Books, Arts & Manners: Beware of Greeks

IN the autumn of 1972, NR’s founder and then-editor-in-chief thought it a good idea to turn me into an intellectual and let me loose among the expatriate literati of the City of Light. I had reported for NR from Hué that spring, and had assured our readers that the little men in black pyjamas had been thoroughly beaten once and for all. What I hadn’t figured on was Watergate, and the way those nice guys who destroyed Richard Nixon’s Presidency would manage to get two birds with one stone. South Vietnam went down when the Commies realized the American cavalry was not about to come to its rescue.

In October of that year, however, things still looked good. Nixon was about to be re-elected in every state but the one that keeps sending Ted Kennedy to drink in Washington. And I was in Paris playing Papa Hemingway. Bill Buckley’s idea was for me to interview American writers like Irwin Shaw, James Jones, and Janet Flanner, all three living in Paris. I was excited at the idea and for once went to work immediately.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

IN the autumn of 1972, NR’s founder and then-editor-in-chief thought it a good idea to turn me into an intellectual and let me loose among the expatriate literati of the City of Light. I had reported for NR from Hué that spring, and had assured our readers that the little men in black pyjamas had been thoroughly beaten once and for all. What I hadn’t figured on was Watergate, and the way those nice guys who destroyed Richard Nixon’s Presidency would manage to get two birds with one stone. South Vietnam went down when the Commies realized the American cavalry was not about to come to its rescue.

In October of that year, however, things still looked good. Nixon was about to be re-elected in every state but the one that keeps sending Ted Kennedy to drink in Washington. And I was in Paris playing Papa Hemingway. Bill Buckley’s idea was for me to interview American writers like Irwin Shaw, James Jones, and Janet Flanner, all three living in Paris. I was excited at the idea and for once went to work immediately.