The 2015 book Buckley and Mailer by Kevin Schultz examines the friendship/rivalry between novelist Norman Mailer and Conservative writer William F. Buckley. Both were consummate critics of the prevailing liberalism of the decade, Mailer critiqued from the Left and Buckley from the Right. On September 22, 1962 they held a debate in New York City and became friends afterwards, corresponding throughout the decade. As their cultural influence waned the deep fissures within American they tried to transcend became ever more apparent.
With privileged backgrounds and Ivy League Educations, both spoke with a suave self-assurance. Mailer’s 1948 novel The Naked and the Dead, based on his own experiences in the Philippines during the Second World War, established him as new voice in America literature. His 1959 book Advertisements For Myself helped launched New Journalism, a style that made the writer a part of their own story.
Buckley also came to a prominence through a book, God and Man At Yale , a satiric look at the modern university. In 1955 he founded National Review, which became the bible of the Conservative Movement. Like Mailer, Buckley felt stagnated by the Eisenhower years and worried about the direction of the country.
Their debate was promoted as the “forceful philosopher of THE NEW CONSERVATISM . . . AGAINST . . . America’s angry young man and Leading Radical” (17). The debate proved a jocular affair with both men finding common ground in their fears about technology threatening the individual. Buckley’s conservatism looked to the past for wisdom and guidance on how to move forward – read the “Great Books” and champion Judeo-Christian values as the path to Enlightenment. Mailer evangelized for a new individuality that would reward creativity and advocated for a new value system to unlock the shackles of the past.
Both took the controversies of the decade head on. Mailer covered the 1964 GOP convention in San Francisco that nominated Barry Goldwater and detected a whiff of Fascism. Johnson’s landslide win over Goldwater failed to produce a consensus. The left and right were drifting further apart. LBJ’s escalation of the war in Vietnam would fuel the New Left – and energize Mailer.
Schultz credits Buckley with driving out the wacko right wing groups such as the John Birch Society and the KKK. His long running talk show Firing Line looks more like a placid cocktail party than the predictable rage at Fox News. As time went on Buckley’s aristocratic view of politics alienated him from the forces that would shape modern conservatism – white working class resentment.
As well educated white men there views on race and gender betrayed their privilege. Mailer’s 1957 essay “The White Negro” expressed his admiration for black culture, specifically the sexual openness that terrified middle class whites. James Baldwin, a friend of Mailer’s, called out the racism of the article because of its simplistic view of black culture. Buckley opposed the Civil Rights Movement and his statements on race are now outmoded, sometimes painfully racist. In 1965 Baldwin humiliated Buckley at the Oxford Union debate they held.
Mailer’s reputation as a male chauvinist also put him in opposition to Women’s Liberation. In 1971 Mailer debated a group of feminists including Susan Sontag and Germaine Greer and came off as clownish. In a later essay, Greer dismissed Mailer as aging and no longer relevant – echoing the Boomer animus towards Mailer.
Mailer continued to write in the 1960s, writing an experimental novel An American Dream, and two works of non-fiction about protests he participated in Armies of the Night and Miami and The Siege of Chicago. Realizing film was poised to displace literature Mailer made several experimental movies. In 1968 he ran for mayor of New York City with Jimmy Breslin in a splendidly Quixotic campaign that pledged to make NYC the 51st state.
Today literature lacks anyone approaching the panache of Mailer, while conservatism reduced itself to angry bloggers, talk radio rants, and Fox News (with a few exceptions – National Review soldiers on more weary than ever in the Trump era). Our fragmented culture tends to separate people into something resembling tribes, a development that would appall both Mailer and Buckley.
Reading the book, one can understand their flaws and yet appreciate their willingness to jump into the maelstrom of ideas. Schultz paints a panoramic portrait of the 1960s that deeply resonates for the current moment.
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