Oh, brother. The travails of Bill Clinton, author. From the latest Publisher’s Lunch newsletter:
Today’s wave of Bill Clinton stories comes by way of previews of a June Vanity Fair interview. The poor thing says, “I am literally hardly sleeping. I am working around the clock. I am killing myself because I want (my memoirs) done. … Hard enough to live my life the first time. The second time has really been tough.”
A classic NY Post version says, “The publisher of Bill Clinton’s forthcoming memoir is ‘despairing’ that the ex-president hasn’t churned out enough pages – and that the book is too full of self-justification and blaming of others, a new report claims.” They quote the VF piece as saying that the “Prose is fine; there’s just not enough of it. And what has been composed, says an editor who’s been briefed on the manuscript, veers too often into trademark blame and self-justification.”
They say the interview indicates, “Only within recent weeks did he begin jotting down memories of 1998, when he faced impeachment over of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.” Editor Robert Gottlieb is said to have been sleeping over in Chappaqua to help get the book finished.
Man, it’s tough being a writer…