Essay: Last Words on William F. Buckley, Jr., 1925 -2008
Wednesday, 19 March 2008 - 1,767 words.
At the time of this posting, William F. Buckley, Jr. has been dead for three weeks. At first planning to write or say nothing to mark the occasion, I did finally begin taking notes and reflecting at significant length after two weeks, finally deciding a few days ago to string them all into a series of disjointed thoughts, as some tribute to my literary hero.
* * *
In the weeks before a website called IntellectualConservative.com launched the “In Dissent” column (it was called “For the Record” then), the site’s editor posted a teaser. Its exact wording has escaped me over the years, but the upshot was, “If you love William F. Buckley, Jr., you’ll love Brian S. Wise,” which was (and in large measure remains) as thrilling and frightening a compliment as has ever been bestowed upon a failed newspaper columnist who had someone managed to fool a few people into thinking he was smart.
How many commentators, would you guess, have been placed at the back end of that association over the years since God and Man at Yale? And how many have been called, or thought themselves, the logical successor to the Buckley legacy? But succession was a lost cause. William F. Buckley, Jr. was the literary equivalent of Johnny Carson: every pretender who rose to claim the throne seemed to forget that the ideal man was already sitting there, and eventually every aspirant collapsed under the weight of someone’s expectations. Every time the smoke cleared, there was Buckley, standing alone. And it was right.
Of course it takes some doing to live up to that sort of hype, and so that first column was about Buddy, the Clinton’s First Dog, which had just been hit by a car and killed. (The upshot: It wasn’t newsworthy … but fine for a column, one supposes.)
Yes, well. Let’s just say it took some time to hit my stride.
How many commentators, would you guess, have been placed at the back end of that association over the years since God and Man at Yale? And how many have been called, or thought themselves, the logical successor to the Buckley legacy? But succession was a lost cause. William F. Buckley, Jr. was the literary equivalent of Johnny Carson: every pretender who rose to claim the throne seemed to forget that the ideal man was already sitting there, and eventually every aspirant collapsed under the weight of someone’s expectations. Every time the smoke cleared, there was Buckley, standing alone. And it was right.
Of course it takes some doing to live up to that sort of hype, and so that first column was about Buddy, the Clinton’s First Dog, which had just been hit by a car and killed. (The upshot: It wasn’t newsworthy … but fine for a column, one supposes.)
Yes, well. Let’s just say it took some time to hit my stride.
* * * * *
Let’s also say that you knew nothing of Mr. Buckley’s work before he died but have since decided to build as comprehensive a collection of his work as possible; books, columns, interviews, speeches, debates, articles, obituaries, commentaries, television appearances, “Notes and Asides” sections from National Review, et cetera. That means you will have to purchase fifty-four books – I’ve counted, but confess to occasional fallibility – written and published between 1951 and 2008, including one on Barry Goldwater being released this Spring, and “at least five” others if you include those he edited.
His columns, numbering more than 5,600 and published between 1962 and 2008, contain more than 4.5 million words, which, if published in their entirety, would “fill 45 more medium-sized books." You can collect the vast majority of the columns (and why not?!), and so many of his articles, thanks to archives maintained by National Review Online and, to a much greater extent, Hillsdale College, which makes over 8,300 pieces available to the public online.
This is to say nothing of the 1,504 episodes of Firing Line taped and broadcast between 1966 and 1999, impeccably cared for and catalogued by the Hoover Institution. Some are available for purchase on VHS, but at $45 a pop. (A comparatively small number are available for free viewing.) It would be far more time consuming to assemble the “Notes and Asides” columns, published in National Review between 1967 and 2005. Of course you would need access to a large, metropolitan or college library, and Lord only knows how many dimes you’d need for the copy machine.
Also troublesome would be his speeches, beginning (we’ll say charitably) with his first address to the Yale Political Union in 1946 and concluding with his last speech, also to the Yale Political Union, sixty years later, in 2006. To make it somewhat easier on yourself, start with Let Us Talk of Many Things (a book of collected speeches, released in 2000) and work your way forward filling in the gaps.
And while you’re it, you may as well drop Yale a line and ask if the collected Buckley papers are available for perusal. Together they weigh seven tons.
Now you see not only the enormity of your task but also have some idea about the furious pace with which Mr. Buckley set about changing the tenor of American politics; never mind the television appearances, interviews, debates, book reviews, and whatever else. Christopher Hitchens put it best in his piece for The Weekly Standard: “The late William F. Buckley Jr. was a man of incessant labor and productivity, with a slight allowance made for that saving capacity for making it appear easy. But he was driven, all right, and restless, and never allowed himself much ease on his own account. There was never a moment, after taping some session at Firing Line, where mere recourse to some local joint was in prospect. He was always just about to be late for the next plane, or column, or speech, or debate. Except that he was never late, until Wednesday [27 February].”
His columns, numbering more than 5,600 and published between 1962 and 2008, contain more than 4.5 million words, which, if published in their entirety, would “fill 45 more medium-sized books." You can collect the vast majority of the columns (and why not?!), and so many of his articles, thanks to archives maintained by National Review Online and, to a much greater extent, Hillsdale College, which makes over 8,300 pieces available to the public online.
This is to say nothing of the 1,504 episodes of Firing Line taped and broadcast between 1966 and 1999, impeccably cared for and catalogued by the Hoover Institution. Some are available for purchase on VHS, but at $45 a pop. (A comparatively small number are available for free viewing.) It would be far more time consuming to assemble the “Notes and Asides” columns, published in National Review between 1967 and 2005. Of course you would need access to a large, metropolitan or college library, and Lord only knows how many dimes you’d need for the copy machine.
Also troublesome would be his speeches, beginning (we’ll say charitably) with his first address to the Yale Political Union in 1946 and concluding with his last speech, also to the Yale Political Union, sixty years later, in 2006. To make it somewhat easier on yourself, start with Let Us Talk of Many Things (a book of collected speeches, released in 2000) and work your way forward filling in the gaps.
And while you’re it, you may as well drop Yale a line and ask if the collected Buckley papers are available for perusal. Together they weigh seven tons.
Now you see not only the enormity of your task but also have some idea about the furious pace with which Mr. Buckley set about changing the tenor of American politics; never mind the television appearances, interviews, debates, book reviews, and whatever else. Christopher Hitchens put it best in his piece for The Weekly Standard: “The late William F. Buckley Jr. was a man of incessant labor and productivity, with a slight allowance made for that saving capacity for making it appear easy. But he was driven, all right, and restless, and never allowed himself much ease on his own account. There was never a moment, after taping some session at Firing Line, where mere recourse to some local joint was in prospect. He was always just about to be late for the next plane, or column, or speech, or debate. Except that he was never late, until Wednesday [27 February].”
* * * * *
First word of Mr. Buckley’s death hit National Review Online via a brief posting at The Corner, by Kathryn Jean Lopez: “I’m devastated to report that our dear friend, mentor, leader, and founder William F. Buckley, Jr., died this morning in his study in Stanford, Connecticut. He died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.”
As obituaries and tributes mounted, the tidbit about Mr. Buckley dying at his desk took on a life of its own. In its obituary (in the poorly edited first draft and the corrected second), the New York Times wrote in the second paragraph, “He was found at his desk in the study of his home, his son [Christopher] said. ‘He might have been working on a column,’ Mr. Buckley said.” Reuters, second paragraph: “Buckley suffered from emphysema over the past year and died early on Wednesday while writing in his study in Stanford, Connecticut….” The Associated Press, first paragraph: “William F. Buckley died at work, in his study.” So on and so on.
Some may be confused as to the relevance of that datum, but it very much warranted mention. For writers, more than any other group of people, there is just something romantic and majestic about dying with their boots on. It speaks not only to the character of the man (to soldier on while clearly so unwell) but the personal meaning of his mission. All writers – and by “writer” I mean someone who is compelled to manage words by a force they cannot understand – hope to die as Mr. Buckley died: At home, hip deep in words, perhaps sensing that something more severe than normal is amiss but hoping beyond hope there is enough time to finish the next sentence, and then the next paragraph, and then, God willing, the next chapter….
As obituaries and tributes mounted, the tidbit about Mr. Buckley dying at his desk took on a life of its own. In its obituary (in the poorly edited first draft and the corrected second), the New York Times wrote in the second paragraph, “He was found at his desk in the study of his home, his son [Christopher] said. ‘He might have been working on a column,’ Mr. Buckley said.” Reuters, second paragraph: “Buckley suffered from emphysema over the past year and died early on Wednesday while writing in his study in Stanford, Connecticut….” The Associated Press, first paragraph: “William F. Buckley died at work, in his study.” So on and so on.
Some may be confused as to the relevance of that datum, but it very much warranted mention. For writers, more than any other group of people, there is just something romantic and majestic about dying with their boots on. It speaks not only to the character of the man (to soldier on while clearly so unwell) but the personal meaning of his mission. All writers – and by “writer” I mean someone who is compelled to manage words by a force they cannot understand – hope to die as Mr. Buckley died: At home, hip deep in words, perhaps sensing that something more severe than normal is amiss but hoping beyond hope there is enough time to finish the next sentence, and then the next paragraph, and then, God willing, the next chapter….
* * * * *
“Stories told over the last week by writers who knew Bill Buckley have had their effect on those who didn’t,” Anthony R. Dolan wrote for National Review Online. “Among the affected is a young and exceedingly bright conservative who raised with me the question of whether some of the pieces wouldn’t have been better off with more on the great man himself and a little less on the authors and what they said, discussed, or did with the great man.” Dolan’s response: “Hard to do." Every conservative had Their Buckley, by which I mean that Mr. Buckley became something different and personal to whoever found themselves enamored. Here, reflections of My Buckley.
Literally the first words I ever read by William F. Buckley, Jr. were these, in mid-1993, from a column dated 10 April 1990: “The point, then, is that women who go to an abortionist, or who procreate illegitimate births, are not the best judges of right and wrong, even if society agreed that they should in their own situation be the executors of the critical decision, whether to give birth or to abort.”
This is quite the one-two punch, because when properly considered it forces one to confront his biases. Being the young liberal, about ten minutes had to pass for me to completely hash out Mr. Buckley’s argument. How many girls had I known to routinely engage in reckless sexual behavior without bothering to protect themselves, and how many ended up suffering the (physical, emotional, and financial) slings and arrows of abortion clinics when, for a mere fraction of the cost, they could have purchased birth control pills, or condoms? (It didn’t occur to me they oughtn’t have had sex in the first place, as it had never before that point.) By the time I’d conceded he was right, I’d further decided to give Mr. Buckley a chance.
In September 1993 I purchased Happy Days Were Here Again, which took five weeks to read. His every point of contention with liberalism was thought through to what seemed its logical conclusion. Even though I ultimately disagreed with him on several points (interpret that as a youthful devotion to an ideology crafted by and for teenagers; points of contention today could be counted on one hard), learning was taking place, slowly but surely. If this was Republicanism, then I had horribly misunderstood it – but most liberals do.
Other conservative columnists, also masters of their craft, were eventually brought into the intellectual fray, but at the fore of my creeping change were William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review. Eventually I awoke from what felt like a dead sleep, feeling forced to unburden myself of this new understanding. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote; in total, four awful little books, a lovely fifth book of collected work, and a few hundred passable columns before finally slowing to a crawl in mid-2005. After eleven-and-a-half years as a writer (eight as a columnist), the writing had become repetitive and stale. There was nothing new to say.
Of course, by the time Mr. Buckley had entered his twelfth year as a writer, it was … 1963.
Literally the first words I ever read by William F. Buckley, Jr. were these, in mid-1993, from a column dated 10 April 1990: “The point, then, is that women who go to an abortionist, or who procreate illegitimate births, are not the best judges of right and wrong, even if society agreed that they should in their own situation be the executors of the critical decision, whether to give birth or to abort.”
This is quite the one-two punch, because when properly considered it forces one to confront his biases. Being the young liberal, about ten minutes had to pass for me to completely hash out Mr. Buckley’s argument. How many girls had I known to routinely engage in reckless sexual behavior without bothering to protect themselves, and how many ended up suffering the (physical, emotional, and financial) slings and arrows of abortion clinics when, for a mere fraction of the cost, they could have purchased birth control pills, or condoms? (It didn’t occur to me they oughtn’t have had sex in the first place, as it had never before that point.) By the time I’d conceded he was right, I’d further decided to give Mr. Buckley a chance.
In September 1993 I purchased Happy Days Were Here Again, which took five weeks to read. His every point of contention with liberalism was thought through to what seemed its logical conclusion. Even though I ultimately disagreed with him on several points (interpret that as a youthful devotion to an ideology crafted by and for teenagers; points of contention today could be counted on one hard), learning was taking place, slowly but surely. If this was Republicanism, then I had horribly misunderstood it – but most liberals do.
Other conservative columnists, also masters of their craft, were eventually brought into the intellectual fray, but at the fore of my creeping change were William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review. Eventually I awoke from what felt like a dead sleep, feeling forced to unburden myself of this new understanding. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote; in total, four awful little books, a lovely fifth book of collected work, and a few hundred passable columns before finally slowing to a crawl in mid-2005. After eleven-and-a-half years as a writer (eight as a columnist), the writing had become repetitive and stale. There was nothing new to say.
Of course, by the time Mr. Buckley had entered his twelfth year as a writer, it was … 1963.
The standard by which a man judges himself should be greater than he thinks is manageable; that way he’s always struggling to become better. In that respect, I’ve let Mr. Buckley down. As my gift wilted, Mr. Buckley eased into his 80s, carrying on with book and column writing even after Mrs. Buckley died and he became sick. To the degree any of us can advance a rational, modern conservatism, we owe him everything for clearing and maintaining a path. A world without William F. Buckley, Jr. is a world significantly less worthwhile.
posted by Brian S. Wise | 7:44 PM
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