Losing Mum and Pup

In the 60's as a kid I actually watched Wm F Buckley on NET. His odd diction and queer facial changes made him unique. Then the recent doc about Buckley and Gore Vidal--a must see--sent me on a binge diet of old 'Firing Line' programs for the past few years. This book by his agnostic son is heart-tugging. Chris Buckley lets us see the private Father, who was very witty and loving. It's one of my favorite books. Having just lost my own Pop--July 3--Chris' words are helping me to cope. We never get over the loss of our parents--if we loved them. It's a beautiful book. Get it.

In this unsparing yet respectful farewell to his parents, Christopher Buckley does not confuse love with sentimentality, dependence or absence of conflict-- this is one of the book's main strengths. "Losing Mum and Pup" captures with frankness and humor the ambivalence children often feel toward their parents, and vice versa. Anyone who has cared for aging parents with strong personalities but failing minds and bodies will find much that is familiar. Not every detail is pleasant, but this book would not be true without facing the end with open eyes. In this life, things fade, friends and loved ones depart, and all symphonies remain unfinished. In some quarters, much is made of the elder Buckleys' wealth-- modest by Hollywood or rock-star standards. However, far too little attention is given to their capacity for enduring friendship with people across political, cultural, national and generational lines. The subject of friendship was one of the most interesting, heartwarming, and underdeveloped aspects of the book-- the bright background against which the darker moments are seen in proper perspective. If Christopher Buckley writes just one more book about his parents-- and I hope he does-- this should be it.

Let me start by saying that I've been looking for the key to unlock myself for too many years to mention, and this book finally did it for me. It's a humorous, engaging, insightful complex relationship (dis)closure. Must read, if only for it's slant on religion, indoctrination and living w/ people who must control everything around them, especially their children. I was a huge fan of William F Buckley, but this book made me realize that I wasn't the only one with impossible, albeit charming parents.

Christopher Buckley's "Losing Mum and Pup" joins Philip Roth's "Patrimony," Geoffrey Wolff's "Duke of Deception," and Alexander Waugh's "Fathers and Sons" (there are a number of other examples) as a masterpiece of the contemporary parent genre. Is there a happier way to grieve than to write a book? His loving memoir of two difficult parents, the account at times hilariously funny, at times outrageously irreverential, draws his outsize father and mother, Bill and Pat Buckley with the eye of a portraitist uniquely in a position to know. Both parents were at times difficult for Christopher Buckley. As his mother comatose lay dying, he said, "I forgive you." Much as Geoffrey Wolff lovingly said, "Thank God," when informed of his father's death. What is so interesting is that the very style of his parents is reflected in the style of the portrait. The account is breezy but incisive reminiscent of his mother. One can almost hear her saying, "Pul-eeze, excuse me while I go out and buy a Stradivarius" in parrying some filial jeremiad. The outside-the-box thinking is vintage Bill Buckley. I paraphrase: "I wanted to tell each eulogist at my mother's memorial service at the Temple of Dendur that I had snipers hidden in the Temple with orders to shoot if any exceeded four minutes." Who, but a Buckley, thinks like that? It's what makes them so exasperatingly delightful. You can almost see the arched eyebrows. The ideation is of a piece with the father's famous quip during the 1965 New York City Mayoral election. "What will you do if you win, Mr. Buckley?" "Demand a recount." The book particularly resonanted with me since, like Christopher Buckley, I am an only child who in his fifties lost both parents (mother first) within a year of each other. The author, like me, accepts the profound sense of loss in being orphaned in such a short time. So I was moved to tears as he writes something like, "In my dreams they are still looking after me, and I am orphaned no more." Or as Fitzgerald put it, "So we beat on, boats against the current...." It is all about memory, isn't it? Christopher Buckley has forced himself to remember and write about it. In this there is catharsis, hope and the expression of deep and abiding love. A must read!

I found this memoir by Christopher Buckley quite unlike any other book I have read. It recounts some of the life and a great deal about the deaths of his parents, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Patricia Taylor Buckley, which occurred within 11 months of each other during 2007-2008. It is at times hilarious; moving; and cuttingly sad. But mostly it celebrates their lives and his life with both of them. In the process it gives us some really inside views of Bill Buckley and his famous wife, and adds to our understanding of the human dimensions of this "Godfather" of the right. I think also anyone who has parents still living, or has gone through the experience of bidding "Adieu" to one's parents (as I have), will find much to learn from and identify with in this short book (251 pages). The book certainly sparked my interest in Buckley (not exactly an ideological compatriot of mine) and I look forward with great interest to the forthcoming biography by Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of a fine book on Whittaker Chambers. Christopher Buckley celebrates the lives of his parents, but also shares his mourning with us. He recounts with total frankness his disagreements and prickly relationships with both parents. Anyone who has buried their parents will recognize the combination of mourning, regret at not having straightened everything out (aka as "the talk"), and just the sense of being truly alone (not to mention, as the author points out, you become next in line in this endless procession of death). Buckley calls himself "an orphan" and I think we all fall into that designation. There certainly are very sad moments--I for one never imagined I would ever shed a tear for Bill Buckley but came close a couple of times. Yet the author, a "humorist" by trade, has mixed in scenes of exquisite comedy that make the sadness extremely tolerable. Bill Buckley's refusal to update his various computers from 1985 Wordstar struck a responsive chord with this adherent to WordPerfect 5.2. There are some wonderful private and public photographs included. I disagree with those who say that one need only read the New York Times Magazine excerpt (April 26, 2009) to get the essence of the book. In fact, the book places everything into a meaningful framework and enhances our understanding of Bill Buckley far more effectively than the article, though it is a fine piece standing alone. One interesting facet is that the author includes throughout what might be termed "tips for burying your parents," which are only partially in jest. To bury a parent is to enter into a strange and sometimes irritating world of bureaucratic demands. A book that at once is funny, sad, and informative is a combination hard to beat.

I usually cringe when I see that an author has decided to read his book. Writing is such a solitary task, and while research and other ancillary endeavors involved in writing are interesting, most authors cannot, for any length of time, read their own books well. This isn't always true, you have ones like Jean Sheppard or John Le Carre doing such a great job, others try. With Christopher Buckley, you get a good reader, who, because of his slight tongue-in-cheek manner sometimes, one wonders where I got that from, makes the book more humorous than the subject, losing ones parents, would normally be. For me, LOSING MUM AND PUP: A MEMOIR stands as a testament to his parents, William F. and Patricia Buckley, and as such it is also a testament of himself: his parents were grand people standing on the grand stage of life, and while he has a certain amount of notoriety in the publishing world, he lives in shadows of them somewhat, especially his father. With LOSING MUM AND PUP: A MEMOIR, their only son, Christopher, has given us, in this case the listener or reader, an excellent account of what he went through when he lost both of his parents within a year. This account, while perhaps too personal for some, is nonetheless honest and forthright. It speaks of the flaws of the author as much, if not more, than the subjects of his writing, his parents. And, what I find so remarkable was how his loss was so much more expressive when the words sometime came out of his mouth somewhat reluctantly, often skating to the edge of quivering (in the audio version), but never quite doing so, at certain points, such as reading his father's letter to others after his mother's passing. I only knew William F. Buckley through his writings, his guest appearances on the talk shows and his interview show "Firing Line." In everything he did, he tackled serious subjects with tenacity and wit, and just when it looked as if the person he was talking to or interviewing was going to get a valid point-in, Mr. Buckley would open his mouth, touch the tip of his tongue to his top lip and say something, usually very economically, that would shoot down the other's point as if it was a clay pigeon hit by both shots of a double-barreled shotgun...>BAM< Got you! <br /> <br />As for Patricia Taylor Buckley, she was just as remarkable. She had to be because Bill and she were married for 57 dull-free years, and while this book deals with her passing, too, it is with the loss of William F. that we learn as much about the son as we do the father. <br /> <br />For Christopher dealt and interacted with his father as his health declined, like many caught in this situation, you witness a week-to-week, sometimes day-to-day, deterioration in what they can do, what they can remember, and in how they treat you. You learn as much about Christopher as you do his father, as William F. Buckley goes through the whole Elizabeth Kubler-Ross stages of death: denial, anger, bargaining, depr