"This is Christopher. Christopher Little. Gee I'm terribly sorry to ring you so late--"
Christopher regularly apologizes when he calls, as if his presence were somehow burdensome. In fact it brings pleasure.
"Apologize to me?" I said. "God," I looked at my watch, "it's two-thirty in New York! You are in New York?"
"Yeah. I know. But the editors of People are going wild. They want just one line from you -- there isn't room for more than one line -- on why you did it again."
"Did what again?"
"Sail across the Atlantic."
"What do they have surrounding the blank line?"
"Shall I read you the whole thing?"
"Shoot."
"The big headline says, 'WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. BRAVES THE HIGH SEAS, IN HIS FASHION, WITH CHAMPAGNE & SCARLATTI.' "
I groaned, but not noisily -- and anyway, it was largely my fault. Nobody made me mention champagne or Scarlatti.
"Then they have the lead, in italics. It says: 'William F. Buckley, Jr., 54, is well-known as a conservative (TVs "Firing Line") and best-selling author (Who's On First). His reputation as an adventurer is less appreciated. Last month he set out from the Caribbean island, of St. Thomas to sail the Atlantic with four friends, four paid crew members and one intrepid photographer, Christopher Little--' "
"Who said you were intrepid?"
He laughed, Christopher laughs like a shy teenager, at once appreciative and self-effacing. "You did, in the story."
"Okay. Go ahead."
" ' -- aboard the 71-foot ketch Sealestial. It was Buckley's second such crossing; the first was the subject of his 1976 book, Airborne. Why would he try it again?' -- that's where they need the line."
"What comes after the missing line?"
" 'After 30 days at sea the Sealestial landed in Marbella early this month. Before beginning a book about the voyage -- Atlantic High, to be published by Doubleday next year, with photographs by Little -- Buckley wrote this account of the trip for People.' " Christopher paused. "That's it."
"Say: 'Buckley answered, "The wedding night is never enough." ' "
Christopher laughed. But he'd have laughed if I had said, " 'Buckley answered, "Toasted Suzy is my ice cream.
In The Reagan I Knew, the late William F. Buckley Jr. offers a reminiscence of thirty years of friendship with the man who brought the American conservative movement out of the political wilderness and into the White House. Ronald and Buckley were political allies and close friends throughout Reagan’s political career. They went on vacations together and shared inside jokes.
Yet for all the words that have been written about him, Ronald Reagan remains an enigma. His former speechwriter Peggy Noonan called him “paradox all the way down,” and even his son Ron Reagan despaired of ever truly knowing him. But Reagan was not an enigma to William F. Buckley Jr. They understood and taught each other for decades, and together they changed history.
Getting It Right is set in the upheaval of the 1960’s. The Cuban missile crisis has brought the Communist threat to within miles of the United States, and extremist movements roil the American Right.
Two college students, Woodroe Raynor and Leonora Goldstein, meet in the fall of 1960 before embarking on separate paths. Woodroe goes to work for the indiscriminately anti-Communist John Birch Society: through his eyes, we see how anti-Communism defined American politics while nearly defeating itself in its own extremism. Leonora becomes a novitiate in the libertarian-objectivist cult of novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand: through her, we witness how sexual passion shaped Rand’s movement. But a singular romance blooms as the two make their way through the tumultuous era, navigating the political fault line that would change American history.
'In Happy Days Were Here Again,' William F. Buckley, Jr. offers a collection of his finest essays from the latter part of his long career. Sometimes celebrating, sometimes assailing, Buckley takes on opponents ranging from Mikhail Gorbachev to Carl Sagan to Leonard Bernstein; reflects on the academic scene, the Gulf War, and the idea of sin; and offers appreciations of friends, both right and left. For everyone who appreciates the wit and style of America’s pre-eminent conservative, this is a must-have collection.
Let Us Talk of Many Things,' first published in 2000, brings together Buckley’s finest speeches from throughout his career. Always deliciously provocative, they cover a vast range of topics: the end of the Cold War, manners in politics, the failure of the War on Drugs, the importance of winning the America’s Cup, and much else. Reissued with additional speeches, 'Let Us Talk of Many Things' is the ideal gift for any serious conservative.
This is the book that launched Buckley's career. As a young recent Yale graduate, Buckley took on Yale's professional and administrative staffs, citing their hypocritical diversion from the tenets on which the institution was built. Yale was founded on the belief that God exists and thus virtue and individualism represent immutable cornerstones of education. However, it is apparent that when Buckley wrote this scathing expose, the institution had made an about-face Yale was expounding collectivism and agnosticism. This classic work shows Buckley as he was and is dauntless, venturesome, bold, and valiant.
An ambitious, roguish young presidential candidate . . . a lifetime of inconvenient secrets . . . a decision to save a candidacy—all at a fatal cost: These are the provocative threads that master storyteller William F. Buckley Jr. weaves into this gripping yet surprisingly empathetic political novel.
The Rake brings together Buckley's keen political insight and his tale-spinning craft to tell the story of a candidate on the rise and the dark shadows cast behind him. As Reuben Castle, the prototypical child of the sixties, coasts through his early life on a cloud of easy charisma, he leaves behind more skeletons than Arlington: a highly questionable Vietnam record, an abandoned wife, and worse. Yet two decades later, just as his dreams are within reach, he learns that his personal history is about to become his political epitaph—unless he takes the direst of measures to protect himself.
With a blend of satire and suspense, Buckley offers an archly pointed portrait of a familiar icon. A novel by the defining conservative of our times, about a figure bearing an unmistakable resemblance to the defining liberal of our times, The Rake is a welcome new masterpiece, and Buckley's most winning, and provocative, novel in years.
Chapter One
Grand Forks, North Dakota, September 1969
Last Saturday, after the ardent petting—after the movie, after the snack, after the giggles—Henrietta came to terms with what she knew, now, was Reuben's grand design. He was delicately concrete about it: it would take place in a duck blind. Not—he said with scorn—not at the Hop See Lodge. That was the handy motel across the river, in Minnesota. Hop See was a single-story caravansary in its second decade of operation.
All that was required there of a patron was a driver's license and, of course, cash—fifteen dollars for twelve-hour access to a bedroom.
The Hop See also had conventional uses. Last November, during an overcrowded football weekend, Henri had booked a room there for Bruce Seringhaus, her young cousin. Bruce would share the room with another football fan, also in town for the game, from the University of Minnesota. The two would be strangers, but never mind. The other occupant would be duly registered with the University of North Dakota as a student from the visiting team's college looking for inexpensive lodging for the Saturday night, after the game.
Bruce was only eighteen, but he announced haughtily to his willowy twenty-year-old Canadian-born cousin that he was not willing to share "any old room" with "any old visitor" (never mind that he lived in shared quarters at his own university), "not even if he's a member of the football team. I'd rather sleep in the gym."
Henrietta soothed him by contributing half of the room's cost, allowing the stranger to be displaced. So Bruce had the Hop See room to himself, and he could have drowned his misery over the humiliation of his team's loss in solitude, except that he didn't drink.
Reuben scolded Henri for being extravagant, but she cut him off by saying she was certain he would have done the same thing if he had an eighteen-year-old cousin coming to town to see the big game without a place to stay. Reuben smiled indulgently and leaned over, in the common room, to give her a light kiss, spilling his curly blond hair over her blue eyes and slender nose.
So much for the Hop See. The idea of the duck blind in place of the motel appealed to her, though she felt a shaft of fear, and the dull pain of sin coveted, and acquiesced in.
Still, leave it to Reuben, dominant in all matters. He too was a senior, handsome, spare, and agile, at twenty-one a formidable figure in the student body. He lifted his head and smiled first with his eyes. Then his teeth flashed out. The grin was quick, mischievous. For Henrietta Leborcier it was captivating, a prologue to the momentous event, planned now for the following Saturday.
Reuben always had interesting ideas, she reminded herself as she sat across from him in the library. This one, Reuben confessed, had taken much of the summer to gestate. It was climactic, whatever else you might call the prospective surrender of your virginity. She looked up at him, his head bent over the book, his teeth gripping the eraser end of the pencil that dangled from his lips. A trace of a furrow could be seen on his forehead as he engaged the text. She crooked her finger, interlocked with his, and he looked over at her. He gave a wide-eyed smile, moving his book out of the way, as if removing anything that might stand between him and his Henrietta of the light brown hair, which framed her carelessly freckled oval face and blue eyes. He leaned over and, observing the solemn silence of the Chester Fritz Library, spoke in a whisper. They were seated in a corner of the large room, safely removed from the librarian's desk. Their requisitioned books were open on the table between them, and they...
