Overdrive (11 page)

Hugh Kenner sends me a copy of a letter he has fired off to the gentlemen at the Heath Company, complaining of the incompleteness of the instructions that appear in the Personal Computing course distributed by Heath. The problem is that one is drowned with material after the reading of which one spends hours trying to find out
exactly what to do
. Hugh recites the difficulties he has had and, along about page three, writes with that terrifying clarity for which he is so famous:

"So let's outline something better. Suppose Manual #595-2268-04, which comes with the machine, ended its nut-&-bolts section by saying, 'You now have the following: [outline of your hardware]. To make it do anything useful you need an Operating System such as HDOS or CP/M, both available from Heath.' Now let the HDOS manual commence, quite simply, An Operating System like HDOS configures the computer to receive data, execute programs, and communicate with outside devices such as disk drives and printers. In particular, it looks after the details of program and data storage on disks, directing traffic to and from these storage devices. It contains a number of Drivers (ATH.DVD, etc.) from which you will be selecting the proper ones to communicate with your particular disk and printer configuration. And it contains a relatively simple BASIC interpreter, so that you will have one high-level language at your disposal immediately.' "

One would want to kiss such prose, were it ever attached to an instruction booklet. But I must not go on to affect that all mechanical problems disappear on experiencing Hugh's prose. As I write, in Switzerland, I am simultaneously attempting to master not the internal mysteries of a word processor, but merely the technique of operating one; and I have here at my side identical counterparts of the machines Hugh Kenner has—the Z-89, the two disk drives, and the Diablo Printer. And, most valuable of all, sixteen pages of typewritten instructions conceived and executed by the great Hugh Kenner. Alas, after two days I gave up. I could not, from Switzerland, produce Kenner, who resides in Baltimore.

But providence arranged it that at the high moment of my distress two of my sisters arrived for a fortnight's skiing and brought with them nephew Jay Buckley—who is a computer expert. He pays me what he calls "office calls" after skiing, every couple of days, as I accumulate fresh desires I know not how to satisfy. Now, having been taught empirically by Jay, I can turn back to Hugh's instructions and read them like a road map. Some people write with total lucidity, but implicitly rely, for an understanding of what they say, on a level of spatial imagery some people just don't have. It is precisely this lack on my part that caused my essay on celestial navigation, first published in my book
Airborne
, to be such an unusual success: because it presupposes nothing at all. I am going to repay Hugh's courtesy, before I am through, by writing a fresh set of instructions on operating the computer, entitled: "Instructions for a Mechanical Simpleton. An Aprioristic Guide to the Use of the Word Processor." Practically the whole of it will be devoted to teaching the layman how to cause to be typed by the Diablo Printer, from the disk drive, as directed by the computer, the words that appear above between quotation marks.

I write to Mr. Clement at the Heath Company and tell him that if he should let H. Kenner slip through his fingers, I'd sell my stock in Heath, if I had any stock in Heath.

 The fight over who will be the next director of the National Endowment for the Humanities rages. Two candidates are close to the wire, a third is held in reserve. The last is Ronald Berman, who served as chairman with distinction under Nixon and Ford. The other two are William Bennett, of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, and Mel Bradford of the University of Dallas. It is fair, but only roughly so, to say that the hard conservatives are backing Bradford, the neos, Bennett. I say it is only roughly fair, because some enthusiasm for Bradford is dissipated by speculation that he would fail confirmation by the Senate, the consequence of certain animadversions he has made in the past about Abraham Lincoln—none objectionable as historical speculation, but one or two the kind of thing you can mount mountainous demagogic campaigns on.

One month ago, in San Francisco en route to the passenger ship Viking
Sky
, on which I was voyaging and lecturing, I had a call from an assistant to the President with whom I have from time to time dealt, and she told me that Bradford was "out" and asked, in my opinion, were Bennett's credentials as a conservative authentic? I said that they were, and at the time thought the matter of the NEH disposed of.

Why, why do they drag these things out so? In any event, it is all very much alive, and now Irving Kristol writes to denounce an editorial in
National Review
that falsely, in his opinion, elaborates the qualifications of Bradford. "Last night I read my latest issue of
National Review
, with its editorial on the NEH, and I must tell you that it depressed me enormously. I keep saying that the clear distinction that was once visible between 'neoconservatives' and 'old conservatives' is now so blurred as to be meaningless, but every now and then
National Review
will remind me that a gap still exists. The sad truth is that too many 'old conservatives' are so far distanced from the academic-intellectual world that they find themselves saying things, and doing things, that make the position of
all
conservatives in this world that much more difficult. Your editorial was a case in point."

Kristol proceeded to reject, at considerable length, the factual representations we had made; indeed, he did so so categorically that I simply assumed him to be correct, wrote him in that vein, and chose to disregard the general complaints, here quoted, about the difference between the new and old conservatives. I did, when I replied to Kristol, reflect on the fact that Jeffrey Hart, the single working academic professor on the staff of
NR
, who also writes editorials, happened to be the author of the editorial in question.
National Review
has never, in its twenty-five years, been in any significant sense "distant" from the academic scene: we have always roamed among professors and other intellectuals—it is simply amusing to denominate a journal whose principal editorial figure for twenty-three years was philosophy professor James Burnham as alienated from academic thought.

But Irving likes to make his points categorically, so I let it go. And now, having replied to him, I drop a note to Jeff Hart, my learned colleague, full professor of English at Dartmouth, who is traveling on the West Coast so I can't now reach him on the phone. Did he, I ask, get the facts on Bradford wrong? Well, interestingly enough—having now seen both accounts—I would judge that Hart was much closer on than Irving; but, really, it turned out not to be important, or in any case that is my reading of it. The appointment was finally given to Bennett.

 It is hard to devise a happier couple with whom to share lunch than Priscilla Buckley and Joe Sobran. Pitts (her nickname) is the single unmarried of the original ten Buckleys (two of my sisters died young, leaving between them fifteen children). I lured her from Paris where she was working for the United Press, bringing to the large office there the quiet pleasure she has given everyone ever since (alongside Nancy Davis Reagan) she graduated from Smith College. She combines extraordinary efficiency with the most obdurate affability, self-effacement, intelligence, and charm. Joe Sobran is one of the two or three wittiest men I have ever met, with a cultural intelligence as penetrating as that of anyone around twice his young age. He was doing graduate work in English at Eastern Michigan University, trying to support three children and a sick wife (from whom he is now divorced) when our paths crossed. He has now been four years with
National Review
as a senior editor, and his editorials, book reviews, and culture pieces are in every issue. He is also launched as a syndicated columnist, and (he will tell you) is writing two or three books.

The parentheses above are something of a joke, because Joe is terribly disorganized in the endearing sense that Samuel Johnson was disorganized, though I am not absolutely sure that Joe would have ended by actually producing that dictionary. Recently someone sent me, with the notation
"Can't wait to get it
a full page from
Publishers Weekly
, advertising a book: "
The Conservative Manifesto. The Philosophy, the Passion, the Promise
. By Joseph Sobran. Introduction by William F. Buckley, Jr." The final sentence of the ad read, "Leading conservative spokesman William F. Buckley, Jr. has written a cogent and entertaining introduction to this definitive work." And, emblazoned on the top of the page: "
Every disenchanted liberal and every American who calls himself a conservative—or is thinking of becoming one—must read this book.—
Wm. F. Buckley, Jr."

On reading the ad I was faintly put off by my utterly certain knowledge that the book did not exist; that I couldn't, therefore, have written an introduction to it, let alone a cogent and entertaining introduction (though when it is written, it will of course be at least those two things); and I didn't even remember composing a tribute to the book that didn't exist, though on faith I'd venture to say, sight unseen, at least as much about anything Joe Sobran undertook to write. So I sent along the
PW
page to Joe with a questioning note, and in his wonderful, reassuring, there-there way, he called and reminded me that
when
the publisher asked
whether
I would write an introduction for the book he was commissioning from Joe, I
had said
sure; but they
needed
something on the spot, so / had told
Joe
to say something
appropriate
to what he
proposed
to write, and his
memory
of it was that he did so, gave the text to Frances to check it out with me, and he simply
assumed
this had been done. Well, it is certainly safe to assume that something you give to Frances to do gets done.

So I asked my friend Joe, on November 18, as Priscilla and I silently raised our glasses to each other, how was the book coming along that would be
published
in April (books are usually published about nine months after the finished manuscript is submitted). And he smiled and said, "Now Bill, don't you worry. It will surprise you." It certainly will.

I apologized to Pitts, knowing she had heard the story before, and told Joe that speaking of book blurbs and surprises, I had had a jolly time a few years back with David Niven. I was given his book,
Bring On the Empty Horses
, to review. Thank God I was so favorably struck by it, because David has been for fifteen years one of Pat's and my closest friends. I found the book absolutely remarkable, said so in my review, and one line in my encomium was picked up by the publisher, and used universally, as follows:

^u
Probably the best book ever written about Hollywood
—New York
Times."

I have no doubt this is so, and other reviewers similarly acclaimed it. About a year later I received a telegram from my British publisher. Would I immediately secure from David Niven a blurb for my first novel,
Saving the Queen
, which would be published in March? David was in Hollywood (filming
Murder by Death)
, and I got him on the telephone. He agreed to read the manuscript that very weekend, and I got it to him. On Monday I had a telegram from him that read: "DEAR BILL: HOW'S THIS: QUOTE FASCINATING, EXCITING AND UNIQUELY DIFFERENT. WHAT MORE CAN YOU ASK? UNQUOTE. IF YOU DON'T LIKE, FEEL FREE TO CHANGE IN ANY WAY YOU WANT. DAVID."

The following winter, in Switzerland (as ever, during February and March), the evening before my departure for London where I would spend two days promoting
Queen
, I was in my study, the far end of which is equipped as an atelier centered about a Ping-Pong table. There, two or three times every week, I paint with David (he is expert) and whatever guests or friends are so inclined (we have a hundred guest-painted canvases lying about). David was concentrating most fearfully on his tulip or whatever, and I on mine, when I said, "David, remember the telegram, you know, the blurb for my book?"