I got a nice early Christmas present this year.  My whole life it’s just been me and my Dad, and so it was a little awkward to call home and hear a strange voice on the other end of the phone.  Whereas I’m used to just barging straight into conversation, this time I stuttered to get out words never before uttered: “is…uh…Peter there?”

You see, Dad has an Egyptian houseguest currently staying with him: a professional kickboxer, trying to make his way here in North America.  Now, to hear Dad speak of Konga (not his real name, but Pops isn’t exactly the world’s best Arabic speaker), is to hear him speak of a boy with drive, ambition, goals, i.e., the exact opposite of me.

To be fair, I have no doubt that Dad is proud of my Master’s degree in political theory.  After all, who wouldn’t be proud of a son who can talk ad infinitum (or indeed drop phrases like ad infinitum into daily conversation) about justice, equality, representation, aesthetics and the like? But I’m not exactly bursting at the seams with ambition, unless you count shining shoes or bussing tables as ambitious.

Now, anyone who knows Dad knows how great of a man he is.  When I was a kid, this was irritating, because I only ever wanted to talk about, you guessed it, me, but everyone around me seemed more interested in talking about him.  Big shoes to fill, you know?

But I have to face a harsh reality: he has a new son now.  And so I find myself thrown into the cold unfeeling marketplace, looking for a new Dad to fill the void.

People who have never met Dad 1.0 always ask me what he’s like.  I usually say something to the extent of ‘well he’s a lot like me, except humble, nice, caring, etc.”.  These qualities will have no place in Dad 2.0.

The first prospective new Dad I can think of is Bill O’Reilly.  Abrasive, loud, authoritative, but still charming as hell.  He has a Master’s degree from an Ivy League school, but if graduate school has taught me anything, it’s that a monkey could get a degree in liberal arts so long as it can jump through hoops and kiss ass at the same time.

So let’s add a bit of solid intellect to the mix.  Who do I get? Plato.  Sure, he was a proto-fascist.  But he is the father of Western political thought, and even his biggest detractors cannot help but admit to his genius.  He would have told me my role, and would have expected me to conform to it.

But Plato wasn’t exactly all that approving of writing, and if you haven’t guessed by now, I would like one day to be a writer.  So next up I have William F. Buckley Jr., the intellectual voice of American conservatism for decades.  Buckley would have taught me how to be authoritative, a genius, an author, a sailor and, last but certainly not least, a socialite.  He also, like me, always had a pen in his mouth (Shut up, Freud, I’m not talking to you).

So in the end I choose Buckley.  And even when I look at his real son, Christopher, the author of Thank You for Smoking, I see an image of my future self.  A touch arrogant, sure, but suave as suave can be: with a really sharp wit and with sharper fashion taste.

Now, some will look at this list and say ‘you’ve picked all conservatives’.  Well, duh.  What do you think a father should be?

I should recapitulate.  I love my previous father and he is a great man.  I wish him and his new son all the best, and I hope that kickboxing turns out to be more lucrative than political theory.

(Incidentally, today is my father’s birthday.  Happy birthday Dad!)

Many of you will spend hours in the car as you journey to visit family and friends during the holidays. Why not make the most of your transit time and listen to an audio book? Our top 10 picks for 2009 span from tear-jerker novel to complex financial scrutiny, all chosen by BookPage audio columnist Sukey Howard.

Fiction

Rain Gods by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster Audio)
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson (Random House Audio)
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Penguin Audio)
The Shawl and Rosa by Cynthia Ozick (HighBridge Audio)
The Women by T.C. Boyle (Blackstone Audio)

Nonfiction

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall (Random House)
David Sedaris: Live for Your Listening Pleasure by David Sedaris (Hachette Audio) — Review coming soon in the January issue of BookPage
Fool’s Gold by Gillian Tett (Tantor)
Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley (Hachette Audio)
Panic by Michael Lewis (Simon & Schuster Audio)

Do you have any audio books to add to this list? Tell us in the comments.

I have an important message for Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the most visible Republicans on the national stage: Keep going! You’re doing great! If this was video, you would see me standing an applauding. Maybe holding up a lighter for an encore.

The Republican Party is shriveling faster than Rush Limbaugh on a flight home from the Dominican Republic.

While I believe America only benefits from a robust two-party system, the Republicans aren’t really filling their seats at the table. The insufferable centrist Democrats, for better or worse, are covering the power void in an unofficial interim capacity and it wouldn’t shock me if there was eventually a replacement party built up around the conservative Democrats and some of the center-right moderate Republicans.

Another theory for another time.

But it’s clear that there will either be a clean break in the current party dynamic, or the more moderate, reasonable faction of the Republican Party will begin to seriously assert itself against the wingnuts who are, simply put, cartoonish stereotypes of themselves.

It’s this latter group that appears to be scaring away GOP moderates and whatever remains of “intellectual” Republicans like, say, David Frum, David Brooks and Christopher Buckley. Center-right voters are becoming increasingly embarrassed to call themselves Republicans, and party identification has dwindled to 20 percent. And it’s not necessarily borne out of an ideological split as much as it has a massive character gap.

Modern “wingnut” Republicans still share many of the core values of classic conservatism, but they’ve abandoned the all-important character traits of reason, consistency and intellectual honesty. They’ve entirely navigated their crazy train off the rails, specifically in terms of how they talk about their conservative values.

Call it the Malkinization of the Republican Party. Abandoning these traits frees them up to make the loudest noises possible without worrying about whether the noises actually make sense when assembled in the form of a sentence. The Glenn Beck strategy. If one guy stands on the sidewalk pleasantly handing out political leaflets, and another guy is positioned directly across the street shouting crazy gibberish, who’s going to enjoy the most attention? Glenn Beck across the street of course, and it’s not necessarily because he’s making the most sense. He’s just shouting gibberish.

But if polling is any indication, people don’t want to be associated with a party that elevates crazy self-satirical wackaloons. Especially when they refuse to be honest about who they are, and, instead, try to keep up a very obvious and transparent masquerade.

For instance, Fox News Channel continues to refuse to admit that they’re an extension of the Republican Party. They refuse to admit that the network’s news programming has an obvious right-wing slant. Everyone knows it. So why don’t they just admit it?

Rush Limbaugh is playing the same game. When he was called out for his race-baiting by the NFL, he refused to acknowledge the fact that he markets in racially-insensitive language in order to play to the darker instincts of his audience. That’s his thing and he’s a multi-millionaire because of it. But he lacks the class and honesty to man-up to his shtick. The same goes for wingnut stereotype Erick Erickson and MSNBC’s resident crank Pat Buchanan — each of whom described the president’s Nobel Peace Prize as the consequence of “affirmative action.” But, but, but they’re not race-baiting. They’re — well, yes, they’re absolutely race-baiting in a way that would make Lee Atwater blush.

This inability to own their rhetoric doesn’t help the Republicans and only damages what remains of their authenticity.

And it’s this lack of authenticity that gives way to the wide array of contradictions and inconsistencies we’re witnessing on the wingnut right. How can President Obama be Nixon, Carter, Mao, Stalin and Hitler at the same time? How can he have a Christian former pastor and also be a Muslim? How can liberals be both communists and Nazis? How can there possibly be Republicans who are attacking the Democrats for fiscal irresponsibility even though the Democrats have suction-cupped themselves to the door of the CBO?

I imagine the whiplash alone is scaring away whole chunks of former Republicans. One minute, they’re expected to defend George W. Bush by suggesting that it undermines the troops to attack the commander in chief during a war, and then they’re banking around on a dime to suddenly attack the new commander in chief during a war. I’m not sure how anyone can look themselves in the mirror and feel good about being that flagrantly inconsistent.

The same goes for matters of governing. The Republican Party could stand to show a little humility for their recent record. Instead of at least pretending to “grab a mop,” as President Obama said this week, they continue to stomp their feet and hold their breath about everything from federal spending to war strategy to — here’s a laugh — executive power and civil liberties. Suddenly the Republicans care about executive power abuses and the “trampling” of the Constitution, eh? That’s rich.

Again, the whiplash must be excruciating.

Meanwhile, rather than debating the policy aspects of health care reform or Afghanistan or the economy, they’re attacking the president for asking kids to stay in school, and outing principals and teachers for daring to teach their students about, you know, the President of the United States. Time well spent, Republicans. You’d think these educators were asking kids to worship (in tongues) a cardboard standee of the president.

But while there are several reasonable voices emerging from the twisted wreckage of the Republican Party, the current leaders don’t appear to be taking the hint and are, instead, doubling down on the crazy. Make no mistake, I’m happy to see the Democrats flying solo, as aggravating as they might be sometimes. But, as I wrote earlier, I tend to view the Democratic squabbling as the interim two-party system in lieu of any sort of reasonable Republican opposition.

Meanwhile, keep going, Republicans! And buck up, little troopers. There’s at least one thing you have going for you. Contrary to nearly every poll, Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post says it’s been a good year for the Republicans. And there’s always TIME Magazine’s Mark Halperin who seems to always believe that positive news for the president is, instead, negative news for the president. As Republicans, you should appreciate and cherish how insanely upside-down that is. Congratulations. Ass-backwards support is better than no support at all.

Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog! Go!

Jaguar will build only 50 copies of the XJL Supercharged

Neiman Marcus whose Christmas Book gifts used to be a nod to the wealthiest, has unsuprisingly this year went from extravagant to modest.Their well-heeled clients had reset their minds thus cut back on spending.A year ago, Neiman Marcus proffered a $1 million custom-designed golf course and $10 million horse farm within weeks of a global financial markets collapse. No takers emerged, but a $275,000 collection of vinyl records of top rock and pop music hits did find a home.

This year,  Neiman will charge you $200,000 If you want to brag about having a diner party  at the New York City’s Algonquin Hotel with some of the world’s sharpest minds-Henry Louis Gates Jr., Christopher Buckley and George Stephanopoulos.

For car lovers, there is a $105,000 limited- only 50 copies- edition Jaguar.Be ready to dial fast on Oct. 16, which Neiman Marcus begins taking reservations. (The number is (866) 524-6963 and the phones open at noon Eastern.)

Reuters

Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley
Publication: Random House Trade Paperbacks; 4th edition (February 14, 2006), Paperback, 288 pages / ISBN 0812976525
Genre: Satire
Rating:
Find @ Amazon or IndieBound
Read: August 2009

Thank You For Smoking feels like a very 90’s book. Not just because it’s set in the 90’s, but just because the uber-yuppie seems like such a 80’s/90’s cliche. It’s like how American Psycho was full of uber-yuppies (and, er, death)– that whole money-money-money and screw everyone else mentality. Some books, though they may have been written seventy years ago, still seem very fresh and new, where as some other books, er, don’t. Unfortunately, Thank You For Smoking felt more like the latter kind of book.

Summary from Indiebound:

Nobody blows smoke like Nick Naylor. He’s a spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies-in other words, a flack for cigarette companies, paid to promote their product on talk and news shows. The problem? He’s so good at his job, so effortlessly unethical, that he’s become a target for both anti-tobacco terrorists and for the FBI. In a country where half the people want to outlaw pleasure and the other want to sell you a disease, what will become of the original Puff Daddy?

Anyway, since it’s a parody of all those uber-yuppie things, Thank You For Smoking is by turns hilarious and horrifying. It’s hilarious because the whole thing is just over the top, and it’s horrifying because there are no doubt some people who did (or still do) think like the uber-yuppies in TYFS think. By the end I was tired from laughing but I was also somewhat shocked at how horrible people can be.

Satires don’t necessarily mean relatable characters, and unfortunately that holds true here. I was really interested in seeing how Nick was going to pull off his plot and I did root for him to win, but I didn’t like him as a person. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to like him, though– it’s really hard to like uber-yuppies because they’re so slimy even when they’re trying to do good things.

I did enjoy reading Thank You For Smoking! But it feels so dated that it was hard to get into completely, and I’m not sure I would have finished it if I hadn’t already seen the movie and wanted to see how it differed from the book. But it was funny, and an interesting look at mid-90’s yuppies (and how people thought of them), and I think some of the morality issues are valid even today. If you liked the movie, you’ll probably like the book!

Get your own copy from Amazon or your favorite indie bookstore.

Other reviews: NickAnny Creations | Knowledge is Cool | The Post College Years

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/missing-you-a-review-of-losing-mum-pup-by-christopher-buckley/

Christopher Buckley is the only child of the late larger than life couple of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Patricia Buckley.  William was well known for his conservative newspaper column, his books and the TV show Firing Line.  Patricia was well known for her glamour and her skills as a hostess.

Obviously, with parents like that, Christopher didn’t have an ordinary childhood.  Politicians, celebrities and actors were frequent guests in the Buckley household.  Trips to exotic places around the world were common.  Christopher really didn’t know that his parents were all that different from anyone else’s until he was a teenager and away at boarding school, though.  After his parents visited, comments from other students made him realize how unique his family was.

William and Patricia died within a year of each other and, being an only child, Christopher was the one who had to deal with making health care decisions at the end, and handling funeral and burial details.

I listened to the audio version Losing Mum and Pup which is written and read by  Christopher Buckley.  I wasn’t sure this was the right book for me since both of my parents are in their eighties and my dad has had some struggles lately.  I decided to give it a try and just stop listening if the book became too emotional for me, and I’m glad I did.

This book certainly has some emotional moments, but it really doesn’t focus on the end of William and Patricia’s lives – rather it focuses on their relationship and what it was like to grow up with larger than life parents like them.  It’s a celebration of living life to its fullest.  Christopher said his goal in writing the book was to make it a “testament to their devotion,” and I think he succeeded admirably.  Losing Mum and Pup had the potential to be a terribly sad book, but Christopher’s humor keeps it from being too heavy.   This book is a loving tribute to his parents written by their adult son who still misses them.   I think fans of memoirs and William F. Buckley, Jr. will enjoy this story, like I did.

By October 2008, the National Review was in disarray. The site had pretty much given up any claims it had to high mindedness by immediately getting behind Sarah Palin, despite her complete lack of experience and terrible performance in all interviews she participated in. But even worse than that was the defection of Christopher Bluckley, known primarlly for sharing half his DNA with his father, William F. Buckley. Chris endorsed Obama, and thus was expelled from the National Review family…..for ever.

But, even worse it seemed was the defection of David Frum. Frum, a former Bush speech writer whose primary contribution to the English language is  the ‘axis of evil,’ was, as the New York Times said, one of the primary sources of the National Review’s euridation. A bit after Buckley left, so did Frum, believing that the National Review, the Republican Party and conservatism in general had gone of the deep end. He left the National Review to found newmajority.com, basically the exact same thing as the National Review online, but hopefully with less crazy.

According to a politico article today, he’s mostly fulfilling that goal. Oh sure, the site doesn’t get nearly enough hit to support anything close to a business, but at least he’s very, very, very far away from the pile of crazy that is the National Review’s current editorial team.

This is a memoir written by the son of one of America’s best known icons, William F. Buckley, Jr. (WFB) and socialite Patricia Taylor Buckley.   As one might expect, the Buckleys lived lives on a very grand scale, and their deaths within a year of each other left the author feeling lost.   He wrote this book not just to document their lives but also – in a sense – to spend more time with them.

Average human beings will find it amazing to learn of the speed with which WFB could write books, which he often dictated from his prodigious memory of history and political events.   His son, a humorist, makes no pretense of having his father’s intellectual skills and stands in awe.   The reader is also surprised to learn that WFB was a daredevil on water and in the air, a fact little known before the publication of this book.

Mrs. Buckley was a woman on-stage, dramatic and often so disagreeable that the author felt the need to forgive her while she was on her death bed.   Politics are wisely left aside in this memoir poignantly written by a son who clearly still very much misses his larger-than-life parents.

Twelve, $24.99, 251 pages

Reprinted courtesy of Sacramento Book Review.   This is a “bonus” review.

I have been reading a lot lately. I had previously been on a bout of not being able to get myself through anything and instead found myself doing various other things on my train rides (Peggle on the iPhone, etc.).

I started with “throw away titles” as I like to call them because even though I enjoy them for what they are, they are my versions of trashy novels. They were Mass Effect: Ascension and Darth Bane: Path of Destruction. As I said before, by no means, do I dislike these novels but I would never put their “value” in range with something like The Great Gatsby.

I then picked up Wonder Boys which was the start of my more “serious” reading. Having previously read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Wonder Boys was exceedingly easy to breeze through having been an earlier piece of work in Micheal Chabon’s career.

Up next was Boomsday, an excellent novel, written by the author of Thank You For Smoking, Christopher Buckley. I had never previously read anything by him and I am pleased to say that I loved the book. It is truly a book for the blogging generation.

To top it all off I picked up a copy of The New Yorker and I have been enjoying that for the past few days.

The next book up that I plan on reading is Empire by Orson Scott Card. I want to read this because there is an upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game called Shadow Complex and its story is loosely based on this particular novel. This is my first excuse to read something by Mr. Scott Card.

Charlize Theron

La bella actriz Charliz Theron, ha adquirido los derechos de la novela “Florence of Arabia”, escrita por Christopher Buckley (Gracias por fumar), bajo Denver and Delilah Filmsse, su propia productora.  Theron además de producir la cinta también estará al frente en el rol protagónico, y contará con Dean Craig en la adaptación del guión.

La novela cuenta la historia de Florence Farfaletti, interpretada por Theron, quien descubre como su amiga, la prinicesa Nazrah es ejecutada al intentar huir de su marido, el príncipe Bawad, luego de terrible hecho, Florence realizara una cruzada utópica con el afán de lograr la igualdad de los derechos de la mujer en aquel país.

“It was there [Rougemont, Switzerland], perhaps more than in New York and Stamford, that I saw most close up the binary energy that the two of them put out. People just wanted to be around them. They were the fun Americans: the cool intellectual who wrote spy novels on the side and his beautiful, witty, outrageous wife. They had — how to put it? — class” (page 168).

“Losing Mum and Pup” – Christopher Buckley

Little Green Men not only holds up well, but might even improve with age and the stream of stories about lunatic politicians. The novel supposes that “alien” abductions are happening at the directive of a secret government agency named MJ-12. The rationale was originally to a) scare the Russians and b) inflate the defense budget, both of which seem so plausible that I wouldn’t be surprised if such a thing had or is taking place.

MJ-12 functions well enough that “Fifty years and more after the first UFO sightings, the vote was in: a full 80 percent of Americans believed that the government knew more about aliens than it was letting on.” Yet most serious thinkers dismiss aliens as a crackpot phenomenon. A computer program maintains this tension by abducting people unlikely to be believed; as a low-level bureaucrat named Scrubbs says, “the credibility algorithm seemed to have a bias toward overweight women. It would be nice if just every once in a while it picked, well, Claudia [Schiffer—who was then a desirable model] would be nice.” Once again, Buckley knows too much about government and the boredom so many government jobs entail, getting the details of tedium so right that I almost wonder if Little Green Men wouldn’t also be at home in a political science syllabus. Little details about Scrubbs, and the ridiculousness of the situation in general, provide the efficient comic combustion fueling the novel: it mocks both government, the media, and Washington D.C. at just the right levels.

Our friendly bureaucrat Scrubbs decides not to be as feckless as we suspected him to be, and he orders the abduction of a talk show host blowhard named John Banion not just once, but twice, causing Banion to make alien abduction his main topic, much to the ire of his sponsors, friends, and others, who respond with “Slammed doors, trenchant sarcasm, dripping scorn. He wondered if this was what the disciples went through.” Middle East peace and the Russia situation never seemed so simple.

Imagining himself as part of Jesus’ retinue is perfectly appropriate for a man whose ego has so long been inflated by punditry that he probably does imagine himself leading the sheep who are his audience. And yet at the same time, a series of byzantine turns causes him to get a much lower brow, higher rated show that, as one character observes, is more interesting anyway because his followers take action instead of pondering the universe over their morning coffee.

These followers might have some trouble with the intellect, however, as Banion’s messiah-like speech to them on the subject of government secrecy indicates:

People! [Banion says.] Do you know what we are?
Tell us! We want to know! What are we, anyway?
Mushrooms!
From the sea of perplexed looks, it was clear that Banion’s metaphor was not immediately apparent.
You know what you do with mushrooms, don’t you? Stick ‘em in the dark! Feed ‘em a lot of shit!
Ah! Yes, now we get it! It’s a metaphor!

A lower class but a larger volume: that’s Banion’s power. But his ability to change Washington itself is suspect; a presidential election following a NASA fiasco brings new faces to Washington who claim that they’ll crack down on influence peddling. One politico observes: “They all say that when they’re running. Then they get to town and see how it works and we all become best friends.” Banion steps outside the circle. What follows is hilarious because it’s both real and surreal, and things even stranger than fake UFO abductions happen in Washington when one departs the well-worn path. No wonder so few do.

According to his only child, Christopher, William F. Buckley, Jr. often said, “Industry is the enemy of melancholy.”   Accordingly, Christopher Buckley has written this memoir – literally a book of memories – about his parents’ final years as a way of dealing with his loss and sense of disorientation.

We all, of course, knew about his father, the late conservative icon often symbolized by the initials WFB.   WFB wrote 5,600 newspaper columns between the years 1962 and 2008; hosted Frontline for 33 years; and had completed 56 books as of the time of his death.   Patricia Taylor Buckley, WFB’s wife, is someone we knew little of, but she comes to life in her son’s telling as a regal and charming – if occasionally impatient – woman.

What is very clear about the Buckleys is that they were, indeed, larger-than-life figures.   When Patricia one day received a call intended for WFB and was told the president was on the line she responded, “The president of what?’   Of a female politician she said, “That woman is so stupid she ought to be caged!”

While we may think we knew WFB, this book provides a few new views and perspectives.   It was clear that the author of God and Man at Yale was an intellectual (a man who could dictate using perfect punctuation), but not many of us suspected that he was a daring sailor and pilot whose near-death escapades make for lively reading.   As summed up by Chris, “Pup was the bravest man I knew.”

Well, but then politics is a dangerous sport.   Christopher, who supported Barack Obama, has the great sense to touch lightly on conservative versus liberal in this memoir.

Christopher does show us that WFB was both a prideful man and a man of fine humor.   When asked, back in 1965, what he would do first if elected mayor of New York City, WFB answered, “Demand a recount!”

WFB was to say that “Despair is a mortal sin”; and also that “I believe in neither permanent victories nor permanent defeats.”   Perhaps this is why his son crafted this book of memories so that it celebrates the lives of his parents – despite some personal faults that he clearly divulges – rather than the defeat he felt from their passings within a year of each other.

“Christo,” as he was known to WFB, was able to directly tell his father, “I love you very much.”   This despite the fact that WFB could be a harsh critic of his son’s work, including sending this e-mail message just after receiving his son’s latest book:  “This one doesn’t work for me sorry.   XXXB.”

There’s little cause to doubt that Losing Mum and Pup would have “worked” for both WFB and Patricia Taylor Buckley.   While, in the words of a traditional American folksong, “Death don’t have no mercy in this land…”, this is a life-affirming work.

Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir by Christopher Buckley, Twelve Books, Illustrated, 251 pages, $24.99.

Thanks to Karen at Hatchette Book Group for supplying the review copy; much appreciated!

I passed by National Bookstore yesterday to buy a plastic sleeve for my passport. They didn’t have any. The only time I’m a fan of National are the days leading up to the beginning of school. I’ve been using the same brand of pens since first year high school and the same brand of notebooks all through college. Now that I’ve finally graduated, those days are over. Thank god.

Contrary to its name, National Bookstore doesn’t have a very diverse collection of books. Sure, they have your Twilights, Harry Potters, Gossip Girls, Goosebumps, Coelhos, and Shakespeares, but they don’t have Elements of Style. It’s a grammar book; also called Strunk and White. In desperate need for a copy, I once visited two branches but they were both all out. How do you run out of Elements of Style? They’re, well, elements of style.

About a year ago my friends and I went on a trip to Tagaytay. In an old Lite Ace we drove for hours through hard rain and steep slopes. Visibility was extremely low, the engine was groaning in agony, and the thought of suddenly plummeting down a ravine made us all nervous with laughter. Concerned for our safety, we stopped to eat at Pancake House overlooking Taal. Minutes after taking our order of pancakes, the waiter approached us, shuffling his feet, apologizing to say they ran out of pancakes. How the hell does Pancake House run out of pancakes? Does that just make them House? Would you forgive KFC if they ran out of chicken? French Baker if they ran out of bread? The President if she ran out of lies? It dumbfounds the mind.

So I went around looking for a plastic sleeve, realized they didn’t have any, and found myself rifling through a pile of used hardbound books selling for 99 bucks each. I like used book sales. If you dive into a pile with enough patience and persistence, there’s always that one book that will make all the inhaled dust worth it: a brand new copy of Beowulf, a first edition Sedaris, Catcher in the Rye with a cover design (they’re not supposed to have covers), or a brand new Grisham novel mixed in by mistake. My dexterity in browsing through pirated DVD titles comes in handy during this time.

Thirty minutes later, I surfaced through a cloud of dust cradling Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors, and Christopher Buckley’s Boomsday; all hardbound and at 99 each.  If I bought the same thing from Amazon, it would’ve cost me about P2500, plus shipping. The only thing I feel bad about is the amount of book backlog I now have. I swore to myself I’d finish all my unread books this summer, but Ken Follet’s 1000+ pages in The Pillars of the Earth distracted me. It’s by far, the longest book I’ve ever read. Then again, I’ve never gone through a Tolstoy. Anakarenina looks like a hairy beast waiting to be conquered. But for now it’s an expensive doorstop.

They came already covered in plastic.

Shelved.

What’s been happening with the whole duties on imported books brouhaha? I think I can survive on Booksale. Meanwhile, I asked my brother in the States to get me Elements of Style. He bought the illustrated version (red book on the left).

Dear Reader,

From the get-go, author Christopher Buckley says Losing Mum and Pup is not a memoir about his famous parents William F. Buckley and Patricia Taylor Buckley but what it was like to lose both his parents within twelve months. (His mother died in 2007, his father in 2008.) The reader learns about the Buckley’s anyway. (Before reading this book, I knew little, except that William F. seemed to flaunt his extensive vocabulary and intellect with undisguised smugness.) Christopher also has a quite a vocabulary; a pleasure to read really. He also has a fantastic sense of humor, as illustrated by my favorite lines in the book, found on pages 55 and 56, in which he talks about his mother’s “fibbing” skills.

“When Mum was in full prevarication, Pup would assume an expression somewhere between Jack Benny stare and the stoic grimace of a thirteenth-century saint being buried alive at the stake.… The funny thing was that he rarely challenged her when she was in the midst of one of her glorious confections. For that matter, no one did. They wouldn’t have dared. Mum had a regal way about her that did not brook contradiction. The only time she ever threatened to spank me was when I told her, age seven, in front of others, following one of her more absurd claims, “Oh, come off it!” Her fluent mendacity, combined with adamantine confidence, made her truly indomitable.”

I wonder what Christopher Buckley’s first spoken words were. I’m guessing not mama or dada.

Who will like this book? Fans of Christopher Buckley’s writing, William F. Buckley followers and foes (it gives everyone a new perspective, I’m sure), people whose parents died within months of one another, men and women whose difficult parents are always right, and readers who simply enjoy a well written memoir.

If you’re gift-challenged like me, holidays/birthdays/graduations and other gift-giving events have a way of sneaking up on you. We’re doing our part to help out by warning you a full week in advance that Sunday is FATHER’S DAY and if you don’t already have an idea for a present, you’d better get busy. Wait, there’s more. We’re also offering one lucky reader a chance to snag a Father’s Day gift collection without ever leaving the sofa. Our “Four for Father” collection includes these new releases:

• Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley
• Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood by Michael Lewis
• LIFE with Father by the Editors of LIFE Books
• Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival by Norman Ollestad

For a chance to win, leave a comment about your favorite fictional father no later than Friday, June 19. (Sorry, we cannot guarantee delivery by Father’s Day, so even if you win, you’ll have to give Dad a card and a raincheck.)

Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir

By Christopher Buckley

Published May 6, 2009

Twelve Books

272 pp.

ISBN 0-446-54094-3

Reviewed June 15, 2009

Ever since the death of William F. Buckley Jr. in February 2008, his son Christopher appears to have a target painted on his back. Although he chiefly works as a humorist, with satirical government-based novels such as “Supreme Courtship” and “Thank You For Smoking,” a rather vocal group seems to think he is under a moral obligation to preserve the family legacy in the ways they deem appropriate. When he joined the ranks of Republican intellectuals endorsing Barack Obama for the 2008 presidential election, the backlash was so voluminous that he was forced to resign from the very magazine that his father founded and which he still owns one-seventh of.

But that excoriation pales in comparison to some of the comments directed at his latest book, “Losing Mum and Pup,” which has been criticized as full of selfish, petty smears against parents who are no longer around to defend themselves. Once again, the reaction is overblown and completely missing the spirit of his actions, as it’s hard to think of a book that feels more like saying a fond farewell. Mixing his trademark wry humor with sentimental honesty, it’s not an insult but a tribute to people who may have been difficult to live with but never impossible to respect or love.

Between April 2007 and February 2008, Buckley suffered the loss of both his parents – a loss whose difficulty was compounded by their public reputations. His father was credited as the founder of modern conservative thought (as well as National Review and “Firing Line” and over 50 books); and his mother was “the chic and stunning” Patricia Taylor Buckley, queen of New York socialites for decades. They were people of immense reputation and charm, and Buckley was their only son – a relationship regularly strained by faith, black humor and intellect.

Buckley traces over these difficult months, from his mother’s deathbed to the final memorial service for his father in Connecticut. He was pushed into a variety of roles, ranging from nursemaid to an often obstinate patient to literary executor to organizer of elaborate memorial services (the book has regular asides on the minutiae of cremation costs and military honors). Along the way we also see how his parents’ loss touched the political world, with vignettes on his father’s close friends from Henry Kissinger to George McGovern.

Detractors will make the claim that Chris Buckley is kicking out the pedestal his parents were placed on, and to some extent this is correct. He does not skimp over his mother’s acid tongue, treating us to uncomfortable dinner scenes where she humiliated her granddaughter’s best friend and refused Ted Kennedy a car (“There are bridges between here and Gstaad”). His father is shown as distant and difficult, not at his son’s sickbed or graduation and reviewing “Boomsday”  in a uncomplimentary sentence (“This one didn’t work for me. Sorry”).

But none of these comments really ever comes across as mudslinging, more presenting pieces of what made his parents such a complicated package. As Buckley himself says, “larger-than-life people create larger-than-life dramas,” and he more than counters their dramas with the reasons they were larger than life. Pat Buckley could be cruel but she was also a hostess without peer, backing every one of her husband’s ventures without hesitation (after first trying to talk him out of it) and ripping into anyone who dared to insult her son. And WFB was for all his faults “the world’s coolest mentor,” teaching his son how to navigate by the stars and then pushing his limits by sailing in a borderline-monsoon storm.

And the complaints by the indignant reviewers also gloss over the fact that this is probably Buckley’s best-written book to date. He has publicly stepped away from “channeling” his father’s ghost, but between the brisk precision of the word choice and the speed of composition (he has said he wrote it in 40 days) it’s easy to picture WFB offering a spiritual boost. Opening with an Oscar Wilde quote on losing ones parents (“looks like carelessness”), literacy permeates the text with references on everything from P.G. Wodehouse to Joseph Conrad to the labors of Hercules. His mother’s ghost also makes an appearance with various barbs to break the tension: “Oh, do pull yourself together and stop carrying on in this fashion.”

But it’s in the moments where he realizes his looming orphanhood that “Losing Mum and Pup” takes on a singular power, needing no narrative devices other than straight reaction. He may portray his parents as weak but he is in almost as much pain, seeking to rationalize his own thoughts and leave things on as even a keel as is possible. The instance where he gets the call on his father’s death is painfully immersive, showing a war with instincts and emotions and wondering if he should continue what he was doing before, the taxes: “Maybe if I do them, this won’t have happened.”

If there are conflicting opinions about “Losing Mum and Pup,” they may be justified as Buckley’s own opinions were conflicted – but anyone who despises him for daring to show William and Pat Buckley as flawed is blind to the wash of affection he shows them, and the affection they had for each other. “Losing Mum and Pup” is a beautiful piece of work, funny and touching, giving a view of Buckley’s own coming to terms and the universal pain of saying goodbye to your parents.

A couple weeks ago I spent an evening at D.C.’s Politics and Prose bookstore as Christopher Buckley talked about his latest book, Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir about losing his two famous parents. Now I have not yet read Losing Mum and Pup, so this is not a book review per se. But if the book is anything like Chris Buckley’s presentation, or anything like his earlier books, it will be heartfelt and funny, and definitely worth a purchase.

The section Buckley read to us was about planning his father’s funeral. William F. Buckley had told his son that if he was still famous at the time of his death, he should try to get a funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Otherwise, he should just hold the service at the family’s home parish in Stamford, Connecticut. Naturally, WFB got the St. Patrick’s treatment, but Christopher Buckley was under strict orders to keep the service short from the cardinal. He planned for just two eulogies, one for himself and another for family friend Henry Kissinger (who apparently is a teddy bear in real life). Kissinger was reluctant because he was afraid to break down in public, but Buckley said he would sit in the front row and make funny faces to keep Kissinger on point, if Kissinger would promise to do the same. This arrangement was complicated when the White House called insisting that Dick Cheney come to the funeral and be allowed to make a eulogy. Buckley was reluctant because of his orders to keep the service short and because of the additional hassle of the security precautions involved in having a sitting vice president at the church. Buckley’s description of the back-and-forth between himself and the White House provided some of the best comic fodder of the night, and played well to the D.C. crowd.

One of the more poignant moments came when Buckley talked about receiving condolence calls while cleaning out the desk where his father died. He received a call from John Kerry, but not John McCain. He received a heartfelt call from George McGovern, who had become a close friend of WFB in the years since the 1972 election, as the two did public debates about liberalism and conservatism in the U.S. (WFB called him a “fabulous new friend” or something like that). McGovern expressed his condolences and a desire to attend the Buckley funeral should his health and 13 feet of Dakota snow permit.

There were audience questions at the event and as usual they were a mixed bag. The first questioner asked about Buckley’s infamous television exchange with Gore Vidal, where Vidal called WFB a fascist crypto-Nazi and WFB replied by calling him a “queer” and threatened to “sock [Vidal] in the g-dd—n face.” The exchange touched off a long running feud, witnessed by Vidal’s nasty comments against both WFB and Chris in his obituary of the former. The younger Buckley said he believed his father really would have assaulted Vidal had he been able to. WFB broke his collarbone in a skiing accident just two days before the exchange, and was in a back brace at the time, unable to move (perhaps that also explains his irritability).

On a lighter note, one questioner asked about WFB’s long support of drug decriminalization and the famous anecdote of WFB trying pot on his boat in international waters. Was college age Christopher Buckley WFB’s supplier? No, he replied. The New York City chief of police was!

Pictures from the event on Flickr.