Another significant omission is Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the renowned liberal historian and political icon who was such a fixture in American political letters. This oversight, again, is the result mainly of my not having access to the substantive speeches they made when they debated one another. As far as I know, Buckley did not include in his collections the text of his debates with Schlesinger nor to my knowledge did Schlesinger document his exchanges with Buckley.
That they debated and feuded is well known and is easily gleaned from published correspondence and commentary, but this material, while interesting, is not substantive enough to sustain an extended treatment of their ideological differences or the manner in which they were presented to the public. Of course, one can make assumptions based on both men's well-known ideological and political loyalties, but I concluded that this approach would not till enough new ground to make a full-length chapter interesting.
A few observations are worth making, however. Schlesinger mentioned Buckley several times in his posthumously published diaries and it is apparent that the two men were not fond of one another. Schlesinger accused Buckley of intellectual dishonesty and even threatened to sue him when Buckley used a comment made by Schlesinger during one of their debates as a blurb on a published collection of columns, essays and correspondence.
As Buckley recounted the episode in The Jeweler's Eye, Schlesinger had, during one debate, made the comment: "Mr. Buckley has a facility for rhetoric which I envy, as well as a wit I seek clumsily and vainly to emulate." Buckley used the comments as a blurb on Rumbles Left and Right, his first collection of essays. Schlesinger was not amused, Buckley later recalled: "You would have thought it was the greatest swindle since the donation of Constantine."
Schlesinger, not known for being quick on his feet, first denied he ever made the statement and then had his lawyers contact Buckley demanding that the blurb be removed from the book, claiming use of the quote constituted a breach of Schlesinger's privacy. Buckley found this too much. "A most interesting complaint, considering that Mr. Schlesinger's words had been uttered before an audience of 1,500 or so, before television and radio, and before members of the press and the wire services. For someone who wants what he says to be kept private . . . that's a strange way to go about it, wouldn't you say?"
When Buckley refused to remove the blurb, Schlesinger issued a statement in which he decried its use. He argued that it was uttered well before the publication of the book and that, in any case, it was intended as sarcasm. Buckley refused to back down, arguing that a writer's gifts do not, like a soufflé, collapse with the passing of a couple of years. Moreover, he told readers that Schlesinger had not meant to be sarcastic and that he would gladly refer the matter to an objective panel that could review the transcript or a recording of the comments.
Buckley was astonished at Schlesinger's lack of humor, and Schlesinger by Buckley's pluck. And the relationship certainly did not warm up. When Buckley's Firing Line team asked Schlesinger a few years later to appear on the show, Schlesinger, reportedly, refused on the ground that he did not want to increase Buckley's influence. This led to another entertaining exchange in which Buckley responded with a public letter to Schlesinger, which appeared in National Review. "I should have thought it would follow from your general convictions that a public exchange with me would diminish, rather than increase, my influence. And anyway, the general public aside, shouldn't you search out opportunities to expose yourself to my rhetoric and wit? How else will you fulfill your lifelong dream of emulating them?"
Schlesinger responded. "Dear Bill: I do not see the National Enquirer or National Review or whatever it is called; but I understand that you ran your silly letter of January 15 to me in your issue of February 10. I gather also that in neither this nor the succeeding issue did you run my reply of January 30, though it had obviously been in your hands in plenty of time. In a better world I might have hoped you would have had the elementary fairness, or guts, to provide equal time; but, alas, wrong again."
Buckley got testy in reply: "Now, suppose I had begun this letter, 'Dear Arthur, or Dear Barfer, or whatever you call yourself?' Would I do that? No; and not merely because it's childish, but because it isn't funny. The reason I did not publish your reply to my original letter is that I thought it embarrassingly feeble and it did not come to me with your permission to publish it."
~ more... ~
No comments:
Post a Comment