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.  

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.

Scott Donaldson: 1928-2020

 

Scott Donaldson, author and literary biographer, 1928-2020.

My collection of books by Scott Donaldson. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Scott Donaldson's excellent biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fool For Love, 1983. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Scott Donaldson's inscription to me: "For Mark Taylor, who likes the same kind of great writing I do-as he and I will continue to try to do-Scott Donaldson 26 June 2017." (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Acclaimed literary biographer Scott Donaldson died on December 1^st, at the age of 92. Donaldson was most well-known for his work on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, and he also wrote biographies of John Cheever and Archibald MacLeish, among others. I reviewed Donaldson’s excellent biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fool For Love, and I also reviewed his book Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship.

I met Scott Donaldson in 2017, at the 14^th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference, held in Saint Paul, Minnesota. But I had been aware of his work for 20 years before that. When I was in high school, I started reading The Stories of John Cheever, and I was awestruck at the beautiful sentences and sharp precision of Cheever’s writing. My discovery of Cheever’s writing led me to Scott Donaldson’s 1988 biography of Cheever, which I found in some discount bookstore at an outlet mall. (Remember outlet malls?) I read bits and pieces of the Cheever biography, and a couple of years later I discovered that Donaldson and I both attended the same high school, The Blake School. Donaldson was in the class of 1946, and I was in the class of 1999. Finding that connection made me like Donaldson more. Donaldson gave the McDermott Lecture for Fitzgerald in Saint Paul a few years ago, and I was disappointed that I missed it because I had to work that evening.

Scott Donaldson was the very first person that I ran into at the Fitzgerald Conference in 2017. It was Monday morning, and he was walking out of Hotel 340, where the conference was held, and I was walking in. I saw his nametag and said hi to him. I told him that I had enjoyed his books, and I mentioned that we had Blake in common. He told me that he’s always looked back fondly on his time at Blake. Donaldson spoke that afternoon about Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel Tender Is the Night, and he said that his next book would be about Tender. Donaldson’s obituary says that his book about Tender is due for publication. I’ll be looking forward to reading it.

Later during the week of the Fitzgerald conference, I was able to ask Donaldson about his time at Yale University. I knew it was something of a long shot, but I figured I’d ask him if he knew William F. Buckley, since they both graduated from Yale in 1950. When I asked Scott, his face lit up, he laughed and said, “I used to beat him at bridge all the time!” Turns out Scott and his roommate regularly played Buckley and his roommate. I learned from Donaldson’s obituary that it was no surprise he regularly beat Buckley at bridge, as Donaldson was one of the top contract bridge players in the country. Donaldson told me it was obvious even then that Buckley was brilliant.

A further Donaldson, Buckley, and Yale connection: Donaldson wrote a biography of Yale professor Charlie Fenton, who taught a class called “Daily Themes.” The premise of “Daily Themes” was that students had to turn in a piece of descriptive prose, 500-600 words in length, every day of the week, except for Sunday. Buckley had great things to say about the class, even though it made him sweat bullets at the time. Buckley’s 1986 essay “On Writing Speedily,” gives some details on the class, and in the essay, Buckley responds to criticism that he writes his newspaper columns too quickly. (He was known to turn out a column in half an hour.) Needless to say, “Daily Themes” was excellent practice for both Donaldson, who was a newspaper reporter before he got his Ph.D., and Buckley. I told Scott that Buckley had great things to say about “Daily Themes,” and I emailed him Buckley’s essay “On Writing Speedily,” which I don’t believe he had read before.

That’s the extent of my personal relationship with Scott Donaldson. I never saw him in person again after the week of the conference, but I sent him the occasional email, with links to my reviews of his books, and my lengthy review of Tender Is the Night, which was greatly aided by Donaldson’s chapter about the composition of Tender in his book Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days. Donaldson was always kind and supportive in his comments about my writing. As a novice Fitzgerald scholar compared to him, I always appreciated that, and I was always grateful that someone of his stature took the time to read my writing.

Donaldson’s obituary paints a fuller picture of his life, and it certainly reads like a life well-lived.

Book Review: Airborne: A Sentimental Journey, by William F. Buckley, Jr. (1976)

Paperback cover of Airborne: A Sentimental Journey, by William F. Buckley, Jr., 1976. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

William F. Buckley sailing.

Christo and Pup, Christopher Buckley and William F. Buckley.

William F. Buckley Jr. was a man of many talents and interests. Buckley founded the influential conservative political magazine National Review, hosted the weekly public affairs talk show Firing Line, wrote a syndicated newspaper column three days a week, played the harpsichord, started writing novels at the age of 50, and was passionate about sailing. Oh, and one time he ran for Mayor of New York City. And what have you done today, old sport?

Buckley’s first book about sailing, Airborne: A Sentimental Journey, was published in 1976. Airborne chronicles Buckley’s 1975 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in his schooner Cyrano. Various friends are along for the ride, chief amongst them Buckley’s only child, Christopher, or “Christo” as WFB refers to him. When Airborne takes place, Christo is a recent college graduate, figuring out what he wants to do with his life. Airborne features excerpts from Christopher’s journal of the voyage, and it’s very clear that he has a way with words—no surprise since we know that he goes on to become the author of 18 books, famous for political satires like Thank You for Smoking and Little Green Men. Christopher Buckley also wrote a fantastic memoir about his parents, Losing Mum and Pup, and reading that book piqued my interest in reading his father’s more personal books, like Cruising Speed and Overdrive, which both chronicle a week in the life of WFB. 

Buckley uses the ocean journey at the center of Airborne as a jumping-off point to describe the important role that sailing has played in his life. Throughout the book, Buckley weaves in many stories about the boats he has owned, and the adventures they have taken him on. Buckley writes eloquently about sailing: “The ocean and the sky and the night are suddenly alive, your friends and your enemies, but not any longer just workaday abstractions. It is most surely another world and a world worth knowing.” (p.26) 

The sailing bug bit Buckley early. At age 13 he was sailing regularly on a lake near the family home in Connecticut, where he raced neighbors twice his age: “Seventy-five races per summer for three summers may strike some as a few races too many. It struck me as too few races by far.” (p.58) 

Buckley also describes the dangers of sailing and the power of the sea. He also gives the reader an account of the tragic events of a cruise on Cyrano in June of 1971. While sailing on the Hudson River in Manhattan, a young African American advertising executive named Marvin Hayes was sitting on the lifeline of the boat when it broke. He fell into the water, did not know how to swim, and drowned before the boat could get back to him. Lawsuits were filed, and it was ultimately determined that shoddy workmanship was to blame: the lifeline should have held up to 3,000 pounds but “the rigger had applied the wrong kind of crimp to bind the cable to the fitting that secures it to the stanchion.” (p.82) (Buckley was not on board when this accident took place.) 

The voyage that Buckley describes in Airborne begins in Miami, with a stopover in Bermuda, and then on to the Azores. The trip is rife with technological problems from the very start. By the end of the voyage, even Buckley’s trusty sextant has failed him. “Now the list is pretty nearly complete: the radar, the autopilot, the batteries, the motor, the generator, the RDF, the loran, the chronometer, and the sextant. The factual errors in the instruction book for the HP-65 seem almost a diversion.” (p.211)

There’s an interesting section on celestial navigation, which Buckley was a big fan of. It sounds very complicated to a non-sailor like me, but it’s fascinating to learn about how you can find out where you are, even when you’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. (As long as you can see either the sun or the stars.) 

As a prose writer, Buckley’s style is surprisingly similar to that of his nemesis, Gore Vidal. Both men were devotees of the aside, the digression, as though their brilliant brains had so many competing thoughts occurring to them at the same moment that they simply had to set it all down, and well, dear reader, you’ll just have to try your best to catch up with them! Sarcasm aside, that may have been close to the truth, as they were both exceptionally brilliant men who probably did have a million different thoughts rushing through their heads at any given moment. And while that is entertaining to read, it can be tough to follow sometimes. 

What I like so much about William F. Buckley’s personal style is his confidence. You can see it on Firing Line. He’s leaning back in his chair, slouching, with his clipboard and pencil, eyes lidded as though he might suddenly drift off to sleep, and yet, he is never at a loss for words, for threading the complicated tapestry of the argument he is weaving. He can write a newspaper column in 30 minutes. He can sail across the Atlantic. I’m in awe of that kind of confidence, probably because I simply don’t posses it. As Christopher Buckley writes in his journal: “There are times when I’m right and times when I’m wrong. Usually, I admit when I’m wrong. WFB, it seems, does not subscribe to this.” (p.94)

Buckley was renowned for possessing a huge vocabulary, and it’s on full display throughout the book. I was thrilled to read Buckley use the word “arteriosclerotic” which was one of Tom Wolfe’s favorite words that he used throughout his first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Buckley finds the world of sailors even a little too conservative for him: “Sometimes, though, the tribal spirit spills over, and you get arteriosclerotic stuffiness.” (p.127) 

Buckley is aware that owning a yacht is what we would now call a “first world problem,” as he writes about reprogramming his constantly malfunctioning HP-65 navigation device: “You may put that down, if you insist, in the category of the Problems of the Idle Rich.” (p.189)

Buckley also came up with the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump when he wrote: "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)

Throughout Airborne, we see Buckley’s pride in his son, and so it seems fitting at the very end of the book he lets Christopher have the last word. “…even though I’m restless for the touch of land, if you were to set sail tomorrow to cross another ocean, I’d sell my soul to ship out with you. Any day.” (p.252)