A Buckley Blockbuster

Servants and Their Masters By Fergus Reid Buckley Doubleday, 624 pp., $10 I knew when the book arrived that there would be problems. Because of the family connections, the author is not just another author, and thus the chances of coming up with convincingly honest criticism in NR seemed something less than excellent. A favorable review would with justice be considered partisan, an unfavorable review an embarrassment. And complicating all this is the reviewer’s instinctive temptation to demonstrate the courage of his critical integrity by finding as many flaws as possible. Much nicer, after all, to risk being thought perverse by the editors (who are kind people and would never let you know), than to be thought a sycophant by your readers. Yet ultimately, a reviewer’s obligation is not to himself but to the book he reviews. And so I accepted this assignment with a good deal of trepidation.

Nor was my apprehension stilled by the book itself. In galleys it was mammoth, even more ponderous potential for unconvincing dishonesty than I had anticipated. But as soon as I began to read, the abstract contemplations on critical obligations and the nature of critical integrity were blown quickly away. For while Servants and Their Masters remains the most difficult book I have ever reviewed, it is a novel sui generis, just possibly a contemporary masterpiece.

PC

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Patricia S. Coyne

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Servants and Their Masters By Fergus Reid Buckley Doubleday, 624 pp., $10 I knew when the book arrived that there would be problems. Because of the family connections, the author is not just another author, and thus the chances of coming up with convincingly honest criticism in NR seemed something less than excellent. A favorable review would with justice be considered partisan, an unfavorable review an embarrassment. And complicating all this is the reviewer’s instinctive temptation to demonstrate the courage of his critical integrity by finding as many flaws as possible. Much nicer, after all, to risk being thought perverse by the editors (who are kind people and would never let you know), than to be thought a sycophant by your readers. Yet ultimately, a reviewer’s obligation is not to himself but to the book he reviews. And so I accepted this assignment with a good deal of trepidation.

Nor was my apprehension stilled by the book itself. In galleys it was mammoth, even more ponderous potential for unconvincing dishonesty than I had anticipated. But as soon as I began to read, the abstract contemplations on critical obligations and the nature of critical integrity were blown quickly away. For while Servants and Their Masters remains the most difficult book I have ever reviewed, it is a novel sui generis, just possibly a contemporary masterpiece.