Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Miscellanea | William F. Buckley — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

David Brooks gives us a remembrance of William F. Buckley, Jr. that is true to Buckley's warm spirit and generosity:

When I was in college, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a book called "Overdrive" in which he described his glamorous lifestyle. Since I was young and a smart-aleck, I wrote a parody of it for the school paper.

 "Buckley spent most of his infancy working on his memoirs," I wrote in my faux-biography. "By the time he had learned to talk, he had finished three volumes: `The World Before Buckley,' which traced the history of the world prior to his conception; `The Seeds of Utopia,' which outlined his effect on world events during the nine months of his gestation; and `The Glorious Dawn,' which described the profound ramifications of his birth on the social order."

The piece went on in this way. I noted that his ability to turn water into wine added to his popularity at prep school. I described his college memoirs: "God and Me at Yale," "God and Me at Home" and "God and Me at the Movies." I recounted that after college he had founded two magazines, one called The National Buckley and the other called The Buckley Review, which merged to form The Buckley Buckley.

I wrote that his hobbies included extended bouts of name-dropping and going into rooms to make everyone else feel inferior.

Buckley came to the University of Chicago, delivered a lecture and said: "David Brooks, if you're in the audience, I'd like to offer you a job."

Few would have been that kind, or that prescient. When you read the whole thing, be sure to especially consider the last paragraph. If that is your reaction to an encomium, then not only have you lived your life well, you will wake every morning with a joyful feeling that you have still more to contribute to the world.

Not a bad fate, that. Not a bad fate at all.