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VIEW FROM THE EAST WING: A Memoir,<\/strong> by Jill Biden<\/p>\n So trim, toned and beatific that it seems to have emerged from her favorite morning SoulCycle class, Jill Biden\u2019s second memoir, \u201cView From The East Wing,\u201d rests on simple details.<\/p>\n The cotton balls used to simulate snow at the White House\u2019s 2022 holiday celebration. The chicken parm and pasta that the Bidens eat on special occasions. The family tabby, Willow, finding sunbeams at the Rehoboth Beach dwelling that Joe refused to buy until, \u201cFinally<\/em>\u201d \u2014 his wife lapsing into italics with the affectionate exasperation familiar to anyone in a longtime domestic partnership \u2014 he \u201chad looked <\/em>at every house on the market.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n The general vibe is more popovers in Woman\u2019s Day than popping off in Politico.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Along with being a former first and second lady of the United States, Biden is a longtime English professor who casually uses the correct group noun for starlings (\u201cmurmuration\u201d). She quotes many writers here \u2014 Albert Camus, Robert Frost, Nikki Giovanni, James Salter \u2014 but the author the book recalled most vividly to me, in its careful catalog of small details, was William Carlos Williams<\/a>, who in his epic poem \u201cPaterson\u201d wrote \u201cno ideas but in things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This tracks, because Biden acknowledges the help of Ada Calhoun, the author of \u201cAlso a Poet<\/a>,\u201d about Frank O\u2019Hara<\/a>.<\/p>\n Indeed, Biden\u2019s description of being hustled for security reasons through the service entrance to hotels made my O\u2019Hara stand on end, so cleanly could it be broken into stanzas, if you\u2019ll forgive the liberty: \u201cright by garbage cans\/ reeking of rotting room service leftovers\/mixed with discarded mini shampoos\/ \u2014 an odor so sour and pungent\/that it almost knocks you down.\u201d<\/p>\n The book\u2019s title is also pungent, and pointed: the East Wing of the White House, which contained the first lady\u2019s office, a visitor center and several other historical chambers, was demolished<\/a> last year by her husband\u2019s successor, Donald J. Trump, to make way for a ballroom.<\/p>\n \u201cThe innards of the East Wing were spread out for everyone to see,\u201d Biden recalls mournfully of watching the wrecking ball, \u201clike a rare and precious animal that had been hunted down and killed.\u201d<\/p>\n A wish to restore the historical record, more than settle any score, appears to be what\u2019s rattling her keyboard, though she does remind us that Trump mined a rare photo<\/a> of her in conversation with him to advertise his cologne, Fight! Fight! Fight! (\u201cReally?\u201d) and notes that Melania Trump refused her invitation to a transitional tea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She marvels at the perks of the office, the masses of flowers, attentive staff and fine art, such as \u201cMorning on the Seine, Good Weather,\u201d the oil painting that Angela Merkel said Trump called \u201cmy Monet.\u201d (\u201cOur Monet,\u201d Biden corrects, meaning the American people\u2019s.)<\/p>\n But she also notes the office\u2019s absurdities, like having to relinquish a brooch made out of bomb shrapnel from Ukraine after the State Department appraised it at $14,063 \u2014 well above the foreign gift limit, then $480.<\/p>\n Of course \u201cView From the East Wing,\u201d leaking like a geyser into The New York Post<\/a> but officially coming out next Tuesday, must address the biggest elephants in the room, such as the disastrous debate performance that led to Joe Biden\u2019s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, for which his wife has no explanation but that he was over-coached or tired.<\/p>\n \u201cI really f*cked up, didn\u2019t I?\u201d she writes he whispered to her coming off the stage.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, you did.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, she thought he might be having a stroke. \u201cIt felt like we were watching an A.I. hologram of the man we knew, and the hologram was glitching,\u201d she writes. \u201cHas he been drugged? Oh God \u2014 will people assume this is how he is all the time?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Two weeks before the debate, Hunter, the Bidens\u2019 younger son, whose louche binges and loose ways with a laptop did their campaign no favors, was found guilty<\/a> on three felony gun counts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At the trial, as relatives sobbed, a bewildered and brokenhearted Jill \u201cconcentrated on not showing any emotion at all,\u201d she writes in a day-by-day account, suggesting something fishy about the ex-girlfriend who photographed Hunter with drugs \u201calmost as if she were filming a nature documentary.\u201d Further tax convictions would follow; President Biden pardoned him before leaving office.<\/p>\n \u201cTime is a storm in which we are all lost,\u201d Williams wrote. \u201cOnly inside the convolutions of the storm itself shall we find our directions.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bidens have been buffeted by stronger winds than most. They married after his first wife, Neilia, and their daughter Naomi died in a car accident in 1972. Beau Biden, the couple\u2019s oldest son, succumbed to a malignant brain tumor at 46 in 2015<\/a>, which both Joe and Jill wrote about tenderly in previous memoirs. This one is more like blinking in a backyard after a twister or two has torn through.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing about grief is that it veils one\u2019s face,\u201d Biden writes, of visiting war zones. \u201cIt\u2019s like a haze has descended. The tears of mothers stay permanently on the edges of their eyes, as if they can hardly contain their sadness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Barely six months after President Biden\u2019s anointed successor, Kamala Harris, lost the 2024 election \u2014 Jill is measured but warm about her \u2014 he was diagnosed with cancer<\/a>: prostate, Stage 4, metastasized to the bones.<\/p>\n
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