| In His Own Words:
A Tribute to William F. Buckley Jr. As you now know, the father of the modern conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr., passed away this week. Bill Buckley was many things to many people: founder of National Review, enfant terrible, mischievous maverick, and host of the award-winning Firing Line. Here at Regnery, we were proud to know him as one of our beloved bestselling authors. In 1952, Regnery published Bill Buckley's very first book-the groundbreaking God & Man at Yale. It's been selling steadily and influencing new generations of conservatives ever since. Fifty years later, we were honored to publish Buckley's moving, elegant autobiography, Miles Gone By. Nothing we can say will do justice to this literary master. So we mourn and honor him with his own words. The following excerpts are taken from Miles Gone By, which chronicles Buckley's extraordinary life, from his childhood in Sharon, CT, to his college days at Yale, from his transoceanic sailing exploits to debating Ronald Reagan or chauffeuring Whittaker Chambers.
Excerpts from Miles Gone By, A Literary Autobiography
Conflict Over Unusual Words Some words, Dwight Macdonald wrote in a celebrated review of Webster's Third, belong in the "zoo section" of the dictionary. I.e., the words do exist, but the need for them is so remote, you can-and should-keep them caged up in the zoo until it is absolutely necessary to take one out, which may be never. I know a word that describes the feeling you have in the roof of your mouth when peanut butters sticks to it, but I will never use it; in fact, I decline to disclose it. Why Don't We Complain? We are reluctant to make our voices heard, we are afraid that our cause is too trivial to justify the horrors of a confrontation with the Authority...As I write this, on an airplane, I have run out of paper and need to reach into my briefcase for more. I cannot do this until my empty lunch tray is removed from my lap. I arrested the stewardess as she passed empty-handed down the aisle on the way to the kitchen. "Would you please take my tray?" "Just a moment, sir!" she said, and marched on sternly. Shall I remind her that not fifteen minutes ago she spoke unctuously into the loudspeaker the words undoubtedly devised by the airline's highly paid public-relations counselor: "If there is anything I or Miss French can do for you to make your trip more enjoyable, please let us-" I have run out of paper. On Yale and God Yes, God and Yale coexist...As I think back, I wonder that any apologetics need go any further than the remark I ran into at Yale. "I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop." I wish I had said that. The Secret of Fireflies Outdoors it was very very still, and from our bedroom we could see the fireflies. I opined to my sister Trish that when the wind dies and silence ensues, fireflies acquire a voice. "Why do they care if it's quiet outside?" I informed her solemnly that it was well known to adults that fireflies do not like the wind, as it interferes with their movements. Inasmuch as I was thirteen and omniscient, my explanation was accepted. The Essence of Sailing When you are in the harbor, four congenial people around the table, eating and drinking and conversing, listening to music and smoking cigars, the wind and the hail and the chill outside faced up to and faced down, in your secure little anchorage-here is a compound of life's social pleasures in the womb of nature. On Ronald Reagan Yes, there was the legendary aloofness, but this was forgivingly accepted...Reagan sat at one end of the table with sandwiches and a glass of wine telling stories, making Thanksgiving credible for his friends. It's hard to imagine him out of action, and best not to dwell on it. On Whittaker Chambers The tokens of hope and truth were not, Chambers seemed to be saying, to be preserved by a journal of opinion, not by writers or thinkers, but only by activists. Though Chambers was intellectual, insatiable and relentlessly curious, it was action, not belletrism, that moved him most deeply. Typical Buckley I said to Johnny Carson that to say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around.
Regnery joins the rest of the conservative community to
mourn the passing of our founding father. RIP, WFB.
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