Book Review: Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, by Christopher Buckley (2009)

 

My well-worn paperback copy of Losing Mum and Pup, by Christopher Buckley, 2009. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Christopher Buckley had resolved not to write about his famous parents, Patricia Taylor Buckley, and William F. Buckley, but once they passed away within 10 months of each other, Buckley decided to write about that terrible year. The book that emerged was Losing Mum and Pup, published in 2009.

I read Losing Mum and Pup in 2012, and although it was easily one of my favorite books that I read that year, I neglected to review it at the time. Last month I listened to the audio version, read by Christopher Buckley. My own Father passed away last December, and I thought, well, why not revisit Losing Mum and Pup?

Losing Mum and Pup is a moving book, as Buckley details dealing with two aging parents as an only child. But more than that, Losing Mum and Pup is a celebration of Buckley’s parents, and they remain vibrantly alive on the pages of this fine book.

Christopher Buckley is best-known as a humorist and satirist, and he has the right temperament to see the absurdities often apparent in matters of the end of life. When WFB is taken into the hospital in June of 2007 because his kidneys aren’t functioning, Christopher informs us that reiterating to WFB for the umpteenth time that day that they aren’t able to go home just quite yet is “like being on Firing Line, on acid.” (p.99) In time, WFB’s kidneys recover and he’s able to go home.

There are moving scenes, as when WFB dictates to Christopher the final paragraphs of his book Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater. “He made hardly any self-corrections as he spoke. The words came out punctuated and paragraphed. And quickly…In less than ten minutes, we were on the last paragraph of the last book he would write.” (p.142) But then the chapter is lost, thanks to the vagaries of WordStar, an obsolete word-processing program that WFB remained stubbornly dedicated to. “Pup redictated the chapter, practically verbatim. When we went over it the next day, there was little it needed other than a comma here and a word there. I was, for the thousandth time in my life, in awe of him.” (p.143)

Losing Mum and Pup was my introduction to the personal life of William F. Buckley, Jr. I was fascinated by the books Christopher mentioned: Cruising Speed and Overdrive, which each covered a week in the life of WFB, and numerous books about sailing, such as Airborne, which chronicles a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Reading Overdrive in 2013 helped me recommit to my own writing, and since then I’ve become a much more productive writer. And, one can only hope, a better writer.

Losing Mum and Pup is a fantastic book. Funny and moving, it showcases the best of Christopher Buckley’s writing.

Book Review: Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1955, 20th anniversary edition published in 1975)

 

My 20th anniversary edition paperback of Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1955, 20th anniversary edition published in 1975) photo by Mark C. Taylor.

Writer, poet, and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1906-2001.

Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1931. Anne served as Charles' navigator and co-pilot on many flights. 

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the wife of American aviator Charles Lindbergh, and an acclaimed author in her own right. Her most famous book is Gift from the Sea, which became a surprise bestseller upon its publication in 1955. It’s a slim volume of essays, using different types of seashells as metaphors for life.

I recently finished reading a fantastic biography of Charles Lindbergh, The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming, and that inspired me to pull out my copy of Gift from the Sea that I had picked up from a Little Free Library a couple of years ago. I found it to be a compelling little book. Gift from the Sea can be connected to the feminist movement, as Morrow Lindbergh writes about the role of women in American life. She writes of all the different obligations on women: “What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame.” (p.26) Later in the book she writes, “All her instinct as a woman—the eternal nourisher of children, of men, of society—demands that she give. Her time, her energy, her creativeness drain out into these channels if there is any chance, any leak.” (p.45)

Gift from the Sea is also a spiritual book, as Morrow Lindbergh is interested in how women can nourish their souls. She writes: “Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.” (p.44)

Morrow Lindbergh is writing about what might now be called “self-actualization.” One of my favorite quotes in the book is this one: “The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask.” (p.32)

In Gift from the Sea, Morrow Lindbergh describes a hypothetical perfect day. It’s interesting that her perfect day is spent with her sister, rather than with her husband Charles. That’s emblematic of the Lindbergh’s marriage, which had its difficulties, to put it mildly. Charles Lindbergh was always a seeker, a wanderer, and his job as an aviation consultant took him away from home for long stretches at a time. That was obviously the way Charles wanted it. He even fathered several children with 3 German women in the years after Gift from the Sea was published. Anne did not learn about these families during Charles’ lifetime. Despite it all, it was Anne who was at Charles’ side as he succumbed to cancer in 1974.

Gift from the Sea is a book that anyone can still gain something useful and valuable from, as all of us try to find inner peace and calm in a world that seems much faster-paced than 1955.

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming (2020)

 

The cover of The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming, 2020.

Charles Lindbergh and The Spirit of St. Louis, 1927.

Charles Lindbergh making a speech on behalf of "America First," 1940-41.

Charles Lindbergh was a complicated man. That’s an understatement, but let’s start there, shall we? As I grew up in Minnesota, and still live in Minnesota, Charles Lindbergh is someone who looms large in the iconography of the state. The largest terminal at our main airport was named after Lindbergh. (The airport has since changed the names of the terminals to the more prosaic “1” and “2.”) When I was a kid growing up in the 1980’s, there was a full-scale replica of Lindbergh’s airplane The Spirit of St. Louis that hung in the Lindbergh terminal. Lindbergh’s boyhood home in Little Falls is now a museum, run by the Minnesota Historical Society. There’s a statue of Lindbergh, “The Boy and the Man,” on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that three of the most significant American cultural figures to emerge during the decade of the 1920’s were from Minnesota: Charles Lindbergh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sinclair Lewis. Not bad for a state from the Midwest, old sport. 

Candace Fleming’s magnificent 2020 biography, The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, is a fantastic look at a complicated, contradictory man. Fleming often uses Lindbergh’s own words, and those of his wife, writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, to paint a vivid and detailed picture of his life. Fleming’s book is classified as “young adult,” but those distinctions are irrelevant when you’re discussing an expertly written book.

Every chapter of Lindbergh’s life could be made into a movie. If you wrote his life as a novel, it would seem unbelievable.

Lindbergh skyrocketed to world fame in May of 1927, as he became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Lindbergh looked every inch the ideal American hero: tall, slender, with a dimpled chin and a shy grin. Lindbergh used his newfound fame to advocate for aviation, but the press was fascinated by his personal life as well. His marriage to Anne Morrow in 1929, and the birth of their first child a year later, Charles Lindbergh Jr., made worldwide headlines.

In 1932, Lindbergh’s life became a nightmare when his son was kidnapped. Lindbergh ran much of the investigation himself, and while he had a sharp intelligence, Lindbergh was not the best judge of people. He was taken advantage of by people who claimed to have knowledge of where his son was being held. It’s heartbreaking to read of Lindbergh being led astray by liars, searching in vain in stormy waters for the non-existent boat where someone told him his son was being held, at the very moment when police found the child’s dead body, just a few miles from the Lindbergh home.

A sad coda to the Lindbergh kidnapping was how, periodically, people would show up on the Lindbergh’s doorstep and claim that they were his dead son. Rather than respond to them with anger, Fleming writes of how Lindbergh “met their delusions with compassion, speaking with them logically, reasonably, and at length.” (p.308) How heartbreaking to have to carry out such a task.

Controversy followed Lindbergh throughout his life. His interest in eugenics and his approval of pre-war Nazi Germany have cast a sinister shadow over his reputation. Incredibly enough, in the fall of 1938 Charles and Anne were searching for a house in Berlin. Then Kristallnacht happened, and Lindbergh finally came to his senses—sort of. He returned to America in 1939.

Lindbergh was determined that the United States should not enter the coming European war, and he eventually joined “America First,” a non-interventionist group. For a man who didn’t like being a celebrity, and who treasured his privacy, Lindbergh made the surprising decision to barnstorm around the United States, giving speeches in favor of American neutrality. Lindbergh blamed the Jews for agitating for the United States to enter World War II. He wrote of Jews, “There are too many in places like New York already. A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos.” (p.247) Ugh, what a disgusting sentiment.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote a 1940 pamphlet in support of fascism, The Wave of the Future, promoting an American brand of fascism that could be “crisp, clear, tart, sunny, and crimson—like an American apple.” (p.265) Wait, what? Fascism is like an apple? This quote shows how unsophisticated the political thinking of both Lindberghs was. American fascism will be crimson, sure, but the crimson will be the blood running in the streets.

Despite his support for isolationism, once the United States entered World War II, Lindbergh attempted to return to active military service. (He had resigned his military commission earlier in 1941 after clashing with FDR.) Lindbergh was rebuffed, but eventually, in the spring of 1944, he found himself attached to a bomber unit in the Pacific as a civilian observer. Lindbergh was past 40, but he was still a better pilot than the men half his age. He ended up flying more than 50 bombing missions in the Pacific. (This was technically against military policy, since Lindbergh was a civilian, but the military brass was fine with looking the other way.)

During World War II, as Lindbergh was testing planes in the United States, he had a revelation during a flight where he blacked out and almost crashed. He wrote that he had suddenly realized “In worshipping science man gains power but loses the quality of life.” (p.285) After the war was over, Lindbergh toured a concentration camp in Germany. He was sickened by what he saw there. Lindbergh had always been a worshipper of science, but now he saw what science could bring about: Nazi death camps and the atomic bomb. He wanted no part of either.

Lindbergh spent much of his later life traveling the world advocating for environmentalism. He said, “I realized that if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.” (p.317) But lest you think that he was mellowing into old age, Lindbergh also fathered several secret children in Germany that he financially supported.

As I wrote at the beginning, Charles Lindbergh was a complicated man. Candace Fleming has done a remarkable job in presenting all the different facets of Lindbergh’s life and personality.