Hard-core Clinton obsessives must already have heard all this stuff, since Eszterhas apparently did no reporting (and certainly no footnoting); like everybody else, he seems to have gotten his facts and gossip from TV, books, magazines and the Web. What he brings to the party is his creative je ne sais quoi: Eszterhas, after all, is no mere sleaze, but the guy who wrote the screenplays for “Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct.” “American Rhapsody” throws in Hollywood scuttlebutt, pages of once fresh jokes and fantasy chapters, purportedly narrated by Kenneth Starr, Monica Lewinsky and so forth, which Eszterhas helpfully puts in boldface type (and which he might as well have headed skip me). He writes the final chapter in the voice of “Willard,” the president’s penis. David G. smelled hype. Why else would they keep this no-news book under wraps? And how could he write about it without being complicit?

Well, we can answer his first question: “American Rhapsody” has benefited from the old keep-’em-guessing ploy. It worked with Harry Potter; Christopher Andersen’s newly published “The Day John Died” (now it can be told: it’s about JFK Jr.’s plane crash) was also “under embargo” before it appeared. One publisher even made a reviewer (David G. again, poor devil) sign a confidentiality agreement before showing him a memoir by J. D. Salinger’s daughter, which turned out to have crucial information about her old boyfriends. But “American Rhapsody” should be the most controversial of the lot, even though Eszterhas won’t get much argument about his overarching point: that Bill Clinton’s private life is sordid. It’s a gonzo-journalistic history—Eszterhas, remember, started out writing for Rolling Stone—of what he calls the “cultural shadow war that resulted in the figurative assassination of a president,” with everybody except James Carville—surprise, surprise—looking cheesy, and scurrilously catchy epithets for each of the players. Linda Tripp is the Ratwoman, Lucianne Goldberg is the Bag Lady of Sleaze, Matt Drudge is the Scavenger From Cyberspace, Warren Beatty is the Man With the Golden Willard and Vernon Jordan the Ace of Spades. Oh, no offense about that last thing: Eszterhas has a whole chapter about how he loved black culture in the ’60s.

Eszterhas, an admitted user of coke and women before his happy marriage, says he identifies with “the first rock and roll president of the United States.” As he writes in the Author’s Note, “I understood the mad priapic obsession that had always fuel-driven his life… because it had driven mine until I met Naomi.” So you’d think he’d offer some compassion, or at least some insight. True, Willard reminisces about young Clinton’s lonely narcissism: “When his parents were fighting… I was the one who sat with him… I was his friend when he had no others.” But it’s too little, too late, and probably tongue-in-cheek anyway. Mostly, Eszterhas is as contemptuous as any of Clinton’s conservative enemies, and eventually the fun, gonzo invective morphs into far righteousness: “We were a tired people, tired of pornographic imagery in the evening news, tired of feeling we were mired in filth.”

This isn’t to say that Eszterhas is necessarily wrong about Clinton. The stuff in the Starr Report—like the chief executive masturbating into a sink—is so sad and grotesque we’re already managing to forget we ever heard it, and if Juanita Broaddrick’s allegation that Clinton raped her in 1978 is true (as Eszterhas clearly believes), it should make our flesh creep to look at him. And maybe the Clintons’ marriage is only “a cynical deal,” though you’d think a born-again family man like Eszterhas might discern some human complexity there. But it’s more entertaining for him just to have at them. Eszterhas does a good job of demolishing exculpatory psychiatric cant: “A modern president, Bill Clinton was allegedly the victim of incest, pedophilia, child abuse, erotomania, sexual addiction, gambling addiction, wife beating, husband beating, grandfather beating, low self-esteem, jealousy, and poverty.” Point taken. Still, if it’s silly to call Clinton a victim, what is he? A sinner? We’ve heard that theory before, though not from the sort of people whose books get excerpted by Tina Brown in Talk.

Which brings us back, finally, to David G.’s other question: how to write about this book without being complicit in the hype? You can’t, we told him. Everybody’s going to write about “American Rhapsody” for a few days because they think everybody’s going to write about “American Rhapsody” for a few days. A year from now everybody will get it mixed up with “American Beauty.” Or “American Psycho.” Or “American Gigolo.” So what did he do? Wrote about “American Rhapsody.” He put the scabrous stuff up in the first paragraph the way you have to, trashed the book 10 ways from Sunday and everybody went home happy.