Book Review: Boomsday, a novel by Christopher Buckley (2007)

The paperback cover of Boomsday by Christopher Buckley, 2007. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Christopher Buckley’s 2007 novel Boomsday tackles the subject of Social Security. Not perhaps the most obvious subject for political satire, but Boomsday is fun and effective, nevertheless. The main character is Cassandra Devine, a young woman who works for a public relations firm and also runs a blog that is concerned with Social Security spending. The full acronym of her blog is Concerned Americans for Social Security Amendment Now, Debt Reduction and Accountability. 

When Cassandra incites young people to rise up against the senior citizens that are crippling their future with debt, riots break out. Golf courses in gated communities are ripped up, and Cassandra is investigated by the FBI and arrested. Cassandra eventually comes up with a bold new proposal to solve the Social Security solvency crisis: tax benefits for old people who commit suicide in order to lessen the population of elders receiving Social Security. This proposal is eventually called “transitioning,” and Buckley’s black humor shines as he describes the public relations spin on the proposal.  

Boomsday is packed with other characters ripe for satire: Gideon Payne, the holier-than-thou leader of the Society for the Protection of Every Ribonucleic Molecule, or SPERM for short, Randolph K. Jepperson IV, a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts who decided to enter politics after a painting of JFK spoke to him while he was on an LSD trip, and Cassandra’s father Frank Cohane, who spent all of Cassandra’s college fund, but eventually struck it rich with a technology start-up.  

The panoply of characters that Buckley populates his novel with reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s writings, and like Wolfe, Buckley puts his characters through their paces during the course of the novel. There are numerous funny lines and scenes throughout Boomsday. Here’s an assortment of my favorites.  

Cassandra’s mother despairs when Cassandra starts reading The Fountainhead: “I had a boyfriend in high school who read Atlas Shrugged. He ended up handing out leaflets on street corners about how we all have to watch out for number one. It’s an unpleasant philosophy.” (p.50) This is even funnier if you know that William F. Buckley panned Atlas Shrugged in the pages of National Review, and Ayn Rand threw a fit.  

“In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream.” (p.172) 

“Why had he remarried? What possessed him? If he’d only waited a little longer, his dick would no longer have been in charge.” (p.187)  

“His brain was like a mastodon struggling to free itself of a tar pit.” (p.227) 

“She found herself wishing that she had lived before the age of the Internet and cable TV, when news arrived twice a day instead of every fricking second.” (p.279) 

“When she and Terry did their preliminary reconnaissance, he had taken one look at the depiction of FDR, with opaque bronze eyeglasses, upturned hat, and sitting on his almost invisible wheelchair, and said, ‘He looks like that Irish writer, James Joyce, sitting on a toilet.’” (p.312) Devoted fans of Christopher Buckley will recall this line from his very funny book about walking around Washington, D.C., Washington Schlepped Here. Having seen the sculpture in question at the FDR Memorial in person, I’m inclined to agree with Buckley.  

If the above quotes tickled your funny bone, you should pick up a copy of Boomsday.  

Book Review: Florence of Arabia, by Christopher Buckley (2004)

The Australian cover of Florence of Arabia, by Christopher Buckley, 2004. 

Christopher Buckley’s 2004 novel Florence of Arabia is a satire of the Middle East. I know, perhaps not the most likely subject for a satirical novel published in the immediate wake of 9/11 and the United States’ invasion of Iraq. But Buckley makes it work.  

The titular character is Florence Farfaletti, a State Department official who wants to bring women’s rights to the Middle East. Easier said than done. Especially when countries like Wasabia, which has a dismal record on women’s rights, is a close ally of the United States, due to the fact that Wasabia is swimming in oil. Of course, Buckley is a satirist, so there’s no way a country like Wasabia could actually exist. Wink wink, nudge nudge.  

Florence’s memo about her plan to bring women’s rights to the Middle East puts her on the radar of a mysterious government official who finances her covert operation. Florence and her team head to Matar, a more liberal emirate. Matar borders Wasabia, and thanks to Winston Churchill, Matar has ocean access while Wasabia does not.  

Florence of Arabia is a satire, but it still exists in the real world. Some awful things happen in the course of the novel, which feels true to what would actually happen if someone tried to bring women’s rights to the Middle East.  

One of my favorite lines in the novel was from Bobby Thibodeaux, a CIA operative. Speaking of the Middle East, he says to Florence “Don’t you understand that since the dawn of time, startin’ with the Garden of Eden, nothing has ever gone right here?” (p.113) 

Buckley also mocks the haplessness of United States foreign policy. As a crisis unfolds, he writes of the U.S. politicians: “There were those who urged caution, and those who urged that now was a time not for caution but for boldness. Then there were those who urged a middle course of cautious boldness.” (p.158) 

In Florence of Arabia, Christopher Buckley gives us an interesting heroine who is easy to root for, more than a dash of action and intrigue, and enough ideas to power this excellent novel, which turns twenty years old in 2024 but still provides much food for thought.   

TV Review: The Incomparable Mr. Buckley, a documentary for American Masters, directed by Barak Goodman (2024)

Novelist, magazine editor, talk show host, harpsichordist and all-around multi-hyphenate William F. Buckley, Jr.

William F. Buckley on the set of his television show Firing Line. 

I do not share much political ideology with William F. Buckley, but I find him to be a fascinating figure. Part of this is due to Buckley’s personal style: who wouldn’t be in awe of a man who pounded out newspaper columns in thirty minutes, keys clacking on his portable typewriter as he sat in the back of his chauffeured limousine, surrounded by his Cavalier King Charles spaniels? A man who played Bach on the harpsichord, ran a magazine, had his own television show, went skiing in Switzerland, and wrote novels in the gap between skiing and dinner? Regardless of what you think of William F. Buckley, there is no denying that the man was possessed of an immense amount of style.  

The Incomparable Mr. Buckley is a new documentary for PBS’ American Masters series, produced and directed by Barak Goodman, a veteran documentary filmmaker. The film examines Buckley’s life and his influence on American politics. There is a treasure trove of film clips, including home movies from Buckley’s youth, the 1965 Cambridge debate between Buckley and James Baldwin, Buckley threatening to punch Gore Vidal, and many episodes of Firing Line. The Incomparable Mr. Buckley also makes the intelligent decision to forgo footage of talking head commentators—instead we merely hear them speak over footage of Buckley.  

Buckley was renowned as an author and the founder and editor of the conservative magazine National Review, before his television talk show Firing Line took his fame to a new level in 1966. As brilliant as Buckley was on the page, television revealed a new side of his appeal. 

Buckley on television was simply fascinating to watch: the slouched posture, the crossed legs, the pen, the clipboard, the raised eyebrows, the toothy grin, the tongue flicking at the corner of his mouth, the sparkling blue eyes. Photographs of Buckley reveal a handsome man, but it is only in action, before the camera, that his unique charisma fully surfaces. You simply can’t stop looking at him. And then there was that voice. Where on earth was William F. Buckley from? His mellifluous tone was a mixture of East Coast establishment, learning English after he’d already learned Spanish, a hint of a Southern drawl from his mother’s side of the family, and spending several years as a teenager at boarding school in England. Buckley’s voice was an instrument that he wielded like a virtuoso. Similar to the actor James Mason, Buckley’s voice was pure honey to listen to, and it could lull you to sleep, seduce you, or mock you with biting, sarcastic humor. 

When Buckley started National Review in 1955, American conservative thought was regarded as an afterthought at best. After all, Republicans had lost 5 Presidential elections in a row from 1932-1948. One of the defining moments of the nascent conservative movement was when archconservative Barry Goldwater defeated the liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller for the 1964 Republican Presidential nomination. This was a huge step to the right for the Republican party. Goldwater was crushed by LBJ in the general election, but out of the ashes of this defeat came an unexpected silver lining. A Hollywood actor had delivered a powerful 30-minute speech on Goldwater’s behalf during the last week of the campaign. The speech did nothing to help Goldwater’s imminent defeat, but it launched the political career of the actor who gave the speech: Ronald Reagan. Immediately, movers and shakers in the Republican party in California began thinking of Reagan as a possible candidate for Governor in 1966.  

Ronald Reagan became the ultimate conservative Republican: he had the charisma that Richard Nixon so conspicuously lacked, and Reagan was more wedded to conservative ideology than the more pragmatic Nixon. Buckley was never a huge fan of Nixon, and according to the documentary, William pressured his brother James, then a Senator from New York, to call on Nixon to resign. James Buckley gave a speech in March of 1974 calling for Nixon’s resignation, and he became the first conservative Republican to call on the president to resign. (Speaking of James Buckley, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 100, he would be a fascinating documentary subject.)  

Much like the conservative movement itself, the documentary loses a bit of steam once the Cold War comes to a peaceful conclusion. As the Republican party shifted ever rightward, Buckley wasn’t always perfectly in step with it. His 1993 book Happy Days Were Here Again was subtitled Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist. I find it significant that Buckley used “libertarian” to describe himself rather than “conservative.”  

The documentary ends with footage of Trump and the January 6th rioters, and we see what American “conservatism” has degenerated into. Several articles about the documentary have focused on what Buckley’s son, the acclaimed satirist and novelist Christopher says at the end, regarding his father and Donald Trump: “He might just have said, ‘Demand a recount!’” What I take this to mean is not that Buckley would have supported Trump’s claim about the 2020 election being fraudulent, but rather that Buckley would have said we should recount the 2016 election to see if there was some way we could avoid the crisis of having Trump be president in the first place. The more relevant part of Christopher Buckley’s quote that reviewers have ignored is what he says before the final line: “I’ve been asked a thousand times ‘What would your father have made of Donald Trump?’ Well, look, he’s left us 50 books, 1,500 episodes of Firing Line, 6,000 columns. You figure out what he would’ve made of Donald Trump.” The answer should be glaringly obvious to anyone who has any familiarity with the works of William F. Buckley: he would have despised Donald Trump, as Buckley would have recognized what an idiot and buffoon Trump is. Buckley unknowingly came up with the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump when he wrote in his 1976 book Airborne: "The key to a serene relationship with sharks is simply this: Bear it in mind that they are so dumb, you can neither anticipate nor outwit them." (p.133) 

Despite the downbeat ending, The Incomparable Mr. Buckley is a fascinating and engaging look at one of the twentieth century’s most interesting public intellectuals.