Books in Brief

The Blackford Oakes Reader, by William F. Buckley Jr. (Andrews & McMeel, 270 pp., $18.95)

NOW that the Cold War is fading into memory, the real heroes who fought and won it for the West—among whom William F. Buckley Jr. is preeminent—will eventually be forgotten (if, indeed, the good that men do is interred with their bones). But what may live on are the stories; and there is no better collection of these tales than the ten Blackford Oakes novels that Buckley has written. He has always brushed aside the significance of these books (nine of which were bestsellers) with amusing anecdotes about the financial remuneration he anticipated from writing them. But the probable truth is that these books had some impact on the course of the War, not merely because they outlined what was at stake, but because they are enormously entertaining and therefore easy to digest. What good fortune, then, that some of the best parts of these stories have now been collected in The Blackford Oakes Reader, where they are sure to endure. The Reader is a collage of portraits of characters from the novels, including the young German Count Axel Wintergrin, the idealistic Henri Tod, and the superspy himself, Blackford Oakes. These heroes are unabashedly good and the cause they fight for is just, which may make some jaded sophisticates uneasy. But for the rest of us, they are mythic heros like Patroclus, Nestor, and Achilles, who will be proudly remembered in place of the true heroes they represent, many of whom were and are unknown to the general public. For forty years, Bill Buckley ruled as his demesne the windswept landscape of the intellectual World War. How extraordinary that he should have remembered to humanize it as well. And that he should have been so good at it. —Andrew Oliver II

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The Blackford Oakes Reader, by William F. Buckley Jr. (Andrews & McMeel, 270 pp., $18.95)

NOW that the Cold War is fading into memory, the real heroes who fought and won it for the West—among whom William F. Buckley Jr. is preeminent—will eventually be forgotten (if, indeed, the good that men do is interred with their bones). But what may live on are the stories; and there is no better collection of these tales than the ten Blackford Oakes novels that Buckley has written. He has always brushed aside the significance of these books (nine of which were bestsellers) with amusing anecdotes about the financial remuneration he anticipated from writing them. But the probable truth is that these books had some impact on the course of the War, not merely because they outlined what was at stake, but because they are enormously entertaining and therefore easy to digest. What good fortune, then, that some of the best parts of these stories have now been collected in The Blackford Oakes Reader, where they are sure to endure. The Reader is a collage of portraits of characters from the novels, including the young German Count Axel Wintergrin, the idealistic Henri Tod, and the superspy himself, Blackford Oakes. These heroes are unabashedly good and the cause they fight for is just, which may make some jaded sophisticates uneasy. But for the rest of us, they are mythic heros like Patroclus, Nestor, and Achilles, who will be proudly remembered in place of the true heroes they represent, many of whom were and are unknown to the general public. For forty years, Bill Buckley ruled as his demesne the windswept landscape of the intellectual World War. How extraordinary that he should have remembered to humanize it as well. And that he should have been so good at it. —Andrew Oliver II