Christopher Buckley: “Steaming to Bamboola” and Other Journeys

Episode Transcript
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>> Peter Robinson (00:00):
Essays, book reviews, and more than 20 novels,
including a great dealof political satire.
A thoroughly American life of letters.
Christopher Buckley on Uncommon Knowledge,now.
[MUSIC]

(00:23):
One of the country's mostprolific political satirists,
Christopher Buckley graduated from Yale,became an editor at Esquire,
served as speechwriter to Vice PresidentGeorge H W Bush, then began writing books.
Mr. Buckley's more than 20 volumesinclude Steaming to Bamboola,
his 1982 chronicle of lifeaboard a tramp steamer.

(00:44):
His 1994 lampoon of Washington lobbyists,Thank You For
Smoking, which was made into a movie.
And his 2009 memoir, Losing Mum and Pup,
about the year in which he lostboth his mother and his father,
the journalist William F Buckley Jr,Christopher Buckley, welcome.

>> Christopher Buckley (01:01):
Good to be here.

I should state, for purposes of full disclosure, that you and
I have been friends for four decades.

We have backgrounds.

Yes, we do. >> Christopher Buckley
We have background.

There's a backstory [LAUGH].

What's the backstory?

One of the smartest things I ever
did was to bring you aboard,
the George H W Bush speechwriting team.
Which had been known for
a while as the Christopher Buckley era,and

(01:35):
then quickly became supersededby the Peter Robinson era.
And then you went on to even greaterglory as a Ronald Reagan speechwriter.

Thank you. >> Christopher Buckley
you wrote probably the most famouswords he uttered as president.
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Thank you very much, we will edit that out for the purposes

No, no, no, no.

I'll play that for my children only, thank you.

I'm here to talk about you.

[LAUGH].

[LAUGH] well, not really.

That will make this a difficult conversation.

Actually, the title of one of my books is But
Enough About You.

But [LAUGH] exactly.
All right, so we start.
We start when you and I, no,we start a little bit before you and
I actually met each other.
By the way, you remain what you havebeen in my eyes for the last 43 years,
I think we've known each other.

Is it that long?

Which is the coolest kid I know.

You.

Okay, so- >> Christopher Buckley
By the time we met, you had already been an editor at Esquire.
A brilliant start, I remember a profileyou did of the King of Spain,
who was then a dashingyoung figure in those days.
Which was titled, of course,The Reign In Spain.
[LAUGH] Get it?

[LAUGH] Not bad.

So you wanted to be a writer.
And then there was the Yale Daily.
You were not editor of the Daily News but
there was a->> Christopher Buckley: Yale Daily
News magazine.
The magazine, okay.

And my [COUGH] colleagues on that staff were
John Tierney,who's gone on to brilliant things.
He had a 25-year careerat the New York Times and
is now leading contributorto the Manhattan.

The City Journal, yes.

Yes, the City Journal.

Right.

Also aboard, Michiko Kakutani.

I didn't know that.

Who became the most influential book reviewer
in the country.
Jane Mayer, of the->> Peter Robinson: New Yorker?
Now of the New Yorker.
She had been at I thinkthe Wall Street Journal, but
she's one of the country'sleading journalists.
Lloyd Grove, who was withthe Washington Post for 25 years.

(03:55):
So it was pretty,it was not a bad talent pool,
myself excluded,I'm building a wall around me.
But these were really talented people.

So there you were- >> Christopher Buckley
great, great careers.
There you are as an undergraduate and
you've already decided thatyou wanna be a writer.

Well, with my math [LAUGH] skills, such as they were,
writing was pretty much->> Peter Robinson: Computer science was
out of the question [LAUGH].
Pretty much the only avenue open to me.
But I did want to write and I did.

So, your father was a large,
large figure in many lives,including mine.
You're his son, I have thought manytimes over the years that if I
had been that man's son, I would havesold knishes on the street in Manhattan.
I would have done anythingother than become a writer.

I contemplated a career selling knishes.

[LAUGH] >> Christopher Buckley
at last it was a short-lived dream.
[LAUGH]>> Peter Robinson: But
did it cross your mind, how do I do this?
How do I do this whilegetting out from under WFB?

There are advantages and
disadvantages to being inthe same business as your
father if your father isa star in that business.

Right.

But he was always very supportive without being,
I mean,he never once urged me to be a writer and
he was very often [LAUGH],
to my disappointment, my best critic.

Did you pass manuscripts back and forth?

Sure.

You did? >> Christopher Buckley
one of the advantages andone of the really great things about
being in the same business asyour dad is you get to talk shop.
And what do writers talk about mostly?
I'll tell you what they talk about.
They talk about money.

(06:16):
are they paying you for that piece?
They're paying by the word or by the piece, yes, right?

Well, when I was in college and we all wanted,
my colleagues at the oldDaily News magazine,
all we wanted to be wasfreelance writers [LAUGH].
Can you imagine?
And at the time,the top pay in the freelance

(06:43):
writing field was Playboy,which paid $1 a word.
You have to imagine Austin Powerssaying that, $1 a word.

one of the issues,we decided to send letters
to all the famous writerswe could think of.
Saying, the letter began,dear Mr. Malamud, dear Mr.
Heller, dear Cynthia Ozick,dear John Updike.

(07:17):
Congratulations, you have beenchosen by [LAUGH] the staff of
Yale Daily News magazineas a great writer.
And we would therefore like tocommission an original piece from you,
and we can pay $1 a word.
Next paragraph, unfortunately,our budget [LAUGH] means that we can

(07:38):
only commission you towrite a ten-word article.
you'd be surprised who we got,
I mean we got->> Peter Robinson: Really?

We got Uptike, we got Tom Wolfe, we got Joan Didion,
we got Bernard Malamud,we got Anthony Burgess.
Well, they were all sortof charmed by this.

Of course.

And Tom Wolfe sent us a 20 The theme
was the end of the world, so that was->> Peter Robinson: The end
of the world in ten words.
Well, so Tom Wolfe,
he gave us 16 words and he said,

(08:16):
please send the extra$6 to William Styron,
the Connecticut novelist,to help cheer him up.
And so we were titillated to thinkthat we'd been drawn into this,

(08:36):
some kind of literary feud between twoof the gods [LAUGH] of American writing.
Anyway, so we had fun andsome of us went on to write for,
I think it's safe to saywe went on to write for
less than $1 per word.

All right, your first book,
I have here the 40th anniversary reissue.
Your first book is Steaming to Bamboola,
a chronicle of life at sea aboarda tramp freighter, all right?
And when I reread this,after the passage of 40 years,
I read the first edition and the 40thanniversary reissue, and in between,

(09:22):
I confess I'd forgotteneverything about the book.
I was delighted to findthat it was wonderful.
But I thought to myself, I've neverquite understood, where is Bamboola?
So I looked it up, I actually pulled upan artificial intelligence agent and said,
where did Christopher,what did he have in mind?
And here's what I got, Buckley usesBamboola as a metaphor for an elusive

(09:44):
destination, the phrase thus encapsulatesa sense of a perpetual voyage.

You got that from AI?

Artificial intelligence.

That's scary.

So you have introduced a phrase into the language.
Where did this book come, what'sthe inspiration for Steaming to Bamboola?

I was sent off to the Benedictine monks at the age of 13 for
boarding school in Rhode Island.
I've been sad to say, I've beena disappointment to the monks ever since.
But the school was on Narragansett Bay.

Where in Portsmouth?

Portsmouth Avenue and the bay would freeze over,
we had severe winters.
But the Coast Guard ice breakerswould cut a channel in the ice so
that the big ships going to andfrom Providence could get in and out.
And so we would go walk out on the ice,like a half a mile out on the ice so

(10:43):
we could smoke cigarettes undisturbed.
And one day I was standingright at the edge of the ice,
maybe three quarters of a mile out,and a freighter passed by and
there was a crewman on the poop deck,coiling lines.

(11:04):
And he looked up andsaw this sort of improbable sight,
a 16 year old in a blazer andtie smoking a cigarette.
I guess he was sort of charmedby this apparition and
he did something very cool,he said, as in,jump.

Come with me, come with me.

And that was a very romantic moment to me, and
I decided one day I would go to sea andso I did.

Steaming to Bamboola, I'm quoting here.
I won't go on and on, you've flattered me,so I will flatter you.

Do, please.

The book is full of character and the dialogue is super,
all right.

Let thy praise flow trippingly from the tongue.

[LAUGH] When he was not yelling and carrying on,
the Bosun ran a poker game.
He was making crazy bets,a hundred dollars on the cut of the cards,
a hundred on whether pork chopswould be served for dinner tomorrow.
He had almost no booze left, whichput a desperate edge on his drinking.
One morning, Slim,different character, Slim,

(12:12):
ran up to the captain's cabin andbegged him for just one can of beer.
Slim never drank at all, sothe captain asked him why.
Slim said the Bosun was going to givehim a cuckoo clock in exchange for it.

[LAUGH] I'd forgotten that.

The captain handed Slim the beer, and shook his head.
He was hoping the boozewould run out soon.
Things were getting out of hand.

[LAUGH] >> Peter Robinson
this book appears whenyou're 29 years old, and
now that you've told methe fellow staff members
at the Yale Daily News magazine,maybe, but did you.
I'm trying hard not to makethis sound like sheer flattery,

(12:55):
did you know how good you were?
The book was extremely well reviewed.
How do I answer that?
The process of writingit persuaded me that I
was arguably the worstwriter in the world.

(13:16):
I was very fortunate to have as an editora really great man of American letters.
My editor was a guy named Tom Congdon,
who is slightly more famousat being my editor than for
editing a book about a vengeful shark.

(13:40):
I believe the title was Jaws,and it became, I think,
at the time,a bigger seller than the Bible.
I worked on this very hard,
I think there were 650 pages,
which to a rookie writer, feels cool.

(14:04):
You feel, my God, I'm Dostoevsky,and here are 650 pages.

Big typescript.

And Tom called, he said, it's wonderful,
it's even better than I had hoped.
So I walked on air for about two weeks and
then arrives in the maila rather suspiciously thick
manila envelope with Tom's notes,50 pages, single spaced.

(14:33):
And I called him, I said,Tom, I thought you liked it,
I thought you said it was good.
He said, it is, andit's going to be so much better.
[LAUGH]>> Peter Robinson: So
I realize as we speak that you andI are talking about a lost world,
we remember it, but it's a lost world.

(14:54):
Is there an editor in New York who wouldgive line by line notes like that today,
50 pages, single spaced?
I have a sense that the late Bob Gottlieb,
who is considered the greatestbook editor of our
era who has been Robert Caro'seditor on four or

(15:16):
at this point five volumesof Lyndon Johnson bios,
I get the sense he may well have been.
Bob Gottlieb was also famously editorof Catch-22, one of the great,
probably arguably the great comic novel,American comic novel of the 20th century.

(15:38):
I don't know, but
the stories one hears are sobering.
One of my great friends was Sylvia Morris,wife of Edmund Morris,
a great biographer andshe was a great biographer.
And I hardly urge anyone watchingthis To read her two volumes

(16:01):
of Clare Boothe Luce,who was, I think, really,
the outstanding Americanwoman of the 20th century,
for reasons good and maybe otherwise.

But wonderfully readable.

Amazingly, >> Peter Robinson
The point of my story, and I do have one is, [LAUGH] so
Sylvia Hands in volume two,which is stunning work.
And seven weeks go bywith no word from her
editor, imagine that, seven weeks.

(16:40):
And she's worked on this for 15 years, and
then finally on week eight herphone rings, she says, it's great.

The world has changed.

Yeah. >> Peter Robinson
the satirist appears, 1986,the publication of your first novel,
The White House Mess,narrated by Herbert Wadlough,
an assistant to the fictionalPresident Tucker.
And the opening scene takes place asthe newly elected President Tucker arrives

(17:12):
at the White House to movein on Inauguration Day.
On January 20th, 1989.

1989, and the then outgoing incumbent, Ronald Reagan,
simply decides that hedoesn't care to leave.
Herb said the President-electbarely above a whisper.
This is Tucker talking to Wadlough,the narrator and main character,
we have a situation here,President Reagan won't leave.

(17:41):
The President-elect turned toPresident Reagan's physician commander,
is there something you can do?
The commander said the presidentmight respond to two cc's of
adrenaline->> Christopher Buckley: [LAUGH]
But that at his age,
it might provoke an undesirable reaction.
When the President-elect askedwhat sort of undesirable reaction,
the commander replied, death.
A tabloid headline played before my eyes,

(18:03):
Reagan killed by injectionby incoming President.
I am not usually forceful at meetings,but I spoke up and
offered my frank opinion that thiswas not a viable option, close quote.
Okay, wonderful.
Questions, why from fiction to nonfiction?
And why, you and I sat in desks nextto each other writing speeches for

(18:27):
George H W Bush, whom you revered andcontinue to revere.

And you were looming larger and
larger>> Peter Robinson: And
you were totally down with the end ofthe Cold War program of cutting taxes.
You and I, together, won the Cold War.

We won the Cold War [LAUGH].

I mean, let's pat ourselves on the back.

After all these years, credit where credit is due.
But at some level, in the back of yourmind, you're watching it all happen and
thinking, this is perfectly preposterous.
You must have been at some level.
So why do you move fromnonfiction to fiction?
And why are you satirizinga life that you led?

Well, I worked for Mr. Bush for,
I guess, a total of almost two years.
And in the course of that,being at the White House,
I read, recreationally,a lot of White House memoirs.
As you know, anyone who hasworked at the White House for

(19:27):
more than five minutes writes at leasta 500-page memoir about their time there,
which usually has inthe title the word power,
principle, andother rather inflated nouns.
But I became fascinated by this sortof subgenre of White House memoirs.

(19:51):
And it was one of those rare momentswhere a light bulb goes off.
You thought that would befun to parody cuz also in
the course of working at the White House,
I learned a lot about the White House,stuff that I could use.
And it opens with that scene.

(20:15):
The book came out in 1986while President Reagan
was halfway through his second term.
The notion in 1986 of a presidentreluctant to leave the White House was,
shall we say, still a quaint notion->> Peter Robinson: Yes.

(20:36):
Even comic.
And the opening of the booksort of gave it headlines,
gave it traction, andit became a New York Times
bestseller, which was very nice.
But at one point I beganto worry about the Reagans,

(21:01):
whom I had known for many years.
Dear, I wonder if they'refinding this funny too.
And in a press interviewwith the Washington Post,
I admitted that I was a little bit nervousas to what their reaction would be.

(21:23):
In short order arrived a handwritten note,
just said, The White House, and no stamp.
So yeah, who gets to do that?
And so I tremulously opened it.
And it was a handwrittennote from the Gipper,

(21:45):
from Ronald Reagan, saying, Dear Chris,
I just wanted to say I'mdelighted by the book and
tickled to have been part of its success.

Lovely.

And what grace [CROSSTALK].
What grace was there?
Who else would?
Well, I'll tell you who else wouldwrite that, George H W Bush.

George Bush would have written that.

George Bush would have written that.
They both possessedextraordinary grace and decency.

And it mattered to both of them,
gentlemanliness mattered to both of them.

Utterly, as you recall,
you spent a lot more time inthe Oval Office than I did.
Mr. Reagan never took off his jacket->> Peter Robinson: Correct.
In the Oval Office because he thought it would have been
disrespectful.

To his own office.

To his own office.

Little green men, the list of your satires goes on and on.
Let's pause for a moment, though,in 1994, and Thank You For Smoking.
Incidentally, our friend,the journalist, Andy Ferguson.
Andy and I were talking the other day,and he said, The White House Mess and
Thank You For Smoking are the two funniestbooks ever written about Washington.

(23:05):
You and I have the same regard for Andy,coming from Andy, that means something.

I think Andy is, for my money,
among the top threewriters of our generation.
And into the bargain,a lovely, lovely man.
A great friend of the late P.J.
O'Rourke, whom I think we all miss deeply.

(23:32):
Anyway, Andy obviously is also a manof excellent literary taste [LAUGH].

serving.
[LAUGH] Main character in Thank You for Smoking is Nick Naylor,
who is a completely winsome character,intelligent, warm,
funny, sweet, and a lobbyist forthe tobacco industry.
Thank You For
Smoking is such a hit that it has turnedinto a 2005 film of the same title.

(24:00):
Thank you for smoking.
A brief excerpt from that film.
>> [APPLAUSE]>> Joan: This is obviously a heated issue,
and we do have a lot thatwe wanna cover today.
Nick, do you have a question?

>> Nick Naylor (24:12):
Joan, how on earth would Big Tobacco profit
off of the loss of this young man?

[LAUGH] >> Nick Naylor
I hate to think in such callous terms, butif anything, we'd be losing a customer.
It's not only our hope, it's in our bestinterest to keep Robin alive and smoking.

>> Ron Goode (24:30):
That's ludicrous.

>> Nick Naylor (24:31):
Let me tell you something, Joan, and please let me share something
with the fine,concerned people in the audience today.
The Ron Goodies of this worldwant the Robin Willigers to die.

>> Ron Goode (24:44):
What? >> Nick Naylor
So that their budgets will go up.
This is nothing less thantrafficking in human misery.
And you, sir, ought to be ashamed of->> Peter Robinson: [LAUGH] Where
did Nick Naylor come from,how did you devise this character?

I'll tell you exactly-

So outrageous.

Many years ago, I was watching,
as it was then called,the McNeil Lehrer Report,
and the latest scientificevidence had just been
established that smoking isn't good foryou.
This was evidence number 19,342.

(25:24):
So they had on the scientistwho had published this paper in
the New England Journal of Medicine,and he had so
many PhDs after his name that itwouldn't have fit on a business card.
And as he spoke, you could almost seethe footnotes scrolling beneath him.

(25:46):
So, because of notions of fairness,
old fashioned notions of fairness and
balance, they had ona very attractive woman,
attractive in a sort ofa Lauren Bacallish way from
the Tobacco Institute,to offer an opposing viewpoint.

(26:10):
And every time this poorepidemiologist said something,
she just went, please.

are the data?
She said.

She said, I think grammatically correctly,
where are the data?
And I fell in love.
I thought,what a fascinating job that must be.
You get up in the morning,brush your teeth, dress the kids,
send them off to school, and then go tothe office and sell death for a living.
And so that was the genesis.

The writing life, Friends and Heroes,
Christopher Buckley andChristopher Hitchens.
Everything he said was brilliant.
You were very close friendswith Christopher Hitchens,
you became a close friend of JosephHeller, although different generations.
Joseph Heller, the Author of Catch 22.
You were very close to P.J. O'Rourke,

(27:11):
you knew Hunter Thompson,you knew Tom Wolfe.
I'm trying->> Christopher Buckley: If we were talking
about, if all these people were painters,
I would be the guy paintingby numbers with crayons,
in the middle of the Louvre withcanvases by, people like that.

(27:39):
I was, I count myself very luckyto have known these people.
And I miss them,everyone you just mentioned- Is gone.
Is gone.

And I spoke at three, four.

PJ who?

Four, all I do these days is-

Eulogies.

PJ, Christopher, Heller and Tom Wolf.

And Tom Wolf.

But I consider myself very fortunate to
have gotten to know these giants.
These were gods in my world.

What influence did they have on you as a writer,
did you study anybody's style?

Well, I think you consciously or unconsciously always-

Always.

Studying their style.
I remember in collegethe two hot writers we
all worship from afar were Tom Wolfe.

Tom and Thompson.

And Hunter Thompson.

Mm-hm.

And as rookies, newbies,
I believe in currentapartments we committed
the cardinal idiocy of imitating them.
So, pretending to write,
we're channeling Tom Wolf andHunter Thompson.

(29:12):
And, if you showed me stuff that Iwrote in those days in that vein,
I would ask one ofthe technicians with us please
to hand me Mel Gibson's returned pistol so
that I could shoot myself.

(29:33):
The worst thing a youngwriter can do is to imitate.
Although I would note that->> Peter Robinson: Cuz you have to go
through it, don't you think?
Hunter Thompson worked at Time Magazine at one point?
I think he also may haveworked at Sports Illustrated,

(29:54):
but I think it was while hewas very low level writer.
And while he was there heretyped Hemingway novels.

Mm-hm.

Because he wanted to figure out how to do it.
And that struck me as, now->> Peter Robinson: That is setting up your
easel at the Louvre.
That is setting up-

And copying Renoir.

And copying Renoir.

Brushstroke by brushstroke, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah, all right.
But I grant, I'm willing to putup with everything you said,
even though you are a masterof self deprecation.

[LAUGH] Well, as they say in Hollywood,
if you can fake sincerity.

You got it made.
>> [LAUGH]>> Peter Robinson: But
this book is published when you're 29 andthere's nothing imitative about.
There's no passage, well,this is second rate Hemingway.
Or this is an attempt.
There's nothing like that in here.
There is an act of synthesis takingplace in the young Buckley and
it takes place very fast.

(30:57):
All right, I'm just gonna force I'm noteven gonna let you comment on that one.
You're gonna have to listen.

Just lead that way. >> Peter Robinson
compliment.
The satirist of late,The Relic Master 2015,
the action takes placein 16th century Europe.
A forger of religious relics tricksa royal collector into believing he has
acquired Christ's burial shroud.
When he's found out, he's forced to makeup for it by stealing the real shroud.

(31:22):
The Judge Hunter 2018,
this time the action takes placeafter the restoration of Charles II.
A young Englishman is sent to the NewWorld to track down two of the judges
responsible for the executionof the king's father, Charles I.
Kirkus Reviews calls this, quote,
a witty bromance about internationalintrigue, close quote.

(31:43):
Incidentally, H.R McMaster,former national security advisor and.
A great American and a fantastic writer.

I'm so happy that you complimented him because he said he wanted
me to tell you that heloved the Judge Hunter.

All right, that's high praise,
I'm sure undeserved, but a terrific guy.

From political sapphire to historical fiction, why?
You had a great gig going therewith the political stuff.

[COUGH] Well, I had done political
satire by that point.
I probably, I don't know,banged out ten or so-

Little green men.

And [COUGH] Frankly, Peter, and
I wouldn't be surprised if youagreed with this assessment.
By this time, American politicshad kind of become auto satirical.
I mean, I'm not sure it needed satirizing.

(32:54):
Another element of it was,[COUGH] let's try something different.

Right.

And the historical novels I found really quite fascinating
cuz you have to, well, you have to doa lot of research, you have to read.
I mean I probably read 50 booksto write each one of these.
But it was like being back in college,only fun.

I see- >> Christopher Buckley
it was all the->> Peter Robinson: You say 50 books and
it sounds onerous, butactually you enjoyed it.

Yeah. >> Peter Robinson
the details right, butalso the feel right.
Yeah, yeah, and to do that you gotta do your homework.
But the writing I found very challenging.
And I actually don'tmean this as a sly way,

(33:49):
in a self-satisfied way, but
I don't think I couldwrite those books now.
I'm 72, I was in my early
60s when I wrote those and
I don't think I have the stamina.

I'm not gonna talk you out of that one right now, anyway.
Two particular figures,the Vishnu and your father.
First, the Vishnu.
Everyone listening to this is saying,who on earth is the Vishnu?
And you're going to tell us.
Christopher.

[COUGH] >> Peter Robinson
Christopher Buckley and George H.W.Bush, Mr. Bush was,
to be sure, an ur Yankeeblue-blood establishmentarian,
but he was always winking at you.
The Vishnu was the mostconsiderate man I have ever known.
The Vishnu.

(34:55):
I went to work for Mr. Bush in 1981.
This is now referred to asthe pre Peter Robinson era.
And [COUGH] he had recently been gifted,to use that odd verb,
a statue by a,[COUGH] I think the Indonesian ambassador

(35:15):
to the United States,whom he had known when Mr.
Bush was the US ambassadorto the United Nations.
He had been gifted a statue ofthe Hindu God Vishnu with a plaque
describing in great detailall of the Vishnu's

(35:36):
individual powers which amountedto supreme omnipotence.
[COUGH] [LAUGH] So Mr. Bush sort of,
he liked this and he got a kick out of it.
And because he was a manof excellent chest,
which is not necessarilyNew England Yankee quality.

(36:00):
He began referring to himselfplayfully as the Vishnu.
So we'd be on Air Force Twotaking off from Minneapolis after
a campaign swing there, and over the PAsystem would come [LAUGH] a voice.
This is the Vishnu speaking.
The Vishnu is well pleased by [LAUGH]today's visit to Minneapolis and

(36:27):
has proclaimed ordered an extra totof rum for all the lesser deities.
And anyway, so we all referred to him,
at least on the campus, as the Vish.
Hey, we gotta go see the Vishabout the speech or whatever.

(36:47):
Late in his life,I went to visit him in Kennebunkport,
and he was at this point,not far from the end,
and Parkinson's and other ailmentshad sort of locked him down bodily.
And I said it's good to see you,

(37:12):
Vish, and he'd forgotten.

Aah!

And so I told him- >> Peter Robinson
him of this.
And his face which had been a bit imprisoned by
the medications.
There was a distinct smile and that gleamcame in and it was really all I could do.

(37:40):
He was a dear man and
I think country misses him greatly.
I know you miss him.

I do, I do.
Losing mum and pup 2009, a memoir ofyour final year with your parents,
William F Buckley Jr. and PatriciaTaylor Buckley, who is less known,
but was one of the most remarkablepeople I've ever known.

Yes, [LAUGH] a cross between a Noel Coward
character and a snapping turtle [LAUGH].

She made up her mind quickly about people.
But if she liked you and
one of the great privileges of mylife was that somehow or other,
within a minute of meeting me- [INAUDIBLE]>> Peter Robinson: [INAUDIBLE] Was all
right.

You made the cut.

You were all right forever.

Their bodies strewn over the landscape of
belonging to those whodid not make the cut.
But she was quite something.

This is your show, not mine.
But there was a fundraising event, I thinkit was for the Dartmouth Review, and
your father was kind enough to come andyour mother came and she saw me.
So I came in, everyone was seated, soI got down on my knees next to her,
which actually wasthe correct thing to do.

She would have liked that.

And she said, Peter, what am I doing here?
[LAUGH] SoI had to explain what the Dartmouth.
I think I had to tell herwhat Dartmouth was, yes.
Anyway, again, I won't go on andon, but we visited.
When my children were littlefive children, and at this time,

(39:30):
one of them was still an infant.
And your mother had set up the table,
making no concession to childhood at all,the heavy silver.

Finger bowls.

Finger bowls, except that one of the chairs was a high chair.
And she conducted andhad went to quit, and then she said,
children, pay attention, I'm going toshow you how to use a finger bowl.

[LAUGH] >> Peter Robinson
I have a feeling that will be a memory with your
children for->> Peter Robinson: With my children.
Many years.

From Losing Mom and Pup.
Years ago, Pup gave an interview toPlayboy, Pup is your term for your father.
Pup gave an interview to Playboy magazine,asked why he did this,
he couldn't resist saying, in order tocommunicate with my sixteen year old son.
At the end of the interview, he wasasked what he would like for an epitaph.
And he replied,I know that my Redeemer liveth.

(40:26):
Only Pup could manage to work the Bookof Job into a Hugh Hefner publication.

I used that in my eulogy to Pup at St.
Patrick's, I was confused.

This year marks the centenary of your father's birth,
in what ways is this being celebrated?

Well, the US Postal Service on
September 9th will unveil a stamp,
a commemorative stamp honoring Pup.
You can't be blase about

(41:08):
having a dad who was on a stamp.
It occurred to me, I was asked fora comment about it by
the Washington Post when it wasannounced just a few days ago.
And my comment was,makes me wanna take up stamp collecting.

(41:31):
But you always think ofsomething better on the way out,
the French call it the [FOREIGN],the [FOREIGN] being
the staircase that you walkdown after the dinner.
And it occurred to me,
Pup in the inaugural issueof national review in 1955,

(41:55):
declared that itsNational Review's mission
would be to stand athwart history yelling,stop.
And I wished I had had the wit[LAUGH] to say to the Washington Post,
now Pup is standing athwarthistory yelling, stamp.

always happens too late.
But anyway, I'm delighted, and
I urge you all viewers,
the stamp will be available for
advance purchase on August 9th.

(42:43):
30,000 post offices,
that stamp will be available at 30,000
post offices or on usps.com,>> Peter Robinson: all right?
A century, this is a staggeringthought to the likes of you and me,

(43:04):
but a lot of viewers will simplynot remember the Cold War.
They certainly won't remember 1955.

[CROSSTALK] You weren't alive.

I don't remember 1955.

I was alive, but really it went right over my head.

[LAUGH] So what should
people grasp about your father?

There are, I believe, not far from where we are sitting
at this table inthe Hoover Institute archive,
the original tapes of the 1504 episodes of
firing line that he taped between 1966 and

(43:55):
1999 when he gave it up.
I think at the time he retired,he held the record for
longest single host of a show.
And [COUGH] all those episodes,
I can't claim to have seen all 1504.

(44:17):
But they establisheda level of civility and
yet inquiry that I thinkis still unmatched except,
isn't there a programcalled Uncommon Knowledge?
Yes, and I'm going to,just sit still because

(44:40):
I'm going to say something nice about you,
that you are an admirable heirto the standards that Pup sat.
He was never mean,
he was very often on the attack.
But he was attacking you,not on personal grounds or

(45:04):
necessarily ideological grounds, butif you were going to debate with him,
you had better have your argument ready.
And he had everyone on [COUGH] he
was a gentleman, my father.
I never honestly heard him sayanything mean about anyone,

(45:28):
even Gore Vidal,with whom he famously clashed.
Famously, andhe felt very abashed about that moment.
And the only time, that happened in 1968,
Vidal left us, not a moment too soon,
[LAUGH] sometime around 2010 or so.

(45:53):
The only time Pup evermentioned Gore Vidal
after that was in an oddlypositive context.
I remember Vidal was offered a chair at
the American Institute of Arts andLetters.

Yes.

And Vidal, he declined it, saying, thanks, but
I already have Diners Club.
And Pup thought that was aboutthe funniest thing he'd ever heard.

Really.

Yeah, no, I heard him cite that 20 times.

Really?

Anyway, so I think he set a standard
which we would all do well to revere.

All right, so
you're mentioning this exchangebetween your father and Gore Vidal.
At one point, years ago, I went intothe stacks of the Stanford Library and
found the issues of Esquire inwhich those two men had explained
themselves to the extent,in one issue, your father.

(47:04):
And as I recall, it was the second issue,the next issue was Gore Vidal,
I think your father went first.
Each of those men wrote 5,000 words,
published in a then popularmagazine in Esquire.
And what I found sostriking when I went back and
looked at both of those essays isthat the editor had not relieved

(47:26):
the text with call-outs, orboxes, or photographic inserts.
It was assumed thatthe subscriber to Esquire magazine
was a reader andwould enjoy these 5,000 words.
I would agree with you andyour father that Gore Vidal had very
serious drawbacks, in fact, he was thecraziest guest I ever had on this program.

(47:51):
But he could handle prose, andthose two essays were simple.
By the way, the last two words ofyour father's 5,000 words, 4,000 999.

You hereby apologize.

I apologize.
Yes, I apologize.
So Christopher, how do you and
I tease out the natural tendency to
remember the past fondly from actual
serious changes in the wider culture?

(48:25):
About which, honestly,it might in some way even be
our duty to warn our children andtheir generation.
A loss of gentlemanliness as an ideal, assomething that people took very seriously.
The three men we were talking about,Reagan, and George H.W Bush, and your dad.

(48:46):
And to them,gentlemanly behaviors, civility.
Your father admired polemics.
I remember his telling methat Hitchens about him.
He had some reservations.

Well, >> Peter Robinson
polemic ability.
Nevertheless, they were all.
So gentlemanliness and the literacy.
Reagan would never have felt athome in the faculty lounge at Yale.
But that man read and wrote constantly.
Don't you agree?
[COUGH] >> Peter Robinson

(49:22):
Well, there are certain
obstacles to civil discourse.
It's in the form of this, and
the instant communication.

(49:43):
Jonathan Haidt has written,
is the author of a currentbestseller saying,
we are destroying ourchildren by allowing them
unfettered access to the Internet andiPhones.
And there are movements now taking root,

(50:04):
where you have to surrender youriPhone when you walk in school.
And I'm all in favor of that.
When you and I were growing up,there were three TV channels,
and one extra called,which was always on channel 13.

Yes. >> Christopher Buckley
you had to use a round antenna.
Yes, exactly.
And it was called Educational Television.

Educational TV.
And I think at any given evening,roughly over half the households
in America would be listeningto Walter Cronkite.

That's right.

And you turn on the TV today,
you immediately hearthe sound of barking and
language that, had you used it at home,
your mother would have stucka bar of soap in your mouth.

(51:13):
These are impediments.
And now these words are uttered from
the highest podia in the country.
So I don't know how we get back to that.
But we all raise our own children,

(51:35):
and a lot depends on that.
My father used to say,he was a devout Catholic, and
he used to say, despair is a mortal sin.
So one must not despair, but
one must make efforts to be civil.

(51:58):
I believe the Bible expresses it as,
do unto others as you wouldhave others do unto you.
Sounds quaint.
Still pretty good.

Still pretty good.

Advice.

Yes, you mentioned your father in the Hoover Institution.
Thanks to your father's son, Christopher Buckley.

That would be me.

That would be you.
On this his centenary celebration,
the Hoover Institution not onlyholds the original master Films of
1504 Episodes of Firing Line,but this typewriter.
Tell me about this typewriter.

Well, this is the typewriter that launched
the modern conservative movement.
This is the typewriter on whichhe typed that National Review's
mission would be to standathwart history yelling, stamp.

(53:03):
[LAUGH] So I'm gonna
touch it one last time.
This was his typewriterat National Review.
And as I approach my own doubtlessly
disappointing interview with St.

(53:28):
Peter, I thought it was time that it
go somewhere where it will be cherished.

It will be cherished.

I wrote a book you mentioned, called The Relic Master.
This is a relic.
And there's something about relics.
Anyway, I'm very pleased.
And I think he would be pleased.

I think he would.

That it's going somewhere where it will be loved and
taken good care of.
And you might even be ableto find a ribbon on ebay.
But you might->> Peter Robinson: It's a royal.
It's a royal.
It'll probably take some looking for.

Thank you.
Christopher, last couple of questions here for now.
My demise won't be terriblyfar off your demise.
So I'm really rather hearing you speak->> Christopher Buckley: Let us not talk
about your demise.
Let us not speak of demises.

I'm much older than you.

Please.
If I may quote the tobaccoindustry lobbyist, please.
[LAUGH] All right, Ronald Reagan,
George H.W. Bush, your father.
There was an email exchange,or a phone call.
I honestly can't remember quite what.
But when we lost one of these men,you said to me, the adults are leaving.

The grownups are leaving.

And there's nobody left but us children.

But us children.

So as we approach our own demises,
how do you think they wouldjudge the job we've done?
If they were the greatest generation,
do you think we can skate pastas the adequate generation?

[LAUGH] That should be the title of your next book.

My next book, yeah.
Adequate Generation.

[LAUGH] I miss these.
I miss the three peopleyou've just mentioned deeply.
I have to say,I'm a little glad they're not
around to see what's going on now.

(56:01):
I think they all threepossessed an inner sunniness
that almost had the forceof atomic generators,
and I think they would not despair.
But I have to say I'm sort of glad they're

(56:23):
not around to see it as tohow they would judge us.
[LAUGH]>> Peter Robinson: Let's pass on
to other matters.
[LAUGH]>> Christopher Buckley: There will be no
dinner tonight and no TV for a week.

I wanna linger on that point just a moment because I hadn't
thought of it this way,but you're exactly right.
One of the things that all three of thosemen had in common was a cheerfulness,
but I almost wish there werea heavier sounding word because their
cheerfulness was not superficial,it was not a mere.
All three men had paid a price fortheir cheerfulness.

(57:05):
George H W Bush's cheerfulnesswas almost a duty of
one's approach as an American anda gentleman.
He'd been shot down as an 18 year old.

And lost a beloved daughter to leukemia at age four.

All three of these men had suffered the full share of life
sufferings andremained optimistic and cheerful.

I think the word you're looking for is grace.

Yes. >> Christopher Buckley
possessed of extraordinarygrace from which I
suppose we get the adjective orthe noun for graciousness.
But it's I think one ofthe cardinal virtues,

(57:54):
if not the cardinal virtue in religion,
in the church that I grew up in,
which was my father's.
He was a very devout Catholic.
Mr. Bush was a verydevout Episcopalian and

(58:15):
I think Dear Mr.Reagan was kind of sort of a modern deist,
but I think he believed in providence.
Yes, he did, >> Christopher Buckley
Thomas Jefferson.
Who was non-denominational.
But it's this,not to get new agey about it, but

(58:37):
it's this glow,it's an inner glow from which
the other virtues derivethe capacity to forgive.
Mr. Bush, I never heard himsay a mean word about anyone.
I never heard my father say a mean word.

(58:58):
He might not have particularlyadmired someone and
I don't think Ronald Reagan ever probably.
These three, they didn't havea mean bone in their body-
They really did not.

And that made them, I think, who they were.

Christopher, would you close our conversation?
I return to your first book.

But enough about them.

[LAUGH] We haven't mentioned your books of essays,
one of which is titled.

I know, I feel.
Actually, I'm kind of.

No, you're hurt, are you?

I'm kinda hurt.

Would you bring us to a close by reading the epilogue of Steaming
to Bamboola?

A few minutes before midnight, the ship sailed for
Puerto Rico.
In the dark, none of the signsof her old age were visible,
none of the rust streaks,none of the dings.
Her black hull shone underthe glare of the spotlights, and
there was stubborn dignity in the wayshe resisted the pull of the tugs.

(01:00:07):
As she moved away from the wharfwith a rumbling in her boilers,
there was shouting from the bridge.
It was the captain.
His walkie-talkie must have failed.
He was yelling toward the bow,drowned out by other noises.
As she moved into mid-channel andthe tugs prepared to release their lines,

(01:00:29):
I caught sight of a seaman standing onthe poop deck lighting a cigarette.
He saw me there on the shore andwaved, and
I watched until she roundeda bend down river and was gone.

>> Peter Robinson (01:00:59):
Okay, that will be edited out.
Thank you very much.
[INAUDIBLE] No, no, no.

>> Christopher Buckley (01:01:04):
I'd leave it to you.

You bastards, you would, wouldn't you?
Christopher Buckley, thank you.

>> Christopher Buckley (01:01:10):
Thank you, pal.

For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation,
I'm Peter Robinson.
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