May 15, 2007
Writing About Buckley Posted by Alexander Burns at 02:50 PM EST Joshua Zeitz’s front-page feature today reviews a new biography of William F. Buckley, Jr. The verdict from Mr. Zeitz is disappointing: The book is “too much an appreciation, rather than a critical study of a man whose influence on American political thought has run both wide and deep.” For those interested in Buckley’s career, and especially the earliest part of it, I recommend a glance at the final chapters of Sam Tanenhaus’s 1997 biography of Whittaker Chambers. It contains a brief but vivid portrait of Buckley. He comes across as a phenomenally gifted young thinker, determined to cleanse the American right of kooks and bigots and make it into a movement worth leading. “He is something special,” Chambers tells his wife, Esther, after a meeting with Buckley. “He was born, not made, and not many like that are born in any time.” Tanenhaus also notes the “glamour and style, the heedless joy of privileged youth,” that Buckley brought to conservatism. He and his wife, Patricia Taylor Buckley, “a Vancouver heiress as tall and striking as her husband,” helped produce an atmosphere in which, for the first time in a long time, it seemed like conservatism did not have to be the exclusive domain of grouchy old men like Robert Taft. Buckley was also a flamethrower, willing even to sabotage the Republican Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower in order to advance his more staunchly rightist cause. Obviously, the 40-page conclusion of another man’s biography does not do justice to Buckley, nor does it render him in the intensely critical light he deserves. However, readers like Mr. Zeitz and myself, who believe this figure “deserves a first-rate biography,” may not have long to wait. Tanenhaus is at work on another volume that promises to reproduce the success of Whittaker Chambers. This time, his subject is William F. Buckley, Jr..
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