Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM by William F. Buckley Jr. - 9780465002429 - Compare Prices on New & Used Textbooks, Cheap Textbooks

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.

		Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM by William F. Buckley Jr. ISBN-10: 9780465002429 ISBN-10: 0-465-00242-0 ISBN-13: 9780465002429 ISBN-13: 978-0-465-00242-9 Hardcover 2007-10-22 Basic Books Find Lowest Price
Editorials

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.
Reviews

Good read... Although Buckley tends to get carried away sometimes with his own pomposity and ego this is still a good read. He was humorous and was to the point, although I believe his vocabulary was acquired in an attempt to get people to contact him. How do you review Buckley? This is a compilation of some of his best; and read in an occasional manner, (that is not all at once), it is certainly entertaining. A good reference book for put-downs.
The very human side of an intimidatingly erudite polymath This book is a delicious trove of correspondence that shows WFB's sense of humor and wall-to-wall good nature. He spars with critics and detractors, tweaks friends like Art Buchwald and spreads his trademark wit, logophilia and his positively infectious joie de vivre over the decades. My favorite line is from a 12 or 13-year old asking for advice on life. WFB's response: never grow up. He was a man who very obviously cherished and loved God, family and country and his loss is acutely felt. This book is a delightful snapshot of the many facets of his personality.
Buckley At Ease This is a collection of material from the "Notes & Asides" section of Buckley's journal, "National Review." It was a sort of grabbag section and could include office memos, speeches or whatever took Buckley's fancy. Mostly, however, it was where Buckley personally responded to some of the letters to the Review, often either unusually vitriolic ones or ones received from well-known denizens of the political world (including both actual political figures and those who wrote about them). Many of the letter writers shared Buckley's conservative views but some did not. Mostly the book is a showcase for Buckley's famous facility with words and his wit. The material is at its best when his correspondents can match, or nearly match, Buckley's ability in both areas. Over many years this happened often enough to provide a number of interesting exchanges. Buckley tended to be formally polite to everyone most of the time, although he occasionally unloads on some hapless soul, and he is also occasionally condescending to those who fall short of his standards of intelligence, education or decorum. Once in a while Buckley really goes after someone who has tried his patience badly, the salient case being Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who comes off looking like a pompous jerk (and an overmatched pompous jerk at that) in the exchange. Buckley is all surface politeness with Schlesinger but leaves him bleeding from more puncture wounds than St. Sebastian the Martyr. The book is entertaining light reading. If you are looking for Buckley's deeper thoughts, however, look elsewhere.
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: A Personal Documentary, 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: A Blackford Oakes Mystery 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: A Program for the Seventies or United Nations Journal: 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.
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...