THE PAT BOONE FAN CLUB - Sue William Silverman

"The Pat Boone Fan Club...My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew" is more an Anglo-Saxon "confessional" than the typical humorous Jewish-neurotic rant you'd get in short stories or memoirs from Philip Roth or Woody Allen. It does have amusing moments, but most of it touch on serious, and heartfelt issues involving the search for identity and a place to call home (she's had a few husbands and lived in several cities).

Only a few chapters are about the man who sang "white bread" pop hits in the 50's and early 60's. Most of this collection of essays (some of them award winners and previously published in literary magazines) are about Jewish jitters if not outright angst. This includes the many times Sue has been a stranger in a strange part of America. However, only a Jew is going to write an entire essay pretty much about wanting a colonoscopy to find an answer to a condition that might be colitis, or might not. That it isn't gut-funny as a stand-up whiner like Richard Lewis might've made it, is just Silverman's conversational style and sensibility. She knows anecdotes about "the human comedy" aren't all laugh out loud hilarious. So why force it on every page? Instead, her book sometimes seems like a transcript you overheard from someone on a cell phone. It gets more and more fascinating even if you don't know the person.

No doubt, a lot of readers here already know Sue from her previous books so reading an old friend's diary, or a lament about a hospital stay, would be particularly engrossing. They know all about her painful childhood via "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You," and another memoir, "Love Sick," focusing on sexual addiction. The latter became a Lifetime made-for-TV movie.

The very serious recurring theme of this collection, is shaking off the agony of guilt and inferiority. It's difficult not to feel confusion, shame and insecurity when antisemitic remarks slip from the mouth of a trusted loved one. Sue hasn't forgotten the time her first husband complained about a project and said, "I won't let him Jew me down." She also won't forget her father, the guy who destroyed her innocence and drove her to wish Pat Boone would adopt her: "I ask you. Would you want to be Jewish if your Jewish father is a bad man? A bad, bad man?"

But just when you hope for a touch of Jewish ironic humor, or a gentle smile, she does toss in a one-liner: "I know I am Jewish…or as Jewish as a gefilte fish is Jewish."

Probably the most universal chapters of the book refer to her relationship with Pat Boone. At first these "fan notes" involve the restless yearning and anxious fears about actually meeting him. Most of us have had a stage door experience like that. Add to this, the literal counter-culture of being drawn to an exact opposite...an All-American Christian with no accent and perfect hair and a pretty darn perfect face and body, too. In alternating chapters, we get more of the main story...her subsequent encounters with Pat Boone.

Mr. Boone did not, however, supply an endorsement for the back cover, which may just be modesty on his part. He comes off well, and Silverman doesn't sugar coat any realities here, including how she rekindled her fan-appreciation at a time when the aging star was playing minor places in front of sometimes listless older crowds.

While Jewish bookstores are shrinking in number, and would be the likely place to promote a book like this, Sue told me she felt there was a wider audience for her book: "This is really in many ways an American story, about assimilation, a search for identity…it's not just for Jewish audiences. I have friends who grew up Catholic, who didn't want to be Catholic…" so some might easily read the Pat Boone segments and substitute most any star of any religion or color. (My brief talk with Sue was in interview mode. I don't know her; the "Ronald Smith" on page 121 is not me!)

In "Dixie Flyer," Randy Newman sang about what it was like to be part of a family of Jews trying to live in the South: "Christ, they wanted to be Gentiles, too. Who wouldn't down there, wouldn't you? An American Christian! God Damn!" The Jew who celebrates Christmas and finds comfort in the hymns, the Gentile who admires a smart Jewish friend and comes to a Seder...the little white kid who shyly wants the 7 foot black basketball player's autograph...the Middle Eastern girl with dreams of going to Paris and being like Gigi...Sue William Silverman writes for them all, as well as herself in this book. And maybe someday Pat Boone might cover Randy Newman's song. He just hasn't done it yet.

Sociopath Clark Rockefeller: BLOOD WILL OUT

In bookstores, probably alongside the book about the death of Michael Rockefeller, is "Blood Will Out," the new book about the horrifying fake "Clark Rockefeller." Author Walter Kirn knew him for a decade...and was swept up in the conman/murderer's sociopathic charm and cunning.

Kirn, who has written several well-regarded books, was, at the time of the meeting, returning from London for magazine work: "I flew back to America and landed a job at Vanity Fair writing punning headlines for fluffy stories..."

It's tempting to say that anyone writing for Vanity Fair deserves to get slammed down to earthy reality, but this confessional tome spares nobody, including the author and his gullibility. The more ridiculous Clark Rockefeller's brags, the more fascinating he became for Walter Kirn: "...he told me that he lived next door to Tony Bennett, whom he said he could hear rehearsing through the walls at night. He told me that he had degrees from harard and Yale…that he could sing the words to any song that I might name…from "Gilligan's Island" (to) a Cole Porter lyric. He told me that he'd learned from "sourcess" that Prince Charles and the Queen had murdered Diana…"

The story soon becomes a gripping account of a friend suspected of being a fiend, which many reviewers have likened to something out of Patricia ("Strangers on a Train") Highsmith, or a dark volume of James Ellroy.

In fact, Ellroy is one of Kirn's biggest supporters, and you'll agree with him: "“This stunning book dissects psychopathy, the perverse manners of the Internet generation, art, money, and the very nature of belief. At its core, it brilliantly portrays one man's journey through fraudulence to a point of stern resolve. It's tabloid tell-all journalism and Old Testament rebuke. It is of a piece with Roethke: it tells us that the abyss is just a step down the stair.”

Jimmy Carter On Women's Rights - Charlie Rose says NO

On March 25th, Charlie Rose supposedly had Jimmy Carter on to talk about Carter's new book, "A Call to Action." Instead, Rose quizzed Carter on which presidents sought his advice while in office, and which ones he didn't get along with. The gossipy tone continued even when Carter softly, politely mentioned he wanted to "talk about women," glancing at the copy of his book in front of Mr. Rose.

Instead, Rose drove the conversation all over the globe, from the 40 years of turbulence in Israel to the dictatorships in South America to Africa and, even after Carter explained he was no expert on the subject, the current conflict in Ukraine. After some 20 minutes, Carter again mentioned that he had a new book about women...and Rose ignored him, changing the subject yet again.

The strangest thing about all of this, is that Carter's previous appearance on a talk show was with David Letterman...who allowed and encouraged Carter to give some appalling statistics on the rate of female circumcision in Egypt, and other points that were in his book. David Letterman is more of a feminist than Charlie Rose? Over 50 percent of the country is female, and Rose is more concerned over whether Obama asks Carter for advice now and then?

"A Call to Action" is an important book, moreso because of who has written it...an ex-president, not Rachel Maddow or some other provocateur. Carter and his wife Rosalyn took the bold step of leaving the Southern Baptist Convention in 2009 over women's rights issues and denials, and he's spent many years researching the status of women around the world...uncovering backward, ignorant and downright vicious abuses everywhere. Genocide of baby girls, genital mutilation, the apathy to rape victims (including date rape and abuses in our own military system)...Mr. Carter covers it all, including of course the hot-button issues of abortion, contraception and "a woman's right." He certainly doesn't spare religious groups who perpetrate atrocities in the name of God.

Jimmy Carter, mild mannered as he is, has become a figure of some controversy over the years, due to his seeming support of some cruel, antisemitic and anti-American regimes around the world (he defends this as trying to work with these people to change their minds). It's possible that some are viewing this latest book as just another topic for a man who seems to knock off a book every other year, in between his world travels. This one doesn't have Carter smiling on the cover. The cover is to the point...nothing but a few choice words. "A Call to Action" is exactly that. David Letterman understood this, and Charlie Rose apparently didn't.