After starting the 1990s by publishing "Bonfire Of The Vanities," Tom Wolfe wrote an essay decrying the state of fiction, how too many authors wrote convoluted, esoteric novels designed to win elitist approval and be ignored by the masses: Why oh why can't some journalist swoop in and write a novel that's really about life and people we know, like the great Frenchman Zola had?
Joe Klein seemed to notice this, if "Primary Colors," the book he had published under the moniker "Anonymous," is any indication. This was a book taken so directly from life that it became a parlor game figuring out who was who. Sure, Jack Stanton was really our then-president, and his wife Susan was Hillary Clinton, but who was that crazy Libby woman supposed to be? Or the shadowy narrator, Henry Burton?
The buzz gave "Primary Colors" most of its popularity, but one wonders just how interested people are in the book now that Bill Clinton is retired. Probably not much, which is a shame, because "Primary Colors" deserves better than being a '90s time capsule. (Anonymous, 1996)
If you haven't read "Primary Colors," one thing you need to know about it is it's not a note-by-note recitation of the Clinton road to power. It takes some similar turns, and some prescient ones (Monica was not news when this came out in 1996), and in general Jack and Susan Stanton are recognizably Clintonesque, but there are some liberties taken that make the real First Couple seem like the saintly Carters by comparison. The plot takes some jaw-dropping turns, in a sort of shameless "Desperate Housewives"-way that makes for fun reading.
The other salient thing about the book is that it is a clever satire not of one specific administration but the whole way politics is done in our time, the way passion and practicality come together and threaten to do each other harm..................
