I bit. I read. I succumbed.

You recall that the novel was a scandal d’estime of the 1996 literary season. Partly because it was such an unflinching portrayal of how pols really do it, the lies they tell others, and the lies they tell themselves. Partly because it was a very thinly disguised roman à clef (!), with skillfully drawn, brutally honest portraits of not just Bill and Hillary, but various members of the entourage as well.

Adding a frisson (why when scandal becomes the topic do all these French words suddenly start tumbling out?) of delight was the fact that the book was published anonymously. There it was in big letters on the cover: "by Anonymous." The funny thing was, for the longest time, no one could figure out who "anonymous" was. The Clintons couldn’t, the media couldn’t. Clearly it was a person who had inside knowledge of campaigns generally and of the 1992 Clinton campaign specifically. Random House got lots of mileage out of the secrecy surrounding the editing and publishing of the book.

Soon various critics and pundits had drawn up short lists of possible authors. But still, nobody cracked it. The field narrowed and narrowed and finally Joe Klein, writer for New York Magazine and for Newsweek, was identified as the author, or, depending on your viewpoint, the culprit.

Then came the movie (Mike Nichols directed a script by Elaine May), with John Travolta way over his head trying to do Bill Clinton.