Word: buckleys
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Unfortunately, the picture he paints of this life embarrassingly resembles a Fairfield Porter or F. Scott Fitzgerald universe, where every man had a yacht and every girl a debutante ball. Buckley says of his personal estate, "We desired a house by the sea and didn't see any particular reason why, if the whole Southern tier of Connecticut squats down on the sea, why we shouldn't be among those who squatted down in that part of Connecticut...
...Buckley could clearly use a commuter train to reality, but that simply wouldn't do. Whining about the scaling down of the latest model Cadillac limos, Buckley writes. "This simply would not do: I use the car constantly, require the room, privacy, and my own temperature gauge (for the back seat beyond the glass partition.)" But not to stop there, he goes on to detail the "usual market solution" in the form of a company in Texas that chops normal Cadillacs in half, stuffing them with new space and elegance. This "usual market solution" may enthrall the Polo shirt...
...THESE DETAILS on his latest luxuries just may make Buckley a classier Stephen King in the product name-dropping department. But as with Stephen King, it raises the most serious objections to his work: isn't this man capable of something more than this? Certainly Buckley can be charming, analytical, brilliant; certainly he can consider something more than limo conversions or the history of his family estate. After a while, you question the civic sobriety of a Bill Buckley discussing the housing problems of New York bag ladies after whining on about his family estate going condo...
...some degree, all of this literary boasting invokes the familiar Archie Bunker syndrome. Many of Buckley's fans drive mere Mercedes instead of limos but somehow reap vicarious prestige by knowing (even if only through a book) the rich kid on the political block. "How true, Bill," they might think, "getting good limos is a problem I hope to face someday...
...limos and family estates have never made Buckley a stuffy Puritan-style conservative. On the contrary, Buckley defines the Peter Pan syndrome of politics, forever lost in the dodges that spell success in prep school, now substituting serious political essays on supply side economics for explications of Victorian poetry. In his first spy novel, Buckley had his obviously autobiographically based Yalie Blackford Oakes finish his mission Saving the Queen with a final climax in the private royal chambers. The real life Buckley probably wouldn't go that far outside his imagination but the pranks still go on. At a swearing...