Comments on: A Satire on America in the Middle East

By: The Tory Anarchist » Blog Archive » Small Wars Aren’t Good Wars

The Tory Anarchist » Blog Archive » Small Wars Aren’t Good Wars — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:06:17 +0000

[...] 1983 Esquire essay on his ambiguous feelings about not going to Vietnam — referenced by R.J. Stove in this comment thread — is included in Buckley’s splendid collection Wry Martinis. The book also contains a [...]

By: xenos

xenos — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:09:31 +0000

I saw ‘American Family’ on the shelf at the bookshop but opted for Wittgenstein instead. I’ll have to pick ‘A.F.’ up, it seems.

“A sad decline indeed for a magazine that once published Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Dwight Macdonald, Murray Kempton, Truman Capote, etc. etc.”

Don’t forget Vidal!

By: R J Stove

R J Stove — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:05:04 +0000

Turns out Christopher Buckley was interviewed in 2004 (i.e. before Thank You For Smoking hit our screens) about his writing philosophy:

http://americasfuture.org/doublethink/2004/05/interview-with-christopher-buckley/

Quite rightly, he is scathing about Esquire‘s latter-day standards: “I picked up Esquire not too long ago and I was just appalled. … This was the magazine I started at.” A sad decline indeed for a magazine that once published Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Dwight Macdonald, Murray Kempton, Truman Capote, etc. etc.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:10:14 +0000

“Together, we can make a better world, but we’ll probably have to kill a lot of you in the process.”

That is a great line. It reminds me of a line from the great Mel Brooks “Get Smart” TV series. The Chief confesses to Max, “…you don’t know how hard it is for me to day in, day out send men on dangerous missions often to the deaths.” Max replies “..not as hard as it is on the men.”

By: R J Stove

R J Stove — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:23:17 +0000

Christopher Buckley has a great emotional range. His September 1983 Esquire essay "Vietnam Guilt" is a powerful meditation on warfare, and is well worth looking up if your library has back-issues of that magazine. The early-to-mid-1980s were something of an Esquire golden age.