'THE CLINDEX': WE LOOKED. YOU'RE NOT IN IT.

Ever been in a big-city bookstore and seen patrons leafing through nonfiction books from the back? These are the politicians, government officials, journalists and other graspers looking out for No. 1--in the index. You see our quiet, self-important smiles if we find our names and the look of confusion--"There must be some mistake"--if we do not. In his recent campaign book, "One-Car Caravan," journalist Walter Shapiro decided to tweak people like me by not publishing an index at all. It served us right. But old habits die hard. The hottest index right now is, of course, the "Clindex," the list of names at the back of "My Life," by Bill Clinton. But beware: plenty of names in the book aren't in the index. In a 957-page tome, which few in Washington will read word-for-word, that's almost as bad as not being mentioned at all. When I first realized that I was missing from the index but present by name (OK, you forced it out of me--page 619), I thought it was a simple omission. But then I noticed at least four other journalists with the same shorn identities. Was this Bill Clinton's way of getting back at the press corps?

Nope. It turns out that the production schedule for "My Life" was so rushed that the index was cobbled together in just a few days. In fact, the book contains scores of typographical errors. The final line of the entire book, for instance, refers to others bearing no responsibility for "the failure of my life..." Later printings have already changed it to "the failures of my life." I knew the explanation for the incomplete "Clindex" was haste and sloppiness when I saw the names of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in the book. They're not in the index either, though I doubt they care. Some people are big enough not to read books from the back.