forty years - or that he's got a huge bank account that will be emptied by the suits that must surely be plotting as we read. Cigars aside, there's no denying that the stream of consciousness style that smacks the reader in the eye is itself part of the allure of this book. Eszterhas has obviously been keeping notes all the time that he has been feted and feting Hollywood, but he saves the most definitive description of excess of power, not for the hapless Willard-walloper, but for his "creation" Sharon Stone. Had it not been for Eszterhas, the author tells us, Stone would still be a nobody. His description of her use of power is described in a little passage where she massages his back by lying astride him while he is face down on the floor in front of a producer with whom she is having a dispute - to show this dumb Australian producer that a woman masturbates - not with a magazine in a bath but this way, you fool ... The imagery is pretty powerful. Stone got her way. If you want to read an account of the glitz and glamour that Politics and Hollywood have in common, and if you want an alternative to the Republican view that Clinton is nothing but a sleaze-bag, then read this and you'll learn that, from a Democrats point of view, Clinton was nothing but a sleaze-bag. It's a read worth laughing through, but God only knows where Eszterhas will get his next job because it most certainly won't be in Hollywood or Washington.
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Summary: A Wade Through Eszterhas' Pretension
Review: 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.
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