BOOKS: ROAD SHOW

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On its face, a campaign diary about the 1996 presidential race sounds like something that should be marketed as a sleeping aid. But away from the staged events and stale analysis lay a hurly-burly American Oz of pig farmers, profane tiremakers and pundits with pitchforks. Covering the campaign for the New Republic, journalist Michael Lewis was smart enough to leave the pack and take that yellow brick road, turning in dispatches that were fresh, hilarious must-reads. The same is true for Trail Fever: Spin Doctors, Rented Strangers, Thumb Wrestlers, Toe Suckers, Grizzly Bears, and Other Creatures on the Road to the White House (Knopf; 299 pages; $25), a compilation of those reports.

A first-timer on the campaign trail, Lewis had two prescient impulses. The first was to chuck the tags of the marked-for-isolation press. Using his anonymity, he eavesdrops on Al D'Amato in the bathroom (guess who doesn't wash his hands) and rummages through Bill Clinton's trash. "What are you doing in here?" demands a Clintonite catching him pawing the garbage. "I'm supposed to meet George [Stephanopoulos] here for a drink," lies Lewis, successfully. The second trick was to stick with the losers. Lewis does due diligence by Clinton and Bob Dole, but spends most of his time listening to Morry Taylor's curses, Pat Buchanan's poetry and Alan Keyes' messianic rantings. The result is like a pointillist painting: up close, these events are a sea of bright dots; step back, and they are a captivation of the splendor, spirit and stupidity of our quadrennial madness.

Trail Fever is not without flaws. His magazine editor pared Lewis' endless Morry Taylor stories; his book editor should have too. At times Lewis also talks too much about himself, preening when he should be prying. Still, Trail Fever is a winner, proving, as the author writes, that "if you look long and hard enough at ugliness, you often find real beauty in it."

--By Tamala Edwards