The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Book Review | 'My Life': Confessions of a Policy Wonk. Consider this excerpt from a NY Times reviewer of Clinton's new book: When asked to review this big puffy plum cake of an autobiography, I at once agreed, expecting to have the book the next day. After all, we're an A.S.A.P., next-day America now - pretty much everything desirable in the world of goods can be had overnight. But not, as it turned out, Bill Clinton's book. He wasn't finished. He was writing it in longhand. He's still sending in pages to his publisher, I was told. I thought this "art form" died out just like milking a cow to get a glass of milk, or better yet, like building a car pre-Henry Ford. Well, I guess us kids of the digital age will never really understand. I have to say though, a person who writes in shorthand an entire novel in that amount of time, definitely has the clarity of thought to put down in paper exactly what s/he's thinking without the need to have it hacked up in a word processor. This skill is most definitely a skill I wish I had -- with or without a computer.
Posted by johnvu at June 23, 2004 10:58 PM