MindHunterINFJ
Scribbled:
BOOK REVIEW OF CHILDHOOD'S REND: MEMORIES OF THE DOG STAR, By Jack Clifford. Copyright (c) 2006. All Rights Reserved.
"Compelling and prescient, the book is a riveting, prodigious tour de force of fact and fiction that defies pigeon-holing. Writing as if in a parallel universe, author Jack Clifford vividly and sensitively recalls a poignant and sometimes hilarious montage of unforgettable ragtag "outcasts" and "misfits" from his impoverished childhood in the rural community of Bug Tussle, Arkansa.
Yet, the "Bug Tussle" stories are only one aspect of the book. For Bill Clinton afficionadas (and enemies alike) here is a memoir written by the press/media-crowned "arch-enemy" and "nemesis" of the 42nd president, Clinton's fellow Oxford scholar whom Hillary Clinton envisioned at the center of what she called "the vast right-wing conspiracy".
For the first time, Clifford makes public three previously private letters, two to Bill and one to Hillary, that he Fed-Exed to the White House in 1994. While the letters explicitly reject a prophetic label, they are in retrospect prophetic indeed in that they predict impeachment in the absence of what Clifford calls a "fundamental change" by the 42nd president.
But was Clifford the center of some vast conspiracy dedicated to bringing down Bill Clinton? You may very well have a different perspective after reading Jack Clifford's riveting book with its perplexingly mysterious and amusingly satirical Da Vinci Code twist about the "endtimes" and "666" and those extremists, on both the right and the left, who fearfully tremble at the devil under every demonized Bush (or Clinton). As Clifford, however, observes, 'Each of us possesses devils, do we not, even if they do not possess us?'
Sensitively and thoughtfully, Clifford raises and engages such universal themes as home, faith and doubt, belief and unbelief, despair and hope, forgiveness, grace, time and eternity, and many more.
In short, this is a "must read" for those who want to know more about Jack Clifford, now only an insignificant and forgotten footnote in Bill Clinton's history.
In this quixotic memoir, Clifford presents his multi-dimensional Self in what he calls "all my unadorned shame and glory" through his recounting of a religiously hypocritical community's treatment of its "outcasts".
Throughout the book, Clifford comes across as an intense, sincere, idealistic, transparent, and complexedly multi-faceted person who--like his book---is not easily understood or categorized."
Will Cample, Editor and Book Critic, Los Angels Times.
