Harold O. J. Brown, a youngish scholar who did his divinity work at Harvard and in the past has written religious essays for National Review, sends me a copy of a reproachful letter he has sent to Bart Giamatti, president of Yale, on reading Giamatti's dressy excoriation of the Moral Majority. Giamatti's remarks were made in September, to the freshmen, and my own comment on it at the time had been that to be lectured on the perils of the Moral Majority upon entering Yale was on the order of being lectured on the dangers of bedbugs on entering a brothel.
Again I reflect on the ire provoked by the MM, and the fashion parade of those who have attacked it. Giamatti is a man of near-infinite sophistication and wit, who would normally spend no more time warning us about the Moral Majority than he would warning of the Flat Earth Society. He'd be much more at home warning of the dangers of gnosticism, or sciolism, or pridefulness. But the A4oral Majority is the season's bug, and it sweeps the country. The president of Georgetown University has pitched in, with results similarly vulnerable. The first reaction to this kind of thing is the pleased roar of the programmed reactors—who was that singer who got so much attention, by merely stepping up to the podium during an entertainment at LBJ's White House, and declaiming on the Vietnam war? That kind of thing. But in the long run it's dangerous because the attack is clearly unbalanced and can damage your reputation for precise criticism, if you have a reputation for precise criticism.
The February 1982 Commentary would feature an article, alas at Giamatti's heavy expense, called "God & Man at Yale—Again," by Robert William Kagan, a recent graduate of Yale doing graduate work at Harvard. "The faction which Giamatti's speech served was that of the liberal intellectuals among whom he was raised and educated, and whose ideological dominance on the Yale campus has not abated for a moment since Buckley complained about it thirty years ago in God and Man at Yale. The fact is that the greatest threats to pluralism, to academic freedom, and to the values of a liberal education at Yale have always come from the Left, not from the Right or the New Right. The status quo which Giamatti has been trying to preserve against the destabilizing efforts of groups like the Moral Majority is quite secure within Yale's gates. Preserving it, however, may not necessarily be in the best interests of the University."
I write to Joe Brown thanking him for a copy of his letter, and expressing doubts that Mr. Giamatti will answer it. There, though, I must sympathize, because it isn't possible to respond when the answer would require extensive analysis to mail that arrives in such volume as no doubt it does to the president of a major university. Sometimes I wonder whether no answer at all is preferable to a very brief, formulaic answer.
Brooklyn College wants a telegram sent to be read out when Stanley Goldstein is given the Alumnus of the Year award, which will happen tonight. Stan Goldstein is a high concentrate of ability and enthusiasm who launched an accountant's firm only seventeen years ago, and now it is huge. He is deeply conservative, and so to speak ex officio he became the accountant for National Review, the Conservative Book Club, and suchlike organizations, even as Monsignor Eugene Clark, and only Monsignor Clark, gives the benedictions at our functions. I write out the telegram and feel glad for Stanley, though I fear that he will attribute his winning the Alumnus of the Year award to his jogging every day. How hard he has tried to get me to take up that dismaying practice. But he always knows when it simply won't work. I told him I would endeavor to use an indoor bicycle every other day, and he is pacified; while I am troubled by my inconstancy. At my funeral, I know he will be saying, "I warned him, I warned him."
Hugh Kenner sends me a copy of a letter he has fired off to the gentlemen at the Heath Company, complaining of the incompleteness of the instructions that appear in the Personal Computing course distributed by Heath. The problem is that one is drowned with material after the reading of which one spends hours trying to find out exactly what to do. Hugh recites the difficulties he has had and, along about page three, writes with that terrifying clarity for which he is so famous:
"So let's outline something better. Suppose Manual #595-2268-04, which comes with the machine, ended its nut-&-bolts section by saying, 'You now have the following: [outline of your hardware]. To make it do anything useful you need an Operating System such as HDOS or CP/M, both available from Heath.' Now let the HDOS manual commence, quite simply, An Operating System like HDOS configures the computer to receive data, execute programs, and communicate with outside devices such as disk drives and printers. In particular, it looks after the details of program and data storage on disks, directing traffic to and from these storage devices. It contains a number of Drivers (ATH.DVD, etc.) from which you will be selecting the proper ones to communicate with your particular disk and printer configuration. And it contains a relatively simple BASIC interpreter, so that you will have one high-level language at your disposal immediately.' "
One would want to kiss such prose, were it ever attached to an instruction booklet. But I must not go on to affect that all mechanical problems disappear on experiencing Hugh's prose. As I write, in Switzerland, I am simultaneously attempting to master not the internal mysteries of a word processor, but merely the technique of operating one; and I have here at my side identical counterparts of the machines Hugh Kenner has—the Z-89, the two disk drives, and the Diablo Printer. And, most valuable of all, sixteen pages of typewritten instructions conceived and executed by the great Hugh Kenner. Alas, after two days I gave up. I could not, from Switzerland, produce Kenner, who resides in Baltimore.
But providence arranged it that at the high moment of my distress two of my sisters arrived for a fortnight's skiing and brought with them nephew Jay Buckley—who is a computer expert. He pays me what he calls "office calls" after skiing, every couple of days, as I accumulate fresh desires I know not how to satisfy. Now, having been taught empirically by Jay, I can turn back to Hugh's instructions and read them like a road map. Some people write with total lucidity, but implicitly rely, for an understanding of what they say, on a level of spatial imagery some people just don't have. It is precisely this lack on my part that caused my essay on celestial navigation, first published in my book Airborne, to be such an unusual success: because it presupposes nothing at all. I am going to repay Hugh's courtesy, before I am through, by writing a fresh set of instructions on operating the computer, entitled: "Instructions for a Mechanical Simpleton. An Aprioristic Guide to the Use of the Word Processor." Practically the whole of it will be devoted to teaching the layman how to cause to be typed by the Diablo Printer, from the disk drive, as directed by the computer, the words that appear above between quotation marks.
I write to Mr. Clement at the Heath Company and tell him that if he should let H. Kenner slip through his fingers, I'd sell my stock in Heath, if I had any stock in Heath.
The fight over who will be the next director of the National Endowment for the Humanities rages. Two candidates are close to the wire, a third is held in reserve. The last is Ronald Berman, who served as chairman with distinction under Nixon and Ford. The other two are William Bennett, of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, and Mel Bradford of the University of Dallas. It is fair, but only roughly so, to say that the hard conservatives are backing Bradford, the neos, Bennett. I say it is only roughly fair, because some enthusiasm for Bradford is dissipated by speculation that he would fail confirmation by the Senate, the consequence of certain animadversions he has made in the past about Abraham Lincoln—none objectionable as historical speculation, but one or two the kind of thing you can mount mountainous demagogic campaigns on.
One month ago, in San Francisco en route to the passenger ship Viking Sky, on which I was voyaging and lecturing, I had a call from an assistant to the President with whom I have from time to time dealt, and she told me that Bradford was "out" and asked, in my opinion, were Bennett's credentials as a conservative authentic? I said that they were, and at the time thought the matter of the NEH disposed of.
Why, why do they drag these things ou
t so? In any event, it is all very much alive, and now Irving Kristol writes to denounce an editorial in National Review that falsely, in his opinion, elaborates the qualifications of Bradford. "Last night I read my latest issue of National Review, with its editorial on the NEH, and I must tell you that it depressed me enormously. I keep saying that the clear distinction that was once visible between 'neoconservatives' and 'old conservatives' is now so blurred as to be meaningless, but every now and then National Review will remind me that a gap still exists. The sad truth is that too many 'old conservatives' are so far distanced from the academic-intellectual world that they find themselves saying things, and doing things, that make the position of all conservatives in this world that much more difficult. Your editorial was a case in point."
Kristol proceeded to reject, at considerable length, the factual representations we had made; indeed, he did so so categorically that I simply assumed him to be correct, wrote him in that vein, and chose to disregard the general complaints, here quoted, about the difference between the new and old conservatives. I did, when I replied to Kristol, reflect on the fact that Jeffrey Hart, the single working academic professor on the staff of NR, who also writes editorials, happened to be the author of the editorial in question. National Review has never, in its twenty-five years, been in any significant sense "distant" from the academic scene: we have always roamed among professors and other intellectuals—it is simply amusing to denominate a journal whose principal editorial figure for twenty-three years was philosophy professor James Burnham as alienated from academic thought.
But Irving likes to make his points categorically, so I let it go. And now, having replied to him, I drop a note to Jeff Hart, my learned colleague, full professor of English at Dartmouth, who is traveling on the West Coast so I can't now reach him on the phone. Did he, I ask, get the facts on Bradford wrong? Well, interestingly enough—having now seen both accounts—I would judge that Hart was much closer on than Irving; but, really, it turned out not to be important, or in any case that is my reading of it. The appointment was finally given to Bennett.
It is hard to devise a happier couple with whom to share lunch than Priscilla Buckley and Joe Sobran. Pitts (her nickname) is the single unmarried of the original ten Buckleys (two of my sisters died young, leaving between them fifteen children). I lured her from Paris where she was working for the United Press, bringing to the large office there the quiet pleasure she has given everyone ever since (alongside Nancy Davis Reagan) she graduated from Smith College. She combines extraordinary efficiency with the most obdurate affability, self-effacement, intelligence, and charm. Joe Sobran is one of the two or three wittiest men I have ever met, with a cultural intelligence as penetrating as that of anyone around twice his young age. He was doing graduate work in English at Eastern Michigan University, trying to support three children and a sick wife (from whom he is now divorced) when our paths crossed. He has now been four years with National Review as a senior editor, and his editorials, book reviews, and culture pieces are in every issue. He is also launched as a syndicated columnist, and (he will tell you) is writing two or three books.
The parentheses above are something of a joke, because Joe is terribly disorganized in the endearing sense that Samuel Johnson was disorganized, though I am not absolutely sure that Joe would have ended by actually producing that dictionary. Recently someone sent me, with the notation "Can't wait to get it a full page from Publishers Weekly, advertising a book: "The Conservative Manifesto. The Philosophy, the Passion, the Promise. By Joseph Sobran. Introduction by William F. Buckley, Jr." The final sentence of the ad read, "Leading conservative spokesman William F. Buckley, Jr. has written a cogent and entertaining introduction to this definitive work." And, emblazoned on the top of the page: "Every disenchanted liberal and every American who calls himself a conservative—or is thinking of becoming one—must read this book.—Wm. F. Buckley, Jr."
On reading the ad I was faintly put off by my utterly certain knowledge that the book did not exist; that I couldn't, therefore, have written an introduction to it, let alone a cogent and entertaining introduction (though when it is written, it will of course be at least those two things); and I didn't even remember composing a tribute to the book that didn't exist, though on faith I'd venture to say, sight unseen, at least as much about anything Joe Sobran undertook to write. So I sent along the PW page to Joe with a questioning note, and in his wonderful, reassuring, there-there way, he called and reminded me that when the publisher asked whether I would write an introduction for the book he was commissioning from Joe, I had said sure; but they needed something on the spot, so / had told Joe to say something appropriate to what he proposed to write, and his memory of it was that he did so, gave the text to Frances to check it out with me, and he simply assumed this had been done. Well, it is certainly safe to assume that something you give to Frances to do gets done.
So I asked my friend Joe, on November 18, as Priscilla and I silently raised our glasses to each other, how was the book coming along that would be published in April (books are usually published about nine months after the finished manuscript is submitted). And he smiled and said, "Now Bill, don't you worry. It will surprise you." It certainly will.
I apologized to Pitts, knowing she had heard the story before, and told Joe that speaking of book blurbs and surprises, I had had a jolly time a few years back with David Niven. I was given his book, Bring On the Empty Horses, to review. Thank God I was so favorably struck by it, because David has been for fifteen years one of Pat's and my closest friends. I found the book absolutely remarkable, said so in my review, and one line in my encomium was picked up by the publisher, and used universally, as follows:
uProbably the best book ever written about Hollywood —New York Times."
I have no doubt this is so, and other reviewers similarly acclaimed it. About a year later I received a telegram from my British publisher. Would I immediately secure from David Niven a blurb for my first novel, Saving the Queen, which would be published in March? David was in Hollywood (filming Murder by Death), and I got him on the telephone. He agreed to read the manuscript that very weekend, and I got it to him. On Monday I had a telegram from him that read: "DEAR BILL: HOW'S THIS: QUOTE FASCINATING, EXCITING AND UNIQUELY DIFFERENT. WHAT MORE CAN YOU ASK? UNQUOTE. IF YOU DON'T LIKE, FEEL FREE TO CHANGE IN ANY WAY YOU WANT. DAVID."
The following winter, in Switzerland (as ever, during February and March), the evening before my departure for London where I would spend two days promoting Queen, I was in my study, the far end of which is equipped as an atelier centered about a Ping-Pong table. There, two or three times every week, I paint with David (he is expert) and whatever guests or friends are so inclined (we have a hundred guest-painted canvases lying about). David was concentrating most fearfully on his tulip or whatever, and I on mine, when I said, "David, remember the telegram, you know, the blurb for my book?"
"Umm," David said, rocking fore and aft on the balls of his feet, observing the petals of his daffodil.
"Well," I said, "I took you up on your offer, so I told the publishers that Mr. Niven had sent in a telegram: 'THIS IS PROBABLY THE BEST NOVEL EVER WRITTEN ABOUT FUCKING THE QUEEN.' " I swear it's true (though his friends and fellow professionals will never believe it) that for once in his life David Niven was caught off balance, for maybe half a second, which for him is a long time. His laughter was prolonged.
I am reminded that the next day, in London, during the press conference at which my novel was presented, the very first question was put to me by, no less, the young editor of The Economist, Andrew Knight.
It was something.
"Mr. Buckley, would you like to sleep with the queen?"
That was certainly an icebreaker, and I drew a deep breath. I explained to the journalists that anyone who had read my novel could not possibly confuse the existing queen with the fictional character I depicted. That being said, I thought it fair to respond with more spirit to the question of my friend Andr
ew, and added that, respecting the fictitious queen, my biological instincts were normal, but before undertaking any such irregularity as my character Blackford Oakes undertook, I would need to consult my lawyer, given the historical fate of some of the Englishmen who had dallied with royalty. Moreover, I pointed out, finally, it was important to remember that in my story the queen was the succubus, my American CIA agent most clearly not the incubus. The effort by Beautiful Andrew (they tease him with that—Andrew looks like a freshman, modeling) to transform my book into lese majeste was unsuccessful, though here and there a reviewer tried to make a little—not, really, that much—of the royal seduction. Mostly the book was ignored there. But there was one character, an elderly Englishman residing during the winters in Gstaad—a Wodehousian gentleman alongside whom Colonel Blimp looks and sounds like a dead-end kid—who assiduously telephoned ahead to all social hosts during The Season to ascertain whether I had been invited, in order to be able to say, if it turned out that I had been, that he would not be attending, as he did not desire the company of anyone who would insult the Queen. I confess that I greatly enjoyed it when, without informing me, a year or so later my wife sent off anonymously to Lord Pomp the centerspread of the New York Daily News, in which was a large picture of the Britannia's deck, featuring the Queen of England and her husband greeting me and my wife at the reception she held to commemorate the declaration of American independence from Her Majesty's (I must reflect here, where Lord Pomp would not need to) great . . . great . . . great . . . greatgrandfather.
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