Dale Nelson sent me this link to a London Telegraph list of “50 Crime Writers You Should Read Before You Die.” It’s been linked at other blogs, but I think it belongs here too. Without doing the actual math (which would tire out my brain muscle), I think I’ve read something by about half these authors. I’m not sure I’m all that keen to check out most of the remainder. They seem rather dark and nihilistic and “significant” to me.
In regard to the title of this post, OK, I never actually met William F. Buckley. Or corresponded with him. Or with anybody who ever met him, as far as I know.
I can’t even say he brought me into conservatism. To be honest, although I’ve ready many of his essays, the only books of his I’ve read have been some of his novels. (Which are very good.)
But he was part of my pilgrimage.
I first became aware of him in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one evening around 1970 when I was making a brief visit to the home of a friend. As is my wont, I was checking out the bookshelves, and I saw a book entitled Up From Liberalism, by William F. Buckley.
What a great title, I thought.* So I pulled it off the shelf.
You must understand that I was a Democrat in those days. My dad had always been a Democrat, and a few years of college had managed to convince me that if you were a serious Christian, you had to be a Democrat, because the Democratic Party was the party of compassion (this was before they nudged all the pro-lifers out). So sneaking a peak at a politically conservative book had something of the same shameful thrill as sneaking a look at a copy of Playboy.
I was amazed by the back of the book jacket. You know how most books have a series of quotations from favorable reviews on the back?
For this book, Buckley chose to list a selection of the nastiest things that had been written about his previous books by liberal reviewers.
I realized that I was looking at sheer, unalloyed brilliance.
In a conservative. There was a little cognitive dissonance there.
But that impression and that memory remained with me over the succeeding years, as I slowly realized that the Democratic Party was no longer tolerating my beliefs, and that some of my political beliefs were fatheaded anyway.
Rest in peace, Mr. Buckley.
*For those of you who suffer from a contemporary education, and therefore know nothing of American history, Up From Liberalism was a take-off on Up From Slavery, the autobiography of Booker T. Washington, whom you probably heard about during Black History Month.
I have his spy novel, Who’s on First. I plan to read it soon.
That seems a horrible list. (In fact as bleak and dismal as a book I leafed through recently on the ‘1000 books you need to read’… where only nihilists seemed to have a chance at selection) It’s a kind of a fad for reviewers to celebrate the worst books they can find.
– I’m sure Brandywine readers could do a lot better.
– some suggestions; the ‘Repairman Jack’ novels by F. Paul Wilson; the Arkady novels by Martin Cruz Smith.
– have you read the Inspector Banks novels by Peter Robinson Lars? (Since you only seem to read novels by americans I’m assuming the answer is no.)
I haven’t read any of those you list, Orm. I’ll have to try to remember to check them out.
To clarify; I haven’t read any novels by Robinson. Of Smith I would recommend Polar Star and Havanna Bay. (I didn’t care much for the last one; Stalin’s ghost… though I think it gives a good picture of modern day Russia.) Of Wilson I’d recommend Legacies (I’ve only read a couple.) The them of the RJ novels is Libertarianism; to put it too simply.
– I mentioned Robinson because while reading an interview with Robert Sawyer (an sf novelist, who is ‘world famous’ in canada) he mentioned R. as a favorite writer.