Stained Glass, by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Mathews, Judy
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "Stained Glass, by William F. Buckley, Jr." Kissinger procrastinated. He viewed the initial Arab victories as adverse to basic American interests. They gave the Soviet Union excessive prestige and contained no incentive for cease-fire, still...
...He also asked her why she was spending her vacation in Edgartown...
...Eban writes...
...It is an engaging adventure written with elegance and a host of amusing purposes, not the least of which must be to stifle the allegations that his novels are only as good as Gore Vidal's...
...At the beginning of each shift they would prepare several gallons of iced tea and consume it by the quart in the course of an evening, sweating it out as they worked...
...Eban speaks directly to Israel's dilemma--the same today as ten or thirty years ago—in his conclusion: "Our international posture cannot exclude the capacity to stand alone for certain periods of time when a vital interest is at stake...
...Buckley now even incorporates friends into the novel...
...He would wonder why lying on a beach with one's skin well-greased so that the sun's rays could slowly poison it red or brown was considered "natural" and "healthy"—while protecting one's skin Sheldon Vanauken Priestesses versus the Incarnation March 1978 ISSN 0149-4244 Attention: Cultural Traditionalists "a first-rate theologicalcultural-literary periodical" —NATIONAL REVIEW (editorial) Discover this unique 32-page monthly magazine published by orthodox Christians...
...That week Laura and Andre spent a large block of their free time together, mostly talking...
...Laura Ingalls came to the beach that morning wearing one of the exceptionally close-fitting, stretch, one-piece bathing suits which were popular during the summer of 1978...
...Blackford had the American republican's innate aversion to servility...
...Buckley's wife Patricia was recently quoted as saying she had a superb sense of the ridiculous...
...They gave the Soviet Union excessive prestige and contained no incentive for cease-fire, still less for negotiation...
...It is important to be popular—but even more important to be alive...
...Various points of view are represented...
...And the driving force in surmounting the obstacles was Dr...
...Carter's mind from the very beginning...
...He had counted on getting the brass ring enough times to afford both their tickets, but he didn't, and had to borrow money from Laura to pay her way...
...They share political ideas, they look alike, they are both connoisseurs of food and wine, and they both ski in Gstaad...
...Blackford Oakes does not follow orders which he finds unconscionable, though unfortunately he makes his decision too late to matter...
...BAN THE SOLEIL (continued from page 4) out before him was not without bleakness...
...The countess leaned over to him and pointed to the little gray kitten, asleep near the fireplace, and whispered: "Do you believe in reincarnation...
...BOOK REVIEW Stained Glass William F. Buckley, Jr...
...In the course of their conversation, Andre asked Laura about her reading, and told her about his experience with Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London...
...Andre, not interested in acquiring a suntan," was still wearing his shirt and trousers as he walked over to where she had spread her beach towel...
...For example, in a flashback to Wintergrin's World War II service, the young nobleman mysteriously disappears on the Polish front and is declared Missing in Action and Presumed Dead...
...The present stalemate cannot, therefore, be blamed on the alleged inflexibility of Premier Begin...
...In Stained Glass, the young CIA agent Blackford Oakes returns for his second assignment: to penetrate the political movement in Germany led by anti-Communist Count Axel Wintergrin, whose promise is to liberate East Germany upon his election as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany...
...Here Buckley is confronting a modern dilemma: the conflict between commitment to one's superiors and commitment to one's personal code...
...Somewhat later his mother is entertaining public officials and the mayor delicately raises a question: Did the countess—the subject could now safely be raised without opening the year-old wound—have any private opinion what might have happened to her son...
...L," 6013 Lawton Ave., Oakland, CA 94618...
...Or maybe they hardly played it at all, and Andre just noticed it more...
...Buckley's book thus serves a Judy Mathews is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator...
...Meanwhile, he was busy securing the badly-needed materiel reinforcements...
...the men were taken by his slouchy informality, which managed just the necessary ration of deference owed by the young to their elders, without any suggestion of sycophancy, or any presumptive commitment to the bizarre notion that because he was young, he was any less competent, in his own disciplines, than they in theirs...
...When Oakes is ordered to "eliminate" the Count to prevent a Soviet invasion of West Germany, he is torn by conflicting loyalties...
...Kissinger, who knew there could be no cease-fire and no negotiation unless the military situationforced the Arabs to stop fighting...
...One night Andre told her about how hard and depressing job-hunting in New York had been, particularly as he wasn't sure what he wanted to do...
...A sample copy may be had for $1...
...That probably sounds decadent to you...
...Though such serious questions underlie Stained Glass, they never detract from the great fun Buckley has with his narrative...
...You'll find quality articles and reviews by such well-known people as: Peter L. Berger Michael Novak Dante Germino James V. Schall John H. Hallowell Paul Seabmy Jeffrey Hart Whit Stillman James Hitchcock G.B...
...But Dr...
...Oakes emerges in this novel as a hero engage in the Sartrean sense of the term, committed not only to his country and the CIA, but to his ideals of freedom and anti-Communism...
...The vast quantities of tea, his fatigue, the numbing quality of the work, and the music on the kitchen radio often set Andre's mind racing...
...My summer job fell through and—as this is about the last chance I'll have for a long stretch of time in which to read and think—I decided just to take advantage ofit...
...Oakes, like Sartre's Oreste in Les Mouches, is aware by the end of the novel of responsibilities to others and to his own principles...
...Against them all Buckley sets Blackford Oakes: "...the ladies loved his stunning good looks, his fair hair and inquisi36 The American Spectator August/September 1978 tive blue eyes, and easy manner...
...Stained Glass is more interesting than any fiction Vidal has ever fussed over...
...we are against it...
...He decries the automaton of power whether he be John Dean or Albert Speer —those who attempt to justify their misdeeds with the explanation that they were following orders from above...
...Yes, she said, she did have a private notion, but it was so ridiculous, she did not really want to share it...
...He decided to look for temporary employment and was lucky to find a part-time position working in the kitchen of The Manor Inn, a job actually quite similar to that of Orwell's plongeurs...
...At the beach he put suntan lotion on Laura's back because she couldn't reach there...
...We are old friends, said the mayor: Confide in me...
...and the Russians, well, they are the brooding thugs of the real-life Soviet gerontocracy...
...Doubleday / $8.95 Judy Mathews If the public was wary of William F. Buckley's gifts as a novelist, his best-seller Saving the Queen relaxed and gratified them...
...and the head of the metalworkers' union is named Heinrich Regnery (Henry Regnery was Buckley's first publisher...
...It might strike readers as odd that Buckley, a middle-aged conservative, seems intent on celebrating youth throughout his novel...
...Kissinger stood firm: "Such a resolution is impossible...
...As with Saving the Queen, it is impossible to separate William F. Buckley from his hero...
...The author's irrepressible humor, his ability to capture a totally ridiculous situation, inheres throughout the novel...
...Under cover as chief engineer in charge of restoring St...
...As with Blackford so with Chairman Bill, the gifted writer who for three decades has defended the wisdom of the adult with the gusto and wit of brilliant youth...
...Although liberals dwell on this problem, Buckley shows that they do not have a monopoly on such concerns...
...Tennyson Russell Kirk Stephen J. Tonsor John Lukacs Donald W. Treadgold Thomas Molnar Dale Vree John T. Noonan, Jr...
...This steadfastness is in stark contrast with the stand taken by President Jimmy Carter almost from the moment he assumed the Presidency...
...and there was a danger that the UN Security Council would pass such a resolution...
...The Arabs and the Soviet Union, however, were still demanding as a condition of a cease-fire Israel's immediate withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders...
...Write: New Oxford Review, Dept...
...They are well-suited...
...Emphasis is given to enhancing understanding between Catholics and Evangelicals...
...No...When I was between my freshman and sophomore years I thought the same thing, but since then I've found that large blocks of free time often crop up unexpectedly...
...Eban speculates that Mr...
...Anselm's Church, Wintergrin's pet project, Oakes and he become close friends...
...His heroes—Oakes, Winter-grin, even Erika Chadinoff (the Russian spy who later defects)—are all under thirty-five...
...Whether you're concerned about our eroding traditions and standards or the crisis of faith and practice in the churches, you'll want to become acquainted with the New Oxford Review...
...A sentence he had read in Orwell's book came back to him with particular force now: "There is no doubt that women never, or hardly ever, condescend to men who are much poorer than themselves...
...Kissinger therefore declined any official American initiative in this matter, although ostensibly trying to find other sponsors for such a cease-fire "in place...
...But it is now obvious that the plan for Israel's return to the wholly indefensible pre-1967 borders was in Mr...
...On the train to Gstaad, they pass "the orange-shuttered chalet of David Niven...
...For those who know the_ bureaucratic ways of Washington, the astonishing fact is that the airlift (carrying war supplies) was in massive motion about three days after the idea was first conceived," Mr...
...On the other hand, Oakes' gray and forbidding superior, Rufus, is a ruthless man of middle years...
...If you are alive, you can work hard to reconstruct your popularity, whereas if you are dead, you will be conspicuously popular during the funeral oration, but the consolation will be transient and brief...
...One finishes it and hopes that Buckley will take another vacation soon, assuring his admirers of another of these by-products of his leisure hours...
...Although, as a 1976 hit, "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel" was not a particularly "golden" oldie, WPRO played it dozens of times...
...Both religious and secular issues are addressed...
...Religious, cultural, and political affairs are discussed from the perspective of the traditional values of Western culture...
...To keep track of experiences like this Andre began jotting down notes under the provisional heading, "Down and Out in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs...
...Harold L. Weatherby A year's subscription is $6...
...The American Spectator August/September 1978 37...
...In the final moment Oakes, like Oreste, resists "mauvaise foi...
...The closest thing they had to a formal date was the afternoon he took her to The Flying Horses in Oak Bluffs...
...When Premier Rabin visited Washington early in the spring of 1977, President Carter greeted him with the ominous remark about "the American hope of a full withdrawal of Israeli forces in a peace settlement...
...Rabin, facing a difficult election at home—an election he was to lose—may not have told the Israelipeople the whole truth about the attitude of the new Carter administration...
...political as well as an entertainment purpose...
...He realized that in the sunbathers' language he was a "paleface"—someone who doesn't have a tan...
...He condemns the Americans who allow themselves to be bullied by the Russians into assassinating Count Wintergrin lest a Third World War break out...
...His latest novel, Stained Glass, will make them yearn for more...
...Allen Dulles is eventually manipulated by the Russians...
Vol. 11 • August 1978 • No. 9
