THIS NEW BIOGRAPHY is as good as the reviews are saying it is, but with notes and index it does clock in at just over a thousand pages, and knowing myself as I do, I expect it will take me the better part of a year to finish. That being the case, it seemed better to post my notes on it section by section, rather than waiting until I have finished the whole book. This way, the details are relatively fresh in my mind.
The main outline of Buckley's career is relatively familiar stuff, given how famous he was, but Tanenhaus has added a wealth of detail.
(1) I already knew, for instance, that Buckley grew up wealthy and privileged in Connecticut with a great clan of siblings. What I did not know was that even though the Buckley children had the usual horses and private schools and extensive travel associated with their class, the family's devout Catholicism made them a bit apart, a bit of an "other."
Tanenhaus conjures up the Buckley family childhood as a little bit Swallows and Amazons, a little bit Mitford sisters: a world of its own, with rivalries, private jokes, keen enthusiasms. Founded in privilege, yes, but also astonishingly self-sufficient psychologically and emotionally. Also surprisingly well-versed in the Spanish language and Mexican culture (The father had made his fortune in Mexican and Venezuelan oil.)
(2) Young Bill's first political passion was America First and Charles Lindbergh, the anti-intervention movement that was gathering momentum in 1940 and 1941 but evaporated after Pearl Harbor. His father, William F. Buckley, Sr., was passionately (and unsurprisingly) opposed to the New Deal and also, it turns out, dead set against American involvement in World War II. Son Bill, a teenager, enthusiastically joined the cause, taking the America First side in debates at his school (Millbrook Academy).
(3) Buckley always seemed to have a Southern Agrarian, I'll-take-my-stand streak to his conservatism, and it turns out he came by it honestly: besides the big place in Connecticut, the family had a big place in South Carolina. Tanenhaus reports that the Buckleys treated the mainly Black household help in South Carolina well, but the family shared their white southern neighbors' opinions on the rightness of segregation.
(4) Buckley's first book, God and Man at Yale, was written the year after he graduated and counts as an early example of one of the enduring American literary genres: the right hook aimed at academia (later practiced with great success by Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball, and Christopher Rufo).
(5) Again and again, one's jaw drops at Tanenhaus's spadework. For instance: World War II was still on when Buckley finished high school, and he went into the army. His unit was scheduled to go to the Pacific, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to a quick close, so Buckley spent his stint doing administrative work in Texas. Tanenhaus found out exactly what he did and how well he did it. I'd call that going the extra mile. He doesn't spend a long time describing Buckley's duties and does not attempt to overstate their importance...but he does actually have the goods. Every page testifies to just how thorough his research was.
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