the clojure ecosystem has changed a lot over this last year so many of the most linked tutorials sort of do things the hard way. you dont really need to build clojure/contrib and install it anymore. both Maven2 and leinengen do this ver well for you.
you may be able to get up and clojureing just by installing lein (from the tutorial) and then making a new project. this is enough to keep me happy even on my larger projects. you dont really need to install clojure system wide.
from a (ubuntu-10.10) system that has never seen clojure before i run:
dev:~$ lein new foo
Created new project in: foo
dev:~$ cd foo
dev:~/foo$ ls
project.clj README src test
dev:~/foo$ lein repl
Downloading: org/clojure/clojure/1.2.0/clojure-1.2.0.pom from central
Downloading: org/clojure/clojure-contrib/1.2.0/clojure-contrib-1.2.0.pom from central
Downloading: org/clojure/clojure-contrib/1.2.0/clojure-contrib-1.2.0.pom from clojure
Transferring 4K from clojure
Downloading: org/clojure/clojure/1.2.0/clojure-1.2.0.jar from central
Downloading: org/clojure/clojure-contrib/1.2.0/clojure-contrib-1.2.0.jar from central
Downloading: org/clojure/clojure-contrib/1.2.0/clojure-contrib-1.2.0.jar from clojure
Transferring 466K from clojure
Copying 2 files to /home/arthur/foo/lib
"REPL started; server listening on localhost:20092."
user=> (+ 1 2 3)
and thats all you really need. have fun :) (of course there is a LOT more to the clojure ecosystem though there is no need to really rush into it)
ps: add swank-clojure as a dev dependency and run lein swank
and then slime-connect from within emacs
ps: I hit 'q' to exit the backtraces.