A LOOK AT WHAT KEEPS JESSE JACKSON RUNNING.

Byline: Melanie Eversley Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Most Americans know the Rev. Jesse Jackson as the fiery, infectious, rhyming orator who motivates throngs and offends plenty of others.

But few know the sensitive, sentimental, misty side of the Chicago-based activist who emerges in Marshall Frady's biography. Frady, a diligent researcher and journalist, sees Jackson as a tragic, lifelong outsider needing glorification and acceptance into the mainstream.

As Jackson himself puts it to a Democratic insider who approaches him after a speech and practically gushes over his gift for public speaking, ``Well, why don't you use that gift? Why don't you just bring me on in? You can keep on tryin' to cut me out if you want, but I'm not goin' away.''

This is the most comprehensive work to date on the charismatic newsmaker who rose from illegitimate birth and poverty to become a well-known - if not always well-liked - statesman. And while Frady's hefty tome is rich with detail, it is slow going.

It takes Frady four chapters to begin the chronology of Jackson's life. And even then, the book jumps erratically from Jackson's unsuccessful presidential bids in 1984 and 1988 to his painful childhood and his college years. About midway through, Frady finally hits a comfortable, consistent stride.

But what he does remarkably well is paint a convincing picture of Jackson, the person - a very public figure whose stoic exterior has helped shield his inner emotions. While not passing along any earthshaking revelations, Frady adds a human side to what we know about Jackson. The reader comes to see Jackson as a fallible human who, like anyone else, makes mistakes and who, like anyone else, beats himself over the head for them. We see Jackson in numerous sensitive moments, weeping powerfully at rejection by African-American pastors in New York, delaying his massive entourage to encourage a gravely ill hospital patient to live, or leading a group of Armenians in chants of ``Kep hop aliff!''

In Frady's telling, the source of Jackson's need for acceptance was his painful childhood as the illegitimate son of teen-ager Helen Burns, one of Greenville's beauties, and her married neighbor. Jackson's birth scandalizes the South Carolina town, and Jackson grows up sadly watching the privilege afforded his father's legitimate children. He learns to win approval through brashness and aggressiveness. A ``hectic eagerness,'' as Frady describes it, earns Jackson the childhood nickname of Bo Diddley.

In college in North Carolina, Jackson becomes a football star and budding activist. There he meets and woos his wife, Jackie, whose childhood was just as rocky, whose political views are just as strong, yet who seems to provide a calm and centered balance to Jackson's wired personality. Whatever the truth about his womanizing - and Frady gives credence to the rumors - Jackson is immensely proud of the longevity (34 years) of his marriage and the well-directed children the couple has produced.

Jackson always knew he would be somebody. ``Even during his earliest feelings of denial and aloneness, he sensed that he was headed for a life larger than that of the society in which he found himself pent,'' Frady writes. `` `It didn't really come to me all at once,' he says. `It began more like this low burn that just kept on growing.' ''

Frady sheds no new light on Jackson's disputed claim that he cradled the dying Martin Luther King in his arms after he was shot in Memphis. But Frady does share educated insights into what was behind it.

``In the end, though, at least the symbolism of Jackson's story ... would turn out to be largely the reality.

In his eventual massive national activation of the black voting rights won by King in Selma, in his perpetuation of King's vision in the nation's life, in his ascent to become an almost totemic figure for America's black community, he would indeed prove to be probably King's most notable legatee. In that respect, then Jackson's account right after Memphis, however approximate to the circumstantial particulars it may have been, could also be understood as something like a symbolic assertion of his own sense of the consequences to follow.''

Frady suggests that Jackson's association with minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, presents him - again - with the in-or-out dilemma. Farrakhan's references to Judaism as a ``gutter religion'' have alienated the Jewish community, and not denouncing him has cost Jackson political support.

But Jackson is loath to alienate Farrakhan because of the wave of grass-roots political support that comes from Farrakhan and his followers, which has always been the basis for Jackson's support.

Still, even if his power base is diminished, even if he does not get the respect from mainstream politicians he craves, Jackson will not go away. And with a son newly elected to Congress, Jackson's dreams of a dynasty may not be far-fetched.

Ultimately, perhaps like its hero, ``Jesse'' can be both inspiring and exhausting.

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Photo: From illegitimate birth to presidential bids and pol itical troubles, Marshall Frady explores the Rev. Jesse Jackson's public and personal sides in ``Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson.''