Word: buckleys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Conservative Pundit William F. Buckley Jr. has long had an unbridled passion for writing machines. He once mailed an unsolicited testimonial to the president of Smith-Corona, praising the company's $170 portable as "the most wonderful electric typewriter" he had ever used. Now the syndicated columnist, author of 24 books and editor of the National Review, has found a new object for his techno-literary affections. Buckley has shifted his allegiance to word processors, demonstrating his loyalty by accumulating eight of the machines and scattering them among his offices in New York City, Connecticut and Rougemont, Switzerland...
...obvious reason for Buckley's conversion is speed. "Writing on the word processor takes less time," he declares. So much less, in fact, that even his professional friends are impressed. "It takes Bill 20 minutes to write a column," says Peter McWilliams, an acquaintance and the author of several best-selling, how-to computer books (The Word Processing Book, The Personal Computer Book). "Word processors were really made...
...Buckley provided evidence of that earlier this year while vacationing aboard a yacht off the Pacific island of Bora-Bora. With the help of an Epson PX-8 lap-size machine, he fired off a 7,500-word draft of a children's book in two hours, a feat that can be compared with writing a college term paper during lunch break and getting it published. The Temptation of Wilfred Malachey (Workman, $10.95) is a morality tale for children from eight to 13, in which a demonical IBM 4341 mainframe teaches a New England prep-school student that computing...
...Buckley's microelectronic baptism took place late in the winter of 1982 while he was visiting the Baltimore home of Critic Hugh Kenner. There, Kenner introduced him to a vintage Heathkit/ Zenith model Z-89 computer. The next month Buckley purchased his first system: a secondhand Z-89 with a Diablo printer and a copy of the pioneering Pie word processing program. Buckley took the gear along on his annual winter pilgrimage to Switzerland where, guided by 16 pages of instructions prepared by Kenner, he turned out in only five weeks his 20th book, Overdrive (Doubleday...
...Buckley has since abandoned the Heathkit. Aside from the seagoing Epson, he has four Kaypro portables, two IBM PCs (an AT and an XT), and a TeleVideo terminal. The IBM AT, which he keeps at his home in Connecticut, is able to store an entire novel in its customized internal memory. All the computers run the best-selling WordStar program. "I'm told there are better programs," says Buckley. "But I'm also told there are better alphabets." Despite owning all this equipment, he has never played a computer game, tapped into a data base or run numbers through...