Miles Gone By [ a literary autobiography]  by William F. Buckley Jr.

Regnery : Washington, DC 2004

The extreme difficulty of coming up with something novel to say about this body of work or its author was compounded manyfold by the inconvenient  (for me) circumstance of both having been around for quite a while, worked half to death by critics and commentators.

Nevertheless, I think I've done it. I've noticed something I've not seen remarked upon before - but only because I was desperately, desperately auditing.

It is this : nowhere in this assemblage of Buckley's previously published works does he perform that ghastly and now de rigeur American  self-disclosure, the one which, to put it delicately (and reluctantly) invokes the ethnicity and/or nationality of one's forebears, seasoned with dewey-eyed pride and garnished with pathos. I've read much of what this man has written over the years, and I, for one, have no idea what quarters his people are sprung from. Europe, I suppose, by his physiognomy, or some of them at least. Could be a Comanche octaroon for all I know. This is but one of many, many examples of Bill Buckley's marvelous presentation of self, so exceptional and yet so very normal. He deeply respects our privacy, and so does not impose upon us. I like this, and many other things about Buckley and his works  very , very much.  

Oh, and the gratitude, very nearly overwhelming : not once does he mention golf, or suggest that he has the slightest interest in it.  An interest in golf is exactly the sort of thing one should keep to one's self, if indeed one is afflicted by it. Don't ask and please, please don't tell. 

I met Buckley, in a sense, as we filed out of a Washington political banquet along with the hundreds of other guests and speakers. He'd been a speaker, but from my D-list table in Siberia much of what he'd said had been unintelligible to me over the clinking of ice in our glasses. I was troubled, because I'd made out one sentence of his remarks and observed that he'd  left the dias rather abruptly when he'd finished. He'd said:"...and we'll survive this one, too."  That was in January, 2002.

I wrote to Bill Buckley, a paper letter neatly typed,  recalled the evening to him, complained about the acoustics in the banquet hall and troubled him to provide me with a transcript. I had a prompt reply, on lovely stationery. It turned out William F. Buckley, Jr. had been referring to the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Buckley is, among other things, the absolute coolest guy alive, except for my dad, Jack Kotik.  My dad can do all that Buckley does (except, so far anyway, change the course of world history -he delegated that to Buckley) but can also play the cello and the trumpet.

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