Buckley, Pere et Fils

Your correspondent did not endure the double whammy of Oprah and Sarah (not to mention the hysterical audience, all of whom have been given do-it-yourself electrolysis kits and handbags filled with Ecstasy).  To steal a line from Terry Garner, I have a closet full of ten-foot poles to avoid touching shows like this.  Instead, I read, with a certain hesitation, Christopher Buckley's "Losing Mum and Pup."  

I wasn't entirely comfortable picking up a book about the demise of Buckley fils' parents, but I remembered with pleasure his laugh-out-loud "Thank You for Smoking" (movie's okay, book is terrific) and his classic imaginary debate between George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton over Martinis (right up there with Andy Borowitz's imagined exchange between Alan Greenspan and O.J. Simpson).

Buckley begins his book with a kind of apology for writing it, but says, "when the universe hands you material like this, not writing about it amounts either to waste or a conscious act of evasion."  He is aware, as are most people who push words around for a living, that (in Louis Auchincloss's felicitous phrase), "a writer's experience is his capital."

One wouldn't imagine a book with death as its subject could be funny, but this often is.  And what it finally amounts to is a lovely, intimate family portrait.  Do not be frightened by it.

Closing note:  Buckley pere, working to the end, has had three books published posthumously, leading his son to observe that WFB produced more books dead than many people alive.  In this corner we especially admire the final book, a collection of items from the author's decades as founder of the influential periodical National Review.  Buckley pere's title for this last work: "Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription."