Christopher Buckley’s “Mum and Pup”
In a recent C-Span/Book TV “In Depth” segment, novelist, essayist, and former Vice Presidential speechwriter Christopher Buckley talked about his diverse writing career and his newest book, a memoir of his legendary parents called Losing Mum and Pup.
These three-hour “In Depth” programs can easily test the patience of book enthusiasts with even the most iron of butts. I sat down late on a Sunday night to catch a few minutes of Christopher Buckley’s interview mainly to compare his accent and mannerisms with those of his father, the late William F. Buckley, but several fascinating hours later I came to greatly admire the slightly-more-humble, infinitely-more-likeable son.
Buckley’s new memoir describes some of the difficulties of growing up with larger-than-life and often distant parents, but it is hardly a mean-spirited hatchet job. Affection for his unorthodox and immensely frustrating ”Mum and Pup” shows through Buckley’s anecdotes, many of which focus on the final year of their lives.
In one memorable tale he describes his father struggling with prostate problems late in life, which occasionally led him to urinate out of the open doors and windows of various moving vehicles. Buckley’s mother, Patricia, was an equally headstrong figure whose difficult relationship with her son finally moved him to utter, “I forgive you,” to her after she had lapsed into a coma on her deathbed.
Buckley’s satirical novels, like Thank You for Smoking, Boomsday, and Supreme Courtship, are especially fun reads for those who appreciate the sport and absurdity of American politics. I enjoy the hell out of his essays and parodies for magazines like The New Yorker and Esquire, some of which are gathered in the hilarious 1997 collection Wry Martinis.
This excerpt from the book describes a bit of what it was like “Growing Up Buckley.” This review from the Houston Chronicle relates some details of Buckley’s mother’s legendary rudeness and the author’s rather hilarious struggles to deal with his parents’ dying wishes. In this piece for The Daily Beast, Buckley describes the furor that erupted after he endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, and he speculates on the reactions he might have received from his late parents.
“No one has yet suggested my dear old Mum should have aborted me, but it’s pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land . . . . One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have ‘betrayed’—the b-word has been much used in all this—my father and the conservative movement generally, said he plans to devote the rest of his life to getting people to cancel their subscriptions to National Review. But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, ‘Cancel my subscription,’ I was able to quote the title of my father’s last book, a delicious compendium of his NR ‘Notes and Asides’: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.”
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The GOP desperately needs the likes of young Buckley. We need a strong two-party system. I’m a progressive dem, but I’m not stupid enough to believe complete domination by one party is the proper way to do things in America and still maintain our concept of a unified nation. Right now, the GOP is falling down on the job by purging its moderates and intellectuals. This may work to the dems’ advantage for a while (which is OK, for a while), but it’s no way to run a country in the long run.
–opinionated and grumpy Reggie