It's Out! (Almost!)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell's book is out on Friday! Click the pic for a link to sample pages of Treasures Old and New: Traditional Prayers for Today's Catholics (Liguori Press).

The profits from his book go to his Dominican province. He doesn't happen to be in my province, but hey, we can't all be perfect.

Treasures Old and New

Fr. Phillip Neri Powell, OP, of Domine, Da Mihi Hanc Aquam!, has a new book out. Treasures Old and New: Traditional Prayers for Today's Catholics comes out September 15th of this year from Liguori Publications.

And speaking of Liguori:

He who prays is certainly saved. He who prays not is certainly damned. All the blessed (except infants) have been saved by prayer. All the damned have been lost through not praying; if they had prayed, they would not have been lost. And this is, and will be, their greatest torment in hell, to think how easily they might have been saved, only by asking God for his grace; but that now it is too late -- the time of prayer is over.

St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection

Banned Books Week: A Celebration of Freedom?

Today the American Library Association begins its 26th annual celebration of Banned Books Week, an event designed to keep before our eyes the specters of Fahrenheit 451 and Nazis and other totalitarian thugs setting fire to mountains of forbidden books, reminding us to be ever on the lookout for the forces of darkness and tyranny that set out to stifle human thought by regulating what we read.

That, at any rate, is the stated purpose of Banned Books Week. But is that really all there is to it? A review of the ALA's Banned Books Week materials on the Internet (apparently under renovation, with many non-operative links) raises a few questions.

1. Is the mere regulation of library materials, without more, contrary to liberty, where citizens remain free to purchase the materials libraries may not carry? Most libraries are public entities, staffed by government employees and funded by the taxpayers. Must taxpayers support with their dollars access to materials that violate the ideals they cherish? Must they acquiesce in the respectability that library access confers on that which is by nature not respectable? Are not the patrons of scurrilous materials free to purchase them at privately-owned bookstores and newsstands, or even off the Internet?

2. What is the nature of the "censorship" the American Library Association dreads and fears? The ALA's website includes a set of guidelines for librarians who face "challenges" to library materials. "Challenges" -- which the ALA apparently finds undesirable -- include the following (taken directly from the ALA' s website):

• Expression of Concern. An inquiry that has judgmental overtones.
• Oral Complaint. An oral challenge to the presence and/or appropriateness of the material in question.
• Written Complaint. A formal, written complaint filed with the institution (library, school, etc.), challenging the presence and/or appropriateness of specific material.
• Public Attack. A publicly disseminated statement challenging the value of the material, presented to the media and/or others outside the institutional organization in order to gain public support for further action.
• Censorship. A change in the access status of material, based on the content of the work and made by a governing authority or its representatives. Such changes include exclusion, restriction, removal, or age/grade level changes.

As the ALA clearly concedes above, "censorship" necessarily entails government action against a work based on its content. But the ALA also lumps in with censorship citizen complaints of various types. Do citizen complaints against library smut threaten the survival of the First Amendment? What about the First Amendment rights of those who do not want their tax dollars underwriting sexually explicit, anti-Christian or violent material?

3. In surveying the ALA's list of "Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000," it is clear that some of these books are accepted as literary classics (by the way: has anybody seriously questioned whether The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are, at this late date and after numerous film and television adaptations, really on the "censorship" hit list?). But many of them are aimed at children or "young adults" (i.e., children). Now parents have not only the right but the duty to regulate their children's reading. Are they not entitled to be alarmed when public institutions undermine their parental efforts by providing their children with easy access, behind their backs, to literature that is forbidden to them at home? Are concerned parents in fact the primary source of the "challenges" the ALA finds so ominous? Is the ALA being intellectually honest in holding that freedom includes the "freedom" of little kids to look at inappropriate materials against the wishes of their parents?

In its alleged quest to secure the blessings of liberty, the American Library Association ignores and indeed opposes the most obvious safeguard on liberty: the cultivation of virtue. In a letter to a cousin, John Adams wrote:

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, They may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies.

In a letter to his wife, Adams wrote:

The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no blessings. The people will have unbounded power, and the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great.

Virtue is tough to cultivate while you're busy shoveling dirt into your heart. As long as freedom means nothing more than the removal of obstacles to societal corruption, the genuine article will remain in peril. So maybe it's about time the American Library Association quit worrying about parental objections to Heather Has Two Mommies, and started exercising its hitherto unused freedom to read more of the Founding Fathers. (And while they're at it, maybe that most scurrilous of reading materials, the New Testament.)

Required Reading for All Who Face Trouble (In Other Words, for ALL)

As a writer, St. Thomas More’s best known literary work is Utopia, which some people cite for the foolish and insulting proposition that this roaring lion of two-fisted cool supported the repellent and downright anti-Catholic practices, like euthanasia, that he describes in his non-existent society. Ironically, as Gerald B. Wegemer notes in his introduction to A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation (Scepter Publishers, 2005), Utopia, a Latin work, has long been more accessible to English-speaking readers than More’s English works – because the language has sailed on, leaving the English of More’s time far behind, shrouded in mists of unintelligibility. It takes special training, and plenty of patience, to decipher the crazy spelling and archaic vocabulary of More’s pre-Shakespearean language. I myself have never tried to read more than a few lines of his original, un-updated work, even though, as an undergraduate, I studied the even older and crazier Middle English dialects of Chaucer and the Pearl Poet. But Mary Gottschalk’s rendition of the Dialogue into modern English is highly readable: at no time does she get in the way or blunt the force of More’s uncluttered mind, his penetrating logic, his keen wit, or the sense of humor and good cheer that not even the headsman and his axe, overshadowing him as he wrote, could repress.

The Dialogue is set in Hungary on the eve of Suleiman the Magnificent’s invasion of that Christian country, which took place in 1526. The conversation takes place between Vincent, a young man stricken with fear of the ferocious Turks, and his elderly uncle Anthony, wise with the wisdom of the Christian who stands on the threshold of death. Vincent – the figure of More’s family, tormented by his persecution at the hands of Henry VIII – turns to Anthony – the figure of More himself – for advice on how to find consolation, strength and perseverance in the midst of the woes that loom over their country and above all, threaten their faith. Anthony begins with an analysis of true comfort, showing that it is grounded solely in the Christian faith, which in turn affords a true understanding of the medicinal value of suffering and the merits of suffering patiently borne. He then discusses the temptations against perseverance, and their cures; the danger of attachment to worldly goods; the true nature of imprisonment and death, the realization of which is an antidote to fear. The Dialogue culminates in a comparison of the fleeting torments of earth to the everlasting and unremitting pains of Hell, followed by a description of the unimaginable joys of heaven, that will instantly drown out even the greatest earthly suffering.

More’s logic is elegant and straightforward. His insights seem so obvious in the telling that we are apt to forget that they are actually the product of a highly disciplined mind, in turn the product of years of not only intense study and practice, but prayer and mortification. Consider, for example, his response to the then-new Protestant doctrine against the need for penance, reparation and sorrow for sin:

Now, Nephew, as I told you the other day, I will not dispute these matters with those upstarts. But surely, for my own part, I cannot very well go along with them, because as far as my poor mind can see, God’s holy Scripture is very plainly against them. And the whole body of Christendom in all Christian regions, including the ones in which they themselves live, has always, down to their own day, clearly believed against them. And all the ancient, holy doctors of the Church have consistently taught against them, and all the ancient, holy interpreters have construed Scripture against them. So if these new people have just now, at this late date, discovered that Scripture has been misunderstood for all this time, and that of all those holy doctors of old, not one could understand it correctly, then I at this age am too old to begin to study it now. And trust in these people’s knowledge, Nephew? That I would in no way dare to do. For I see no reason to think that these people might not now, in their understanding of Scripture, be as deceived as they tell us everyone else has been for all this time.

From the Master he served so well on earth, More learned the art of parables, using them effectively to clarify the truths he teaches in the Dialogue. His illustration of the sin of presumption sends a chill down the spine:

There’s a story about a fellow who always used to say, “As long as I live I’ll do as I please, for when I die, three or four words will make everything safe enough.” Well, it so happened that long before this fellow could get old, his horse stumbled on a broken bridge. He tried hard to rescue them both, but soon he saw that it would not be. He knew he would be flung headlong into the river below. And in sudden agitation he cried out, as he was falling, “Well, I’ll be damned!” So there he was, drowned with his three or four deathbed words on which, for all his wretched life, he had hung all his hope.

Very intense stuff. But dire solemnity is not More’s style, even in the shadow of his own impending violent death. A lightness of heart befitting a thoroughly convinced Christian shines throughout the Dialogue; and although he engages in serious and sharp reasoning, the Dialogue is leavened throughout with the wit and humor that accompanied the saint all the way to the block. I laughed out loud at another of More’s descriptions of the sin of presumption:

There are also some, I say, who are reluctant to die because they lack good sense. These people believe in the world that is to come, and they hope to go there one day; yet they love so much the wealth of this world, and such things in it that delight them, that they will fight tooth and nail to keep them as long as they possibly can. And when they see themselves allowed in no way to keep that wealth any longer, when death comes to take them away from it, then, for lack of anything better, they will consent to be – as soon as they are gone – hoisted up to heaven and placed right next to God.

More has a delightful way of playing with words. On the chance that a person who refuses to give his life for his faith may “perhaps” afterward attain forgiveness, he warns, playfully yet pointedly:

All his forgiveness hinges, Nephew, as you clearly see, on this “perhaps.” A “perhaps” can turn into a “yes,” but it can also turn into a “no.” And then where is he? And besides, as you well know, per no kind of haps will he happen to permanently escape from death – the very thing for fear of which he forsook his faith.

Although he does lament the need for levity to break up meditation on even the joys of heaven, which our carnal nature regards as tedious, and recommends humor as sauce rather than as meat, More is not above breaking up his own serious subject matter with funny stories, apparently derived from his own domestic life. Witness Vincent’s tale of a relative and her long-suffering husband:

This woman’s husband took much pleasure in the attitude and behavior of another honorable man, and therefore spent a lot of time with him. In fact, more often than not, he was away from home at mealtime. Well, one day it happened that both he and his wife dined with that neighbor of theirs, and she playfully picked a fight with this man for making her husband feel so happy elsewhere that she could never keep him at home. “Actually, ma’am,” he said (for he had a dry sense of humor), “nothing keeps him in my company but just one thing. Give him the same thing, and he’ll never be away from you.” “What wonderful thing might that be?” our relative then asked. “Indeed, ma’am,” he said, “your husband dearly loves to talk, and when he’s with me I let him have all the words.” “ALL the words?” she asked. “Well,” she said, “I’m quite willing and content to let him have all the words just as he’s always had them – which is, I speak them all myself and give them all to him. In that way, for all I care, he can still have them all. But to say that in some other way he shall have them all – you can keep him forever, rather than he get the half!”

Or Uncle Anthony’s story of the confession of the nagging wife:

…a certain nagging wife, when she came home from confession one day, told her husband [what] she was going to do. “Cheer up, man,” she said, “for today, thanks be to God, I made a very good confession and got thoroughly absolved. So now I intend to stop all my old nagging, and star over afresh!”

More clearly understood that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and he used it to great effect.

When I was a kid, there were few things I hated worse than writing a book report. They weren’t as bad during my college years, when I was working toward my degree in English, though they were still onerous, mostly because I was being made to do them. Now that I am all grown up, and at the service of accused criminals rather than professors, I write book reports for fun. I suppose it’s because I enjoy the books in question so much that I want others to read them also, and get as much out of them as I have. The Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation is one such book.

But the day I start doing story problems for fun, somebody better book me a straitjacket and a corner in the rubber room.

Another Book Meme!

I wasn't tagged for this, but what the hell. I was an English major; I love to read; and this is about books. The ones I've read are in bold, the ones I'd like to read are highlighted. I did make one modification: for the sake of space, any book I haven't heard of I took out. Fr. Erik has the full list.

1. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Hated it when I had to read it in high school, loved it when I read it later as a mature adult. Could care less that Mark Twain hated Jane Austen's writings, even though I really like Mark Twain.

2. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lost count of the number of times I have read this at about 35. The movies drove me nuts because of all the deviations from plot and characters.

3. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. Read it and appreciated it more in adulthood than during my kid years, but it is still quite a dark story.

4. J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter series. Haven't read them, don't particularly want to.

5. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird. Loved this when I was a kid, though I haven't read it for years and years.

6. The Bible. If I haven't read it, I'm in a lot of trouble.

7. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is a sociopath.

8. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four. Had to read it in junior high. Every kid should have to read it in junior high.

9. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

10. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women.

11. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Angel Clare, like others of Hardy's characters, is a dink.

12. Joseph Heller, Catch 22.

13. Complete Works of Shakespeare. I have read from them; not read all of them.

14. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca.

15. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit. Of course!

16. J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye. Read it in high school. Hated it. Found it tawdry and sordid.

17. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

18. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind. I think the movie was enough for me.

19. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Read it in high school. Jazz Age sophisticates making a complete hash out of life for themselves and others.

20. Charles Dickens, Bleak House. Though I like Dickens, I haven't read this one.

21. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace. The length of the book doesn't deter me; just haven't got a huge desire to read it.

22. Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Read this in college (not on the reading list, just wanted to). I don't remember much about it except that it was quite funny.

23. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited.

24. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment. Just haven't got the urge to read Russian novelists.

25. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Read it in high school; found it and all the other works of John Steinbeck that I had to read depressing.

26. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland. Never saw the movie, either.

27. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows. Tried to read it, couldn't get into it.

28. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Once again, just not into Russian novelists.

29. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield. Read it in adulthood and found it excellent.

30. C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia. Nope, haven't read it, though I like C.S. Lewis.

31. Jane Austen, Emma. One of these days, I hope to get around to reading this, as I really like Jane Austin.

32. Jane Austen, Persuasion. Haven't read the book, but I really liked the movie with Ann Rice and Ciaran Hinds.

33. Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha. Zero desire.

34. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh. Never read this. Did read the Raggedy Ann books.

35. George Orwell, Animal Farm. Four legs good, two legs better!

36. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code. I saw the movie, and it was crap. That was enough of a waste of money.

37. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White. The only thing I really know about Wilkie Collins is that Mark Twain once upbraided him for praising James Fenimore Cooper, which frankly, he deserved.

38. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. Never read the books, saw the miniseries.

39. Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd. Thomas Hardy wasted enough of my time with Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure for me to want to read any more of his stuff.

40. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale. I actually had to read this in (Catholic) high school. I wasn't old enough to read it then, and I'm still not old enough to read it now.

41. William Golding, Lord of the Flies. Zero desire.

42. Frank Herbert, Dune. Saw the movies, of course.

43. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility. Excellent book; the movie wasn't so bad either, even though Emma Thompson was a little long in the tooth to be playing Eleanor.

44. Charles Dickens, A Tale Of Two Cities. Another excellent Dickens classic.

45. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. I'm very much afraid there are a lot of people who would like to live in it.

50. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men. Read it in high school; hated it (see The Grapes of Wrath above).

51. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita. I couldn't have put it better than Fr. Richsteig: "I avoid porn even when it masquarades as literature."

52. Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo. I tried to read this after reading The Three Musketeers, but failed.

53. Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure. Had to read this for my Victorian Lit class in college. Couldn't stand it. Was especially maddened by the fact that I was being propped up to sympathize with complete morons who were presented to me as tragic-romantic heroes, when what they really were was arrantly stupid.

54. Herman Melville, Moby Dick. No real motivation to read it.

55. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist. Read and enjoyed it in adulthood.

56. Bram Stoker, Dracula. Vampires really aren't my bag.

57. Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden.

58. James Joyce, Ulysses. I think I had to read this in high school, but I remember nothing of it.

59. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. No desire.

60. William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair.

61. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Who hasn't seen one of the many movie adaptations? But oddly enough, I have never actually read the book.

62. Alice Walker, The Color Purple. Pure filth.

63. Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day. Saw the movie, never read the book. Thought the characters in the movie were too stupid for me to want to read the book.

64. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary. Read it in high school. Hated it, notwithstanding Flaubert's le mot juste.

65. E.B. White, Charlotte's Web. Loved this so much as a kid, and read it so many times, my parents tried to take it away from me.

66. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Some of my absolute favorite bedtime reading -- I actually have a volume of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories. My five favorites: The Hound of the Baskervilles; The Sign of Four; "The Musgrave Ritual"; "The Adventure of the Priory School"; "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton".

67. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Just have no desire.

68. Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.

69. Richard Adams, Watership Down. No desire.

70. Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers. Read this in adulthood; actually had to labor to get through it.

71. Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Never had a desire to read this.

72. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables. Never read the book, never saw the play.

73 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Who didn't have to read this in high school?

Anybody who wants to be tagged, go for it. (I'm sure somebody I know would have a different list.)

An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet for the Brain

I miss William F. Buckley, Jr. His books have been intellectual comfort food for me for years and years, ever since that first episode of Firing Line I watched back in college, when the century's greatest polemicist very politely and genteelly dismantled and demolished Derek Humphreys, founder of what was then known as the Hemlock Society. I am one who likes to read my favorite books over and over again, sometimes savoring them for years before going on to new ones by the same author. I have finally gotten to another Buckley book that I have been hoarding for some time -- a new treasure of his inimitable wit for curling up in front of the fire with on a cold winter's evening, and new aspects of his courage and fortitude to appreciate.

I wish I could have found a picture of The Unmaking of a Mayor (Arlington House Publishers, New Rochelle, 1977 reprint) bigger than a postage stamp; because for all that we are constantly warned never to judge a book by its cover, the cover of this book aptly previews the humor of its contents. It is the story of Bill Buckley's unconventional campaign for mayor of New York City in 1965, against Democrat Abraham Beame and liberal Republican John Lindsay.
Until late in the campaign, Buckley was dismissed by the liberal elites -- including the other two candidates -- as an "unserious" candidate, because of (a) his third-party candidacy (he ran on the Conservative Party ticket); (b) his puckish humor; (c) the fact that, as he himself acknowledged, he had almost no chance of winning; (d) his flat refusal to pander to special interest groups; and (e) his unabashedly and outspokenly conservative agenda, regarded by the elite of the mid '60s as laughable, relics of of the Pleistocene Era. Yet despite his humor, and the campaign gaffes arising from his status as a non-politician, Buckley was engaged in the deadly serious business of trying to give the voters of New York City an authentically conservative option; and above all, trying to forestall the deadly dilution of conservatism within the Republican Party, whose left-wing, anti-Goldwater candidate for mayor -- aptly described by Buckley as an "interloper" -- threatened to become a titan on the national political scene.
Although our cultural elites in the mainstream media and the universities are still lock-step, knee-jerk liberals, it is perhaps difficult for ordinary, 21st-century conservative Americans to appreciate just how much courage it took in 1965 to come out publicly and unapologetically as a conservative. But in 1965, there was no Rush Limbaugh; there was no Fox News Channel; there was no Internet; and "liberal" was not a dirty word. Because Buckley openly proclaimed unpopular truths about the state of affairs in New York City, he became an instant target for all sorts of ugly charges, from racism to anti-Catholicism (!) to being "a philosophical anarchist dedicated...to proving that the people of New York are doltish swine who are incapable of ruling themselves" (p. 293). Nor was the press above flatly distorting him, as in the episode in which his use of the word "epicene" to describe the resentment of anti-Vietnam protesters was was turned into an allegation that the protesters were homosexuals (pp. 254-258); or when, before he entered the mayoral race, his speech at a Holy Name Society communion breakfast was falsely reported as an endorsement of racist police tactics in Selma, Alabama (Chapter 1). That Buckley should have borne, to the end of what became a vicious campaign, such a burden of opprobrium with such grace is a great testament to his fortitude.

Still, it was a burden he assumed voluntarily. A savvy political analyst like Bill Buckley had to know he was in for a rough ride if he got into a political race; so why did he run? "Because," he declared in a self-interview before the National Press Club on August 4, 1965 (pp. 3-8), "nobody else is who matters." Meaning, he went on to elaborate, that "New York is a city in crisis, and all the candidates agree it is a city in crisis. But no other candidate proposes to do anything about that crisis."

In The Unmaking of a Mayor, Buckley unfolds the history of politics in New York City, laying the groundwork for the then-current state of affairs; his plan to deal with the crisis of New York City; his analysis of his opponents, and their positions, and the non-existent difference between them; the course of the campaign, which culminated in a victory for John Lindsay and a mere 13% of the vote for Buckley. He submits, for our examination, the position papers he published on a variety of municipal issues from water and sewage to air pollution to taxation; and he serves up a generous helping of morsels from press conferences, correspondence and speeches. All sparkles with the trademark Buckley wit, verve, and razor-sharp intellect.

And then there are the passages that just make one laugh out loud. Buckley on the debates (pp. 273-274):

Lindsay would arrive at the studios very tense, and instantly he would cover the desk area in front of him with a half-acre of three-by-five cards on which were graven in Magic Marker the salient points or statistics he intended to make and cite in the course of the fracas. (I had a mad impulse, one time when he went off for a moment to pose for a picture, to scramble the cards around, or maybe doctor the statistics just a little, horrible bit.)...

...Beame, so nervous that his hand shook when he reached for a piece of paper, had several notebooks, and several brilliantly memorized passages of rhetoric, one of which he never changed...-- he always closed with it. "New York has done a great deal for me. It sent me through school. I love this city. I owe a lot to this city. . . ." I commented about the third time around that if he really desired to requite his obligation to New York, perhaps he should consider withdrawing from public office in favor of me. He managed a wan smile.

On the effect of his victory on the mainstream press, if it ever materialized (pp. 302-303):

On leaving the [New York] Times building I found a television crew waiting outside to question me for comment on LBJ's sudden endorsement of Beame, which had just come in over the wire. We disposed of that subject, and Gabe Pressman of NBC, the cameras still rolling, asked me jocularly how I felt on emerging from the Times building and I said -- the kind of thingk, I fear, that makes some people gray with anger -- that it was as though I had just passed through the Berlin Wall. "What is the first thing you would do if elected?" he pressed. "Hang a net outside the window of the editor." If I had been more conservative, less impulsive -- more civic minded? -- I suppose I
would have recommended a commission to investigate the desirability of suspending such a net.

The Unmaking of a Mayor is an all-you-can-eat buffet for the brain. I toast Mr. Buckley, and pray that the comfort and enjoyment he has given me in this book has earned him at least some reprieve from Purgatory.