Detailed item info | Synopsis | This thinly-disguised roman a clef about a presidential campaign that is uncannily like the 1992 Clinton campaign.The story involves Governor Jack Stanton, a deft and ambitious politician, and his equally ambitious wife, Susan, who is aware of her husband's indiscretions but stands by him despite it all.
| | Size | | Length: | 366 pages | | Height: | 10.0 in. | | Width: | 6.5 in. | | Thickness: | 1.5 in. | | Weight: | 24.0 oz. |
| | Publisher's Note | Young Henry Burton, a former congressional aide of mixed race and the grandson of a legendary civil rights leaders, is going through a precocious midlife crisis. Tired of the back scratching and back stabbing and back watching of legislative politics, he's wondering what to do next with his Beltway experience and abilities when Jack Stanton, the governor of a small southern state who has set his sights on the presidency, half shanghais him into a campaign staff job. What follows for Henry and the reader is an education in modern American electoral politics that in dramatic power, humor, psychological acuity, and insider knowledge beggars a hundred textbooks and a thousands lectures.
Henry hopes against hope that he has at last found a leader he can believe in. He then watches in admiration and dismay as, in his quest for votes, Governor Stanton combines calculation and sincerity, dodges a draft controversy bullet, gorges on barbecue and poaches food off others' plates, seduces the occasional bystander, and confronts the resulting sex scandals. Henry's attempts to manage this impulsive pol a prodigy of altruism and appetite force him to confront his own ambivalence about political ethics, racial identity, and love.
PRIMARY COLORS has its rich rewards as a savvy insider's look at life on the stump. But it travels far beyond mere gossip and expose and discovers a convincing world of its own, peopled by smart cookies, nutcases, and wheeler dealers, whose public and private lives illuminate each other sometimes by casting dark shadows. This story spans the novelistic spectrum from bedroom farce to high moral drama, and it paints a picture of the political state of the nation so vivid and authentic that one finds in it the deepest kind of truth the kind of truth that only fiction can tell.
| | Industry reviews | "It becomes clear very quickly that 'Primary Colors', the rollicking new satire by the coy, media-savvy author Anonymous, is loosely modeled on Robert Penn Warren's classic 'All the King's Men'. Once again, we are given the tale of a Southern politician's rise to power, narrated by one of his young disciples. Once again, we are asked to contemplate the moral compromises made in the world of politics. Anonymous, however, is no Robert Penn Warren. And Anonymous's Southern pol, Jack Stanton, is no Willie Stark; he's a cartoon version of Bill Clinton. And therein lies both the fascination and disappointment of this novel. To be sure, 'Primary Colors' gives the reader an entertaining, inside and often very funny look at the daily workings of a political campaign...But for all its humor and keenly observed descriptions, the novel appeals to our gossip radar rather than our literary instincts."
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani (01/19/1996)
"There must have been a ghost in the campaign, because it captures the campaign environment, even though it makes up a lot about the Clinton-like characters."
U.S. News & World Report - George Stephanopoulos (01/22/1996)
"..an odd book. But maybe the oddest thing about it is how good it is. In spite of its sins it is far and away the best thing I have read about the 1992 campaign; it breaks all the rules and lives to tell about it. The author's portrait of Mr. Clinton is astonishingly powerful...there is a wonderful honesty about it, a refusal to give in to the conventional interpretation of people and events that cripples so much that is written about politics."
New York Times Book Review - Michael Lewis (01/28/1996)
"'Primary Colors' is a roman a clef, and how...every memorable character from the real-life melodrama of '92 marches across the page, barely disguised. Most novels couldn't rise above this kind of gimmickry, and 'Primary Colors', good as it is, doesn't either, not quite. It does have formidable strengths. The plot accelerates at an infectious pace. It shifts moods without straining. The dialogue throws sparks...not much happens here that isn't believable. And that's the problem. Anyone with a little political knowledge will enjoy 'Primary Colors', but not as a novel...[It] is amazingly artful slander. It gracefully slides the reader from accepted fact to monstrous fiction, without ever providing clues as to which is which."
Wall Street Journal - Andrew Ferguson (01/26/1996)
"...it is far too fine a piece of writing to have been written by a politico...It's a mark of the author's skill that, for all Governor Stanton's sleaziness, he emerges as a man so complex as to be not entirely unsympathetic...'Primary Colors' is rewarding at every level: the language...the names...the characters...and the plot...At any rate, congratulations, Anonymous, whoever you are. In the months ahead, a lot of people will be denying they're you while wishing they were."
New Yorker - Christopher Buckley (01/29/1996)
"...'Primary Colors' is a hugely ambitious work, which demands to be read on its own merits...The anonymous author has fulfilled a mission, making the best possible argument for the Clinton presidency. The novel is a statement of loyalty to a charming rogue with the ruthless skills required to win, but justified by a heart big enough to make the victory worthwhile."
Washington Post Book World - Martin Walker (01/28/1996)
"A marvelously down-and-dirty chronicle of a presidential campaign that will make your eyes water, and some more famous eyes burn, in recognition...this is a delicious gift for your friends who still believe that politics and politicians have the answers."
Kakutani
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