Sallie's Turn

By R.Z. Sheppard

PASSION AND PREJUDICE: A FAMILY MEMOIR

by Sallie Bingham

Knopf; 525 pages; $22.95

By now the Binghams of Louisville must have the cleanest dirty laundry in the country. Two books have previously been published and another is in the works about their squabbles over money and power and the subsequent sale of the family-owned Louisville Courier-Journal and associated enterprises. Passion and Prejudice is the first account of the troubles written by a participant. Sallie Bingham, 52, is the rebellious and talented daughter regarded by many as the catalyst who precipitated the breakup of the family business, which grossed the author $62 million.

Bingham does not deny the role. In fact, she relishes it. From a perspective perhaps best described as that of a millionaire Marxist-feminist, she views the Bingham dynasty, the state of Kentucky, the nation and the entire male-dominated world as mired in class conflicts, exploitation, racism and sexism. There is no denying that Bingham puts her money where her mouth is: she has donated $10 million to the Kentucky Foundation for Women. But after Passion and Prejudice, she will probably be remembered for putting her mouth where her money is.

Like many skilled writers, she sacrifices balance for effects. This is acceptable, even necessary, in fiction. But in a memoir whose purpose is to expose one's own family in the glare of a social ideology, the practice seems simplistic and self-serving. There is, for example, her use of the familiar tale about the founding of the Bingham fortune. Grandfather Robert, "the Judge," bought into Louisville publishing with money from the estate of Mary Lily Flagler, his second wife. The Judge was rumored to have killed Mary Lily, but there was never any evidence that would support a criminal charge. Time and again, Bingham prefers the rumor. It not only makes better gossip, but it fits in with her male-bashing thesis. It also allows her to note that the Binghams got their start with a woman's money.

The author's account of confrontations with her father, chairman of the board Barry Bingham, and her brother, publisher Barry Bingham Jr., as well as her versions of family and office politics, is too one-sided to be wholly plausible. Bingham's relations with her mother ring truer. At one point the matriarch is quoted as asking why her family could not be happy, since they were all rich, intelligent and beautiful. It is a fair question whose incomplete answer can be found in this resentful and blinkered book.