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THERE’S AN OLD saying that the job of a critic is to shoot the wounded. Thanks to the speeded-up news cycle that defines an event such as the publication of My Life, I feel as though my job in this case is to bury the dead. Kakutani’s review appeared two days before the book was even released. That night, Clinton was emoting with Dan Rather on CBS’s 60 Minutes, earnestly telling the world that he’d dallied with Lewinsky because "he could," and demonstrating the arm-lock maneuver that prevented Yasser Arafat from kissing him — and, thus, from kissing Yitzhak Rabin — at that miraculous White House ceremony in 1993. McMurtry’s love letter went online the day after the book appeared in bookstores. And by the end of the week, Clinton had talked with Oprah, Larry King, Katie, and anyone else who mattered.

The whole thing had the feel of a pseudo-event that had come and gone before I’d had a chance to do much more than read the cover blurbs. (Indeed, Slate’s Jack Shafer discovered that not everyone who reviewed My Life actually bothered to, well, read it.) But that’s the way it is in publishing these days, especially with high-profile nonfiction books such as Clinton’s. We’re living at an unusual moment, a time when political books — by authors as diverse as comedian Al Franken, filmmaker Michael Moore, counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke, and investigative reporter Bob Woodward — are filling a gap created by the news media. In a profile of celebrity-book editor Alice Mayhew that appeared in the June 27 New York Times Book Review, Laura Secor observed that such books "offer information not obtainable by reporters pressed to publish every day, who have to worry about maintaining relationships with sensitive sources."

At the same time, though, such works could be called "insta-books" — quickie volumes long on plot and revelations, but shockingly short on analysis or any sort of broader context. Even though some of these books have sold well for a remarkably long time, they are marketed as though they had the shelf life of orange juice. My Life most definitely falls into the category of an insta-book. Though there may not be any such thing as a classic presidential memoir (Ulysses Grant’s is often cited, but it’s about the Civil War, not his presidency), Clinton’s is likely to become regarded as more dispensable than most.

Clinton has a well-deserved reputation for — to paraphrase Mark Twain — regarding the truth as such a valuable possession that he must be economical in its use. My Life is worthwhile only to the extent that it is true, and on that score, it is impossible to say. Conservative critic Mark Steyn, writing in the Wall Street Journal, observes that Clinton repeats the story about Hillary Clinton’s having been named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, even though that tale had been exposed as almost certainly untrue some years ago. (Hillary Rodham was born in 1947; Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953.) In itself, that’s no big deal. Nor is it of much concern that Clinton says so little about his rich and varied sex life. He essentially admits that, yes, he’s had one, and I noted with amusement as I slogged through the book that he seems to have remembered the name of every attractive woman he’s ever met.

But if Clinton is willing to lie about little things, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t lie about larger things as well. For instance, Clinton is well known for being averse to personal confrontation. Yet on several occasions, he claims to have engaged in some remarkably tough talk with unsavory characters. Naturally, there are no third-party witnesses. For instance, when Clinton was still a student at Georgetown University and working for then-senator William Fulbright, he claims to have attended a rally held by "Justice Jim" Johnson, a racist Arkansas politico who later became one of Clinton’s leading tormenters in the Whitewater affair. "I patiently waited my turn," Clinton writes. "When he shook my hand, I told him he made me ashamed to be from Arkansas. I think my earnestness amused him. He just smiled, invited me to write him about my feelings, and moved on to the next handshake."

Some of Clinton’s other tales struck me as equally dubious. He writes that during his brief stint as a law professor at the University of Arkansas, a job he held while running for Congress, he lost an exam handed in by one of his students. That student had worked for the very Republican congressman whom Clinton was trying to unseat. "I don’t think she ever forgave me for losing the exam or for running against her old boss," Clinton says. "I sure thought about it when, more than twenty years later, that former student, federal judge Susan Webber Wright, became the presiding judge in the Paula Jones case. Susan Webber Wright was plenty smart, and maybe I should have just given her an A." Well, haw, haw. And, of course, Clinton would never suggest that Wright sought revenge all those years later. It was just one of those amazing coincidences, you know?

But that’s mild compared to the whipping Clinton administers to his former aide George Stephanopoulos. After Stephanopoulos left the White House, he wrote a book, All Too Human, that was sharply critical of Clinton. By Clinton’s telling, Stephanopoulos practically suffered a nervous breakdown before the 1992 New Hampshire primary, when Clinton was almost driven out of the race over revelations about his affair with Gennifer Flowers and his slippery maneuvering to avoid being drafted. "George was curled up on the floor, practically in tears. He asked if it wasn’t time to think about withdrawing," Clinton writes, adding a few sentences later: "I asked, ‘George, do you still think I’d be a good President?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Then get up and go back to work. If the voters want to withdraw me, they’ll do it on election day. I’m going to let them decide.’"

This is brutal stuff. Whether true, false, or just plain exaggerated, Clinton obviously put it in there for the sole purpose of exacting some vengeance. Later, Clinton writes about Stephanopoulos’s decision to leave the White House: "Until I read his memoir, I had no idea how difficult the pressure-packed years had been for him, or how hard he had been on himself, and me. George was going on to a career in teaching and television, where I hoped he would be happier."

Obviously the proper way to read that passage is to place the emphasis on "and me."