A L S O+.T O D A Y

The big baby
By Joan Walsh
Forget "The Death of Outrage." If the right really wants to win the Culture War, it should pass out copies of "Monica's Story."

Monica's nightmare
By Charles Taylor
There's nothing balanced or objective about Andrew Morton's book. That's why it rings so true

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"The Handyman"
Reviewed by Ruth Henrich
In this L.A. novel, an unassuming handyman muddles his way to artistic genius while repairing the lives of lonely wives and other lost souls

T A B L E+T A L K

It's almost spring, and books about baseball are a hot topic in the Books section of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Journey to the center of a race
By Fetzer Mills, Jr.
Randall Kenan talks about the seven-year odyssey that led him from Martha's Vineyard to Alaska in search of the truth about black life in America
(02/24/99)

Writing on Air
By Geoff Edgers
David Halberstam talks about his new book, "Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made."
(02/18/99)

I know why the untuned Thunderbird pings
By Todd Lappin
Maya Angelou delivered the inspirational speech to the National Automobile Dealers Association. And guess what? It worked
(02/09/99)

Black but not like me
By Jill Nelson
A journalist slouches into a party celebrating the black elite -- whatever that is
(02/04/99)

"It's the Stupidity, Stupid"
By Harry Shearer
In this excerpt, Shearer wonders if we should hate the people who hate President Clinton
(01/29/99)

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STARRING MONICA LEWINSKY, AS HERSELF | PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4
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When Monica went to Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., Bleiler, now married, moved his family there and continued the affair. And so in the summer of 1995, when she graduated and moved to Washington, Marcia Lewis breathed a sigh of relief. "Like all mothers tend to do, I thought she would meet a nice young man," Lewis told Morton. But the man Monica hooked up with was not a suitable match by a long shot. In December of that year, when Monica told her close friend Catherine Allday Davis about her intrigue with the president, Davis was "horrified" -- again, not because Monica was having an affair that could have destructive consequences for a family and for a nation, but because "this wasn't the relationship she needed or wanted at that stage in her life. She needed someone's undivided attention. She ended up with the world's most unavailable man." And yet for an unavailable man, Clinton gave his favorite intern an awful lot of presidential face-time, at least in the beginning. Morton fleshes out the relationship, its romance, its playfulness and, especially, its mutuality, emphasizing Clinton's aggressive, enthusiastic role in starting the affair.

Whatever else Monica Lewinsky may fudge (and one significant lie has already been discovered: It is not true, as the book states, that the boyfriend who got her pregnant in the fall of 1996 backed out of paying for her abortion), the fact that Clinton was the one who instigated their assignations, that he was calling her and not the other way around, is indisputable. He learned her phone numbers by heart in record time and dropped by her office so often that people began to talk. He confided that the first time their eyes locked on the White House lawn, when he gave her what she calls "the full Bill Clinton," he knew that they would kiss. And when they did kiss for the first time, she raves, it was "soft, deep, romantic." He made her feel "incredibly special ... just holding me, taking in my worth and my energy as a woman and a human being." Monica's mother and aunt knew a crush was afoot but thought that "these brief flirtations with the President were good for her ego." They decided that anything that distracted her from Bleiler couldn't be all bad, and they had no idea how far the affair had already gone.

Early in 1996, the president started to feel guilty and tried to back out of the relationship, but soon enough he started calling Monica again for conversation, consolation and phone sex. It was a pattern that Monica, then 22, was already used to with Bleiler, whom the president loyally dissed as a "jerk." Married men made her feel secure, she explained to Morton. "They feel guilty, say they want to stop it and then succumb to temptation anyway. So they always come back." If the book is to be believed, their relationship endured for almost two years, with less and less physical contact and more and more emotional outbursts from Monica, largely provoked by the manipulations of her false friend, Linda Tripp. Monica barraged Betty Currie with notes and gifts when the president avoided her, becoming emotionally entrapped by a man who gave her just enough attention to give her hope. "People have made it seem so demeaning for me, but it wasn't -- it was exciting, and the irony is that I had the first orgasm of the relationship," Monica insists. Morton makes no attempt to hide the fact that once the president's ardor cooled she became a pest. But as the last section of the book, a chilling portrait of a family under siege, reveals, there was only one stalker in this strange, destructive relationship: Kenneth Starr.

N E X T+P A G E+| Why so many people will go on disliking Monica