Cruising Speed: A Documentary
Brudnoy, David
"Cruising Speed: A Documentary" Of course, the Fraser solution to a real problem like Japan's would be more careful planning, more rigid control, further...
...Buckley, too, certainly, but one does not find in him a neatly packaged saran-wrapped conservative's conservative...
...Skinner has some sort of contraption in his study by which he records his productivity, day by day, week by week -- year by year -- charting his output...
...One can never imagine someone plus Randian que La Rand, but there are many men more "conservative" than Mr...
...Roosevelt was planning to appear at a future Political Union meeting...
...He cheats us here, telling us way too little about Patricia Taylor Buckley...
...Bill Buckley stories were part of the cocktail-party repertoire at Yale - - how, after one in a series of debates with Norman Thomas, he had been asked whether there was any consistent thread to their debates, and had answered, "Why, yes, in all our dehates there has been one consistent thread, and that is, that Mr...
...Hell, how will I satisfy myself tomorrow, satisfying myself so imperfectly, which is not to say insufficiently, today...
...If the book were simply a collection of What I Did Last Week, it wouldn't be unworthy of a reader's time, but wouldn't be Buckley...
...I suppose by learning some more and siring a little of it through to those who listen to what he says...
...Buckley deal with rudeness...
...The cover shows a funny little periscope peeping out of a beautiful body of water...
...would indicate a reader too mundane to contemplate, o r a Buckley too predictable for one to want to read another line by, or about...
...For instance, type columns while ridin_g in the car, if you have a chauffeur...
...Bill Buckley was, to Yale's conservatives, a folk-hero, well on his way to becoming a solar myth...
...I was sitting there early one afternoon some dozen years ago when a fair-haired man in his early thirties came in, looked around briefly, poured himself a cup of tea, inspected the sandwiches (cucumber, which means it was a Tuesday afternoon), and went off into the front room...
...Were one-to search for the archtypical conservative, one would not find him-it-her regularly on 73rd Street or in Stamford, Connecticut or on Mr...
...Look in Cruising Speed for wl~at it proclaims itself to be, a documentary of a week in the life, and find also, an added bonus, quite a bonus, his most charming book by far...
...One knew his reputation, of course, and it was not hard to imagine, in retrospect, a kind of hauteur and instant dismissal of everyone in the room - - everyone meaning me...
...How come Profeser Revilo Oliver thinks Bill Buckley just may be a commie...
...He's enough of a student of history and literature to eschew naming his book, in imitation of one of the last great scions of America's premier family, The Education of William Buckley...
...But this is surely a sliver of 16 The A l t e r n a t i v e December, 1971 that unwritten book...
...Some people, myself included, invariably divide the world into those with the ironic sense and those without...
...We talked, I know, of drugs and alcohol and youth culture, Churchill and Ireland and what was happening at Yale...
...The title, for instance Buckley sails, and as sailors are supposed to know, cruising speed means something nautical...
...It is most evident in his assumption that all men, no matter what, are always going to desire the technical processes and technological devices that result in the polluted biosphere and ravaged resources which he decries...
...Had there been a look of disdain as he glanced around the room...
...We stopped for a cup of coffee on the road - - coffee out of paper cups, an old Mercedes-Benz (his car), the Connecticut countryside in January, a conversation of which (barring his wonderment that Edgar Smith could be a likeable human being after ten years without seeing the light of day) I remember little enough...
...Thus, it is people who are the "problem" and must he suppressed, not a technology which is out of control...
...Where does he eat...
...The second excerpted half, however, caught me up, made me go back and read the first, and I understood...
...Not just because he's polite, but to learn...
...Not when the sailor himself asks on the last page: "How will I satisfy them, who listen to me today, tomorrow...
...combine things I~e seen him in action, so Cruising Speed offers no surprises to me regarding Buckley's mysterious energy...
...One inevitably gravitates to those sections that treat things dear to one's heart...
...I shy from contact lenses and so Evelynwoody my way through his remarks on his struggle with those things...
...Buckley's way, but for those who can't seem to get anything done, the Buckley way might he the answer: JUST DO IT...
...The remark on cynicism has nothing to do with this...
...Cruising Speed is ironic in so many ways that I think it's lost on many readers, those who don't read in and around and through hot just read straight on...
...And those occasional (to me) incredible suggestions, like the one in the late lamented Look a while before it became late, that Ame~'ie~ ~_bnnld go oo.t _and elect itself a Negro President 'round about 1980...
...One would wonder why he continued with his book after that if it weren't plain that Fraser can't imagine population being naturally limited by any factor short of disaster, the ultimate disaster probably being defined by him as the collapse of technolugy, which would probably -- so he would suppose -- entail the disappearance of the race...
...Some reviewers of Cruising Speed appear to be fascin~/ted by How Does Bill Buckley Do All That in One Short Week...
...27), he states: "We can predict that some factor or combination of factors will sooner or later control further increase (in population...
...The exiguous bibliography (13 volumes listed) is headed by two Paul Ehrlich books and, such as it is, goes on from there...
...at cruising speed...
...He is educated by contact with those he meets...
...he'd be veritable tiger if anyone tried to shove him under the IRT, as if he'd take the IRT, while I'm only good for a hundred pushups and twelve laps...
...Cruising Sliced is the iournal of a week in Mr...
...I am looking up from the stage, where I have been arranging the visiting dignitaries...
...Others would disagree...
...And on we go through these things, some, really, of no importance, though they're nicely recounted, others of greater interest to me, like his rather stylized account of how the magazine gets put together...
...It was necessary, in telling the Eleanor Roosevelt story, always to refer to her as "The Great Pink Lady" - - the feeling being "that is the way BILL would want it to be told...
...None of their arguments are outlined in Fraser's book, much less answered...
...The attitude was akin to that which (I would guess) led Arlington House to entitle their recent Buckley sampter Quotations from Chairman Bill,though one doubts it had as much hmnour...
...There was a chair in the corner that belonged on Satin-days to an elderly bibliographer, and the rest of the week to anyone who wanted a good view of members and guests at the Elizabethan Club pourlug themselves aftexnnon tea...
...Skinner's way is not...
...So who listens anymore...
...Except that I rebelled against the hero-worship, I could have dined out for a week on the strength of the wordless encounter at the Elizabethan Club ("And did you once see Shelley plain...
...Our bodies being the first things to go, I too trudge off to a gym regularly, more regularly than he, to seat and groan and court hernias...
...I put him down mentally as a sporting type - - sunburn, khakis, blue blazer - - possibly a sometime crew captain who had been elected:to the club on the vague grounds of good fellowship:or general likeableness...
...Or how, as an undergra_&_~Ate, in the Political Union, he had so insulted Eleanor Roosevelt that s h e had instantly :vowed never to return to Yale...
...and in Congress, and off in the woods of Mecosta, Michigan...
...Nor is he one of those cuckoos in the land, those idee lixe chaps...
...Some years later, in Madison, in 1961, he spoke to a meeting of the Wisconsin Conservative Club, during the summer National Student Association meeting...
...But does the title Cruising Speed here mean something...
...but I~e concluded after lo these many years that of all the gentlemen I've ever met, two of the most consistently gentlemanly are my father and William Frank Buckley, Jr...
...About eighty percent of Cruising Speed appeared ex.cerpted this summer in The New Yorker, in two installments...
...David Brudnoy David Brndnoy is an obscure gynedologist who lives in Ulan Bator, reads every book published, and is currently completing a definitive nine-volume HIStory oJ Avar~e...
...But I do not think I was yet seeing the genuine Bill Buckley...
...For he is not your Typical Conservative...
...I read his section about his weekly gym session more carefully...
...Nixon had a little scratchpad on his lap while listening, he had the marvelous feeling that the President was actually listening ~to him...
...Conservative of 73rd Sh, eet and Stamford, Conn...
...With that, an end to reminiscences here...
...Which is one of his distinctive characteristics, and, I'd wager, the cross that some who worship him bear...
...search for your Prototypical Conservative somewhere else, and your cuckoo in a clock, not in Cruising Speed, which is not his best book (that's The Unmaking ol a Mayor) or his most tender (Odyssey ol a Friend), or his wittiest repository of reportage (The Jeweler's Eye, The Governor Listeth), or his most strident (God and Man at Yale, Up From Liberalism), or his most polemical (McCarthy and his Enemies), or well, never make lists...
...The book is not straight on...
...What I mean by - - unj.erk your knee is: don't expect this man to conform to anybody's expectation of what the complete Conservative is...
...Not only that, very early on in the book (p...
...Who's his favorite pianist...
...Yet, contradition, he will concede that "'As with other problems that we have considered (most notably water, mineral and energy consumption) this one (garbage) is increasing faster than the population...
...To be able to encompass anybody totally, to know all his reasons, and his reasonings, to be able to chart anyone's mind down t o the last little tittle, is a bore...
...He delivered at the Party banquet...
...I seem to recall that B.F...
...But certainly we're not supposed to think that's all, are we...
...I suppose that's what makes Ramsey Clark seem to me so perfectly dreary, and Bill Buckley so otherwise...
...I thank Bill for a couple hundred pages of it...
...bone up on The Speech (one of his retinue) just before giving it, instead of agonizing about it for weeks...
...I talked too much: he is a good listener...
...I noted (for Buckley imitations, like Buckley stories, were a passport to immediate acceptance in conservative gatherings) how he arched on tiptoe before making a point, how be jabbed his hands into his pockets, how he furtively mopped his brow with a large red handkerchief...
...He remarked somewhere, in a column, perhaps, or on a TV talk show, that when he was with Richard Nixon once, and Mr...
...It was an informal speech and I found myself sitting, almost exactly, at the feet of Gamallel...
...Far from it...
...And conservatives find "philosophical guidance" in others instrumental in making National Review, and in Human Events...
...Oh, yes, he has some-of his Things, like the Church, and the crusade contra pornography, and the like...
...Someone, in a speech, listing the distinguished Conservatives there present, has mentioned the name of William F. Buckley, Jr., and I begin ta understand what the word "pandaemonium" means: I am reminded .of a scene in Sdaramoudhe,where a political speech on stage has brought forth "a hurricane of furious appiause" and the actors stand transfixed like small boys who have set a match to a sun-scorched ha)rick...
...He might, I thought, have been a favourite prepschool teacher and I a returning altmmus...
...To this:day, I do not know ff the first is true: of the second, I know only that, at the time of her death, Mrs...
...Buckley's life, not a miniapologia pro vita sua (Heaven forfend) nor a dust-dry diary (and so to bed) nor a reconstruction of some week of crisis (and may he never go through so many that he'll follow in the footsteps of Richard Nixon and tote us through a rehash of his crisis, one by one by one by one), but a most engaging ramble through an ordinary week, so we are to believe, incorporating a great swatch of material from speeches given, letters written and read, various confrontations and the like...
...Ambrose Pierce defined admiration as the polite recognition of another's resemblance to oneself, and I guess in that case not many could admire Bill Buckley...
...That is, were he to write a book specifically devoted to explaining how he has grown and does grow mentally, he would include within i t many of the episodes or similar episodes such as those that appear in Cruising Speed...
...Numero unius, exclusio alterius, as he would say, so I'll hedge...
...I don't understand the logic leading to that one at all...
...Buckley listens...
...Thomas has been wrong, and I have been right...
...One finds it in Mr...
...Not that all that he learns, and says, is congenial to all who listen, even those who listen, as I listen, from a_perspective of general approval...
...How will he satisfy himself tomorrow, "so imperfectly...
...I admire the man Bucldey and like the book, but certainly don't see any resemblance to myself in it...
...Of course, the Fraser solution to a real problem like Japan's would be more careful planning, more rigid control, further technical intervention in the life processes...
...But since no one will ever care enough to try to see if I could defy the laws of gravity from off the Empire State Building, I learn far more common things than he learns...
...Buckley's boat Cyranno...
...In 1968, we met at the Newark Airport, khakis still, touch of sumburn, no blazer, hair now going pepper and salt, on his way back from visiting Edgar Smith in the Death House at Trenton, on his way up to a Party of the Right banquet at Yale...
...Then the book came and filled in all the gaps and I understood even more...
...What is his wife like...
...I admit to a weakness for charm in this increasingly charm-drained world...
...He lets us see how he's educated, not without considerable irony, but also with enough concrete examples so that we are not left unsure...
...How does Win...
...The Alternative December, 1971 15 fronting this situation...
...Gary P o t t e r Quite enough, I imagine, is said in this issue by my brother Lobdell, of recollections of Chairman Bill...
...But of course Pierce told only a slice of the 1ruth, as did Wilde in his definition of a cynic: one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing...
...He left after finishing his tea - - the door slammed, and then two or three of the club's more knowledgeable members came in: I heard one saying "Must be some kind of reactionary shindig in town - - that was Bill Buckley just going out...
...Good luck...
...Were I to add a few, they might include the night in New York when, after dinner following a taping of "Firing Line," I realized that I had a plane to catch in too few minutes, and he went dashing down the street to hail a cab for me...
...Read, that ye may be instructed...
...Another three years, and I see him in my mind's eye in a box in Madison Square Garden, in t h e summer of 1964, the Goidwater rally...
...What does he think of Hugh Hefner and Dick Gregory...
...Buckley is neither a knee-jerk anything, nor a cuckoo...
...But I cannot for the life of me recall one thing he said that night...
...For once I was seeing not Buckley-the-subject-of-stories or Buckley-the-soureeof-imitations but the genuluce Conservative Hero...
...And am glad that I don't...
...The man's faith in technology and technical intervention is evident in his endorsement of the continued widespread use of pesticides and his characterization of the late Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring as "sentimental" and "'gross...
...With whom does he frolic...
...Why does he talk that way...
...The first was delightful but, I thought it incomplete and it took no genius to think this, since the journal plainly told us that it was the first of two pieces, but so what...
...Well, some of it's there, ready for one of those inevitable pencil-clutching, tongue<larting, heresy-dreading Buckleyolators to memorize and imitate--if he so chooses...
...what does, and what I wish I could locate some witty definition of, is irony...
...To be able to go through the complete Buckley oeuvre and agree with it a// - - good Lord...
...Not included in the very slim index are such names as Colin Clark, or even Barry Commoner...
...Jared Lobdell here tells us, truly, that "for philosophical guidance a conservative looks instead in to Mission Control' in Woodstock" - - to the "old man in the back of the room," to Frank S. Meyer, that is...
...William Buckle)' is intrigued by the process of education, not just the stuff that goes on these days in classrooms across the land, but the whole manner in which people educate and are educated, especially the latter...
Vol. 5 • December 1971 • No. 3
