William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925–2008)

Summary: Blackford Oakes teams up with mercenary Tucker Montana to block troops and arms flowing from North to South Vietnam.

The story opens early in 1964 in the jungles of Laos. Blackford Oakes has teamed up with soldier-of-fortune Tucker Montana to explore the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Ostensibly at this time, the conflict in South Vietnam is a “civil war” between government and rebel forces. But North Vietnam has been supplying men and material with plans to move 20,000 men over the Trail show more every month. These two men have to figure out a way to stop it, and extricate themselves before they are caught and killed, which they barely do.

Montana thinks he knows a way to stop the flow of men and material. In addition to surviving against incredible odds, he has a knack for designing devices that work. He believes he can create sensors at key chokepoints to alert when the North Vietnamese are on the Trail. Eventually, Montana and Oakes will work separately on two supply routes–Tucker on the Trail, Oakes on shipping in the Gulf of Tonkin. Both report to Rufus, their control agent.

Their authority actually comes from much higher, from directives from President Johnson, given on a naked swim in his pool. These two men are caught up in the larger events leading to the later massive escalation of the war. In 1964, blocking the North Vietnamese efforts also play into electoral politics between hawkish Barry Goldwater and Johnson, for whom Vietnam represents the derailing of his Great Society. But he doesn’t want to be the president who “lost Vietnam.”

There is a kind of ticking time bomb in Montana. He was at Los Alamos, and in this version, designed the trigger to actuate the atomic bomb. Not only that, he was on the crew of the Enola Gay. Seeing the destruction, he leaves the Army, and nearly goes crazy, taking refuge in a monastery, before returning to military pursuits, concealing his Los Alamos work. That time bomb is coupled with a healthy sex drive. And he finds a girlfriend in Saigon who turns out to be a spy. The classic honey trap.

Meanwhile, Oakes is up to his own hi-jinks. He’s equipping junks with radar and metal detection equipment. But more than that, he’s part of an effort to go inside North Vietnam;s definition of international waters. Buckley portrays it as a plot worked out at the highest levels, including Johnson friend Abe Fortas. The idea is to trigger an “incident” in the Gulf of Tonkin giving Johnson casus belli to pursue an expanded war.

Both men walk tightropes with their conscience. Do you keep your head down and obey orders? Or must one think of the larger ramifications of what one is doing? In Montana’s case, the girlfriend plays on the hovering cloud of an expanded conflict that could lead to nuclear war, raising the old phantoms for Montana. Oakes faces a situation that is more subtle. He suspects, and Rufus confirms the espionage going on with the girlfriend. But Montana is at a critical point in completing the project and going operational. They don’t want to derail him.

It all comes down to how Montana navigates the pulls of love and duty and conscience. And can Oakes protect both the operation and his friend?

Part of what makes this so interesting is the fusion of history and fictional plot. And even in the fiction, we begin to get a sense of how futile the cleverest U.S. efforts will be to stop a determined enemy. Buckley manages fiction at once instructive and diverting. show less

William F. Buckley Jr's postmortem of his impossible campaign to become mayor of New York is entertaining, thought-provoking and witty. The Unmaking of a Mayor has no right to continued relevance after the passage of sixty years; the personalities and many of the issues have disappeared like so much subway smoke rising from the grilles of Manhattan's streets. But Buckley's prose (which cascades rather than sparkling) continues to communicate its vital message and delights the reader every show more step of the way. Though many of the battles Buckley was fighting have been won (and lost again) since the 1960s, The Unmaking of a Mayor remains an enduring record of what happens when the critic mounts the hustings. Highly recommended. show less

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I was interested in reading this book because I had heard that it had an LDS protagonist. After reading it, I have to say that it is one of the oddest books I've ever read. It's an historical novel whose apparent purpose is to give a behind-the-scenes look at the American conservative movement from 1960 to 1965, with particular emphasis on the marginalization of the John Birch Society and the self-destruction of Ayn Rand's show more Objectivist movement. There are 4 pages of notes at the end, which Buckley includes to show that he's not making the important parts up.

The parts that Buckley did make up, including the LDS protagonist Woodroe Raynor and his Objectivist girlfriend Leonora Goldstein, are remarkably bland. Maybe I've been reading some really well-written books recently, because, in comparison to what I'm now used to, the writing in Getting It Right seems mediocre at best. I've been a Buckley fan for over 40 years and own lots of his books, so I was quite shocked at how little I cared for this latest one.

I remember a Buckley newspaper column that appeared in the 1980s (I think) that praised the selfless labors of LDS missionaries. I appreciated the plug, but the column left me with the impression that Buckley didn't know much about what Mormon missionary service was really about. Getting It Right strengthened that impression. Woodroe served his mission in Austria in 1955 and, as far as I can tell, did absolutely no proselytizing but instead taught English classes. Maybe restrictions on the Church in Austria at the time prevented tracting, but it seems odd that Woodroe has no companion, has practically no apparent involvement with religion, and apparently gets to do pretty much what he wants where he wants when he's not teaching class.

Woodroe has sex with a girl he meets in Hungary during his mission and is apparently best described as a lapsed Mormon in the account of his post-mission life, in which he drinks, swears, and fornicates fairly regularly. There is, however, a curious conversation he has with Theocritus Romney, a (lapsed?) Mormon professor at Princeton, in which Woodroe says: "I can't remember if in your course you commented on how the Chinese railroad workers were treated when they crossed God's country. That's *our* *God*, Theo. I haven't forgotten. Other Christians get it almost right. We get it *all* right." I didn't read this remark as sarcastic. Does he still believe? If so, why all the wayward behavior, behavior for which he apparently feels no guilt whatsoever?

Some random comments:

(1) Why the name Woodroe? Sure, Mormons have weird names, but that doesn't sound much like anything on the Utah Baby Namer to me.

(2) There are interesting references to Utah geography. Woodroe is allegedly from Salt Lake but he shows the people he meets in Hungary where that is by making "a pencil dot on the north end of the Great Salt Lake". North? Theocritus Romney is painting a mural on his (New Jersey) ceiling that is supposed to show "the view of the Rockies as seen from the window of his parents' Utah house", including "eleven peaks he had framed in memory". The 3 peaks mentioned by name are Provo Peak, Mt. Timpanogos, and Mt. Olympus. I'm not sure that there was a populated location that long ago from which you could see Provo Peak and Mt. Olympus.

(3) In 1962, Theocritus makes some comment to Woodroe about visiting a lady friend in New York and adds, "I know what you're thinking. I'm rather old for that. Well, I'm only seventy-two. Your Ezra Taft Benson is what, a hundred and seven?" Why the impression that President Benson was old in 1962? He was 63 at the time. Comparing that to the age of some of the major real-life characters in the book, Robert Welch (founder of the JBS) was only 3 months younger, Goldwater was 10 years younger, Rand was 6 years younger, and Eisenhower was 10 years older, but Buckley didn't make a big deal about their ages.

(4) Most interesting fact I learned from this book: Alan Greenspan was once part of Ayn Rand's inner circle.

(5) It is *really* weird hearing the omniscient narrator repeatedly refer to "Bill Buckley" in the third person. show less

A good book, full of WFB's trademark wit and felicity with words. A judicious selection of obituaries written by Buckley, most of which appeared in the pages of National Review. It is divided into sections of Presidents; Family; Arts and Letters; Generals, Spies, and Statesmen; Friends; and Nemeses. Sometimes the introductions by Rosen are more interesting than the obituary, often culled too from Buckley's writings. Sometimes Buckley's pronouncements grate the ear. For instance, his show more at-the-time take of Martin Luther King Jr. (whose image among Americans has become almost godlike), reminding us of King's insulting words about American foreign policy and flirtations with communistic ideas. Or take his at-the-time take on Winston Churchill (whose image among conservatives has become almost godlike), blaming Churchill for letting Eastern Europe fall into Stalin's sway. (Like Churchill had a choice: see Operation Unthinkable.)

A fun read, if you can get it cheaply. But it does make me wonder how many more books like this can be wrung from Buckley's dead bones (he passed in 2008). show less