Books: This Golden Boy's Life

David Letterman used to do a segment on his show called "Brush with Greatness," in which an audience member recalled a fleeting encounter with a famous person--say, bumping into Joan Rivers on an elevator. American Son (Henry Holt & Co.; 294 pages), the much anticipated memoir of John F. Kennedy Jr., by Richard Blow, feels a little like an extended literary version of this, as Blow unearths every last encounter with his subject, as if to say, I knew him; I really, really did.

Blow, the former executive editor of Kennedy's magazine, George, made headlines even before the book was written: his original publisher canceled Blow's contract on the grounds that he had signed a confidentiality agreement with Kennedy. In response to criticism, Blow protested that his book was an appreciation, not a tell-all, and indeed, American Son is so determined to avoid being a cheesy tell-all that it doesn't tell much of anything. Blow's writing is clear and unpretentious, and the book is readable if slight--which may have something to do with its subject, a graceful young man still in search of himself.

The most interesting stuff is the evidence of Kennedy's ambivalence about becoming a member of the media he so deeply mistrusted. Blow describes how Kennedy agonized before conducting his monthly interviews and thoroughly despised negative stories about public figures--particularly if they shared his surname. According to Blow, Kennedy was obsessed with tabloid stories about himself but laughed off the ones that were wildly off base. He was sympathetic to a President--Bill Clinton--who he felt was being lambasted for his private life, and unsympathetic to Clinton's wife, who he believed was exploiting her perch as First Lady to run for office. All in all, this doesn't feel like a dishonest book (as some will charge) so much as it feels like an ever-so-carefully calculated one. --By Richard Stengel