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Title: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM
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Manufacturer: Basic Books
List Price: $24.00
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| Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM by Basic Books Entertaining, personal, and worth returning to | With the publication of the wonderful Florence King's "STET, Damnit!" in 2003 and WFB's "Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription" in 2007, National Review books are breaking new ground in the use of profanity in titles. Which is not a field in which I would have expected them to show such leadership. But since we have Buckley's own assurance in these pages (page 33, to be precise) that "goddam," as used, is profane but not blasphemous, sensitive readers should not be troubled.
William F. Buckley's books can be categorized, broadly, in two ways: books of conservative theory and practice (his collected columns, "The Unmaking of a Mayor," etc.), and what could be termed personal indulgences ("Overdrive," the spy novels, and so on). This book is unquestionably an indulgence, and people who have little patience for Buckley and his well-established personality and voice will probably find this book, as they found him, infuriating. But for those of us who had great respect for the man and enjoyed watching him perform (no slight intended by use of that word), even when we may have disagreed with him, "Cancel Your Own..." is a joy to read and a foretaste of how much we will miss him in the future.
As the subtitle indicates, "Cancel Your Own..." is made up of excerpts and highlights from WFB's long-running "Notes and Asides" column in NR. The book, like N&A itself, included selected correspondence, sent and received, memoranda, and other comments and exchanges WFB considered worth sharing with a wider audience. As you'd expect from a collection he assembled himself (with the help of researchers acknowledged in the text), it shows Buckley at his best, whether smacking down a critic with airy ease, refusing to tolerate misquotation or mistranslation, or simply conducting internal or external business.
While personal favorites of mine include his ukase on the use of the serial comma, exchanges with Eric Alterman, and a magnificent letter from my hero Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn listing no fewer than 20 errors or linguistic or cultural solecisms in Buckley's "Who's on First," most any Buckley fan will be able to come up with their own list. On the other hand, Art Buchwald's strange obsession with Hertz rental cars, which he apparently thought was funny and about which he wrote WFB frequently, I found merely tiresome.
As many of his recent obituaries noted, WFB seems to have recognized in his final years that the rightist movement he did so much to create was already in its own final years and was being replaced by a very different kind of "conservatism." So much of Buckley's work now is mostly of historic interest (who reads "Four Reforms" or "A Delegate's Odyssey" for contemporary relevance any more?). Perhaps ironically, it's now those "indulgences" that draw us most strongly. I think "Cancel Your Own..." is a book people will keep returning to, and justly so. | | Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM by Basic Books Delightful | Perhaps the most delightful book I have had the pleasure of reading in a long, long time. I'm convinced my flat-mate thinks me crazy for doing nothing but laughing out loud in my room for two evenings straight.
Whether you're a conservative or liberal, you will howl in appreciation of Buckley's inescapable charm and wit.
Perfect for an evening of enjoyment after a long day or as a source of infuriatingly brilliant quotes and hopelessly esoteric language.
Oh! to have only known the man... | | Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM by Basic Books A wonderful way to remember a man of words. | Whether you agree with everything Mr. Buckley said or whether he made your blood boil, you'll have to agree that the man had a way with words. This book is a collection of items from the "Notes and Asides" part of National Review magazine over the years. The title comes from one of the briefest replies to a reader, made all the more unusual by virtue of the tendency for Mr. Buckley to answer a point with 10 words where 2 might do for the rest of us. I have many fond remembrances of WFB over the years and this book is a great way to bring them back to the fore. I have also recently read his first book, "God and Man at Yale", and find it frighteningly applicable to today's universities and colleges.
Whether Mr. B makes you happy or makes you mad, he *will* make you laugh. I highly recommend this book. | | Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM by Basic Books Brilliance, humor, and history, in small, challenging bites | | It must be admitted that this volume could use some annotation for the reader who isn't old and may not have paid close enough attention to political events. But this is a wonderful sampling of the style, wit, and humor of Mr. Buckley. If you don't already enjoy Buckley, I am not sure that this would persuade you, but if you are, this is a fun book to have. | | Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM by Basic Books Don't start here | So William F. Buckley Jr. died the other day, most likely quite pleasantly and after a satisfying life, and that reminded me of him. I went up onto Amazon and bought the first interesting-sounding book with his name on it, so as to read something by him and with luck deepen my own impression of him, which so far is the rather superficial one that he's smart and witty, and I disagree with him about quite a few things.
It turns out this particular book wasn't a good choice for that purpose.
"Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription" is a selection of very short pieces, reprints of reader letters that he felt like responding to, snappy answers to other bits of correspondence that came in his mail, and random snippets of other things. There are no reasoned arguments to speak of here, no thoughtful essays, few extended displays of wit. Mostly it's zingers and one-liners and wisecracks aimed at readers of the National Review; not preaching to the choir so much as keeping it amused.
Unless one is a member of that choir (and I'm not), Buckley comes off here as a bit of a jerk, a churl, an overerudite taker of cheap shots. But coming to any firm conclusion along those lines from this particular evidence would be a bad idea. By all means buy and read this book if you're an old-time National Review reader looking for nostalgia. But if you actually want to learn something substantive about Buckley, his ideas, and his quality of thought, this is not the place to begin. | | Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM by Basic Books Product Description | Who knew that William F. Buckley Jr., the quintessential conservative, invented the blog decades before the World Wide Web came into existence? National Review, like nearly all magazines, has always published letters from readers. In 1967 the magazine decided that certain letters merited different treatment, and Buckley, the editor, began a column called “Notes & Asides,” in which he personally answered the most notable and outrageous letters. The selections in this book, culled from four decades of these columns, include exchanges with such figures as Ronald Reagan, Eric Sevareid, Richard Nixon, A. M. Rosenthal, Auberon Waugh, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. There are also hilarious exchanges with ordinary readers, as well as letters from Buckley to various organizations and government agencies. |
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