A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century by William F. Buckley Jr.

A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century Reviews

• 
  Charles Haywood

  Of late, I have noticed much creeping, or rather galloping, nostalgia among National Review-type conservatives. Such nostalgia is doubtless a reaction to the current Trumpian trials of High Conservatism, whose leading lights must feel much like the characters in Toy Story 3, holding hands as they are fed into a fiery furnace. (The Toy Story characters survive, which probably distinguishes them from today’s leaders of High Conservatism.) “A Torch Kept Lit” offers a triple dose of nostalgia: William F. Buckley; eulogies of dead conservatives (and others); and a deep view of a dead time. And, like a papyrus scroll listing grain shipments on the Nile, it is redolent of ancient history, when High Conservatism mattered.
  
  The blurb for “A Torch Kept Lit” promises that “William F. Buckley, Jr. is back—just when we need him most.” This fantasy, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with today’s High Conservatism. Buckley is not back. He will never be back. He has joined the Church Triumphant. But if he were back, he would answer no need we have today. He was a man for his time, and not for our time. His brand of urbane, sophisticated conservatism, predicated on mutual respect among adversaries, on the existence of the rule of law, on shared values, on a belief that denying reality was disqualifying, and on the desirability of reasoned discourse, has no place where none of these things are true. What we DO need now is less clear, for no clear path forward or back exists, and so, to the dismay of Dr. Seuss, we inhabit the Waiting Place, “a most useless place.”
  
  Why Buckley would have no impact today can be encapsulated in one non-political experience. I read much of this book while waiting in line in a federal government office (a customs office, for an interview for the Global Entry traveler program). Let’s leave aside the arrogant, peremptory manner of the federal employees, who (while working with modest efficiency) made very clear who were the Rulers and who were the Ruled. The waiting room was full and the wait was long. CNN Headline News was playing. We, and all of America, were eagerly informed about (a) a child who drove a car, avoiding an accident; (b) a man who took selfies after being attacked by a bear; (c) a fiery truck crash where the cargo, cookies, were baked; and many other such “news” stories, liberally larded with offensively unintelligent advertisements. That such tripe is demanded by consumers of news tells us why Buckley would, like Dostoevsky’s Christ, not be welcomed back today.
  
  Buckley himself early pointed out the trend in this direction. In his thoughts on the death of Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1962, Buckley quoted James Burnham, summarizing Mrs. Roosevelt’s long postwar career. “Over whatever subject, plan, or issue Mrs. Roosevelt touches, she spreads a squidlike ink of directionless feeling. All distinctions are blurred, all analysis fouled, and in the murk clear thought is forever impossible.” Buckley concludes that her epitaph should read, “With all my heart and soul, I fought the syllogism.” That’s about right. Nobody today values the syllogism. Pretty much nobody even knows what a syllogism is. And that’s the problem, for Buckley’s entire life was built around the syllogism, as this book shows.
  
  I don’t mean my negativity to reflect on this excellent book. After all, there is nothing wrong with nostalgia, if we do not allow ourselves to be lost in it. And, not infrequently, we can find in the past facts or reasoning that can help us today. Even if we find nothing directly useful, we can be amused, such as by Buckley’s comment (not in a eulogy, but noted by the book’s editor, James Rosen) about Lyndon Johnson, “It is widely known that whenever Senator Johnson feels the urge to act the statesman at the cost of little political capital, he lies down until he gets over it.” Buckley’s eulogies are full of such pithy phrases, as well as more sonorous ones.
  
  Echoes, or forebodings, of today’s travails can also be found in Buckley’s eulogies. For example, in his eulogy of Ronald Reagan, Buckley notes “how reassuring it was for us [to listen to] the Leader of the Free World who, to qualify convincingly as such, had after all to feel a total commitment to the Free World.” One can only wonder what Buckley would make of Barack Obama—a man who has only contempt for America, and thinks its only value is to atone for its unique sins by abasing itself. No wonder Obama reassures not at all, and fails to qualify convincingly both as the leader of America and of the Free World—he has no commitment to either.
  
  None of these eulogies are hagiographies. Most political figures in this book, even allies, come in for some criticism, or at least an acknowledgement of their failings. For example, in 1965, Buckley knocked Winston Churchill: “It was Churchill who pledged a restored Europe, indeed a restored world order after the great war. He did not deliver us such a world.” Buckley blamed Churchill, in part, for “a world in which more people are slaves [today] than were slaves in the darkest hours of the Battle of Britain,” resulting, in part, from Churchill’s behavior at the end of the war toward Stalin. And Buckley ends his eulogy, “May he sleep more peacefully than some of those who depended on him.” Tough stuff.
  
  The most poignant eulogies are of Buckley’s friends, such as the liberal Allard Lowenstein, killed by a deranged acquaintance in 1980. “His days, foreshortened, lived out the secular dissonances. ‘Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long, and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee; and verily every man living is altogether vanity.’ . . . Let Nature then fill this vacuum. That is the challenge which, bereft, the friends of Allard Lowenstein hurl up to Nature, and to Nature’s God, prayerfully, demandingly, because today, Lord, our loneliness is great.”
  
  Our loneliness is also great, though for different reasons. High Conservatism, like Buckley, is dead, though presumably Buckley realizes it, and National Review does not, yet. But despair, as Buckley was fond of noting, is a sin, and a great one. We cannot see what is next. Like Theoden King, we say to, and ask, ourselves: “The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?” And like Theoden, not knowing what the future holds, our task must be therefore merely to gird ourselves for an uncertain and unknown battle, such that we may be both ready for any challenge, and able to strike in any direction.
• 
  David Huff

  How outstanding it would've been to be one of William F. Buckley's luminary friends, and have him write an eloquent obituary for me! .... although, I'd not have gotten to read it, so ... perhaps not ....
  
  In any event, I have long been a fan and admirer of WFB, and this collection of obituaries and memorial tributes he penned for various friends, acquaintances, and even some adversaries, is a thoroughly enjoyable read. As with anything Buckley, you'll find wit, humor, pointed comments, and a healthy portion of warm, even emotional, remembrances. This volume, finely edited and previewed by James Rosen, was like a guided tour through many avenues of 20th century history, politics, arts, and culture, led by a true renaissance man who was firmly ensconced in the middle of it all.
  
  One of my favorite quotes had to be WFB's observation of Ayn Rand, of whom he clearly was not a disciple:
  
  "I had met Miss Rand three years before that review was published. Her very first words to me (I do not exaggerate) were: "You ahrr too intelligent to believe in Gott". The critic Wilfrid Sheed once remarked, when I told him the story, "Well, that certainly is an icebreaker." It was; and we conversed, and did so for two or three years. I used to send her postcards in liturgical Latin; but levity with Miss Rand was not an effective weapon."
  
  A great collection of great writing and insight, by a master of his craft. Highly recommended!
• 
  Rory Lewellyn

  A nice, succinct education in an interesting period of our history. Who knew you could learn from eulogies?
• 
  Mark

  It's a tough time to be a conservative intellectual in this country given the current right-wing regime's Khmer Rouge-like opposition to facts, science, and critical thinking. I wonder what Buckley would make of the Republican party in 2017. This collection, of all things a cross-section of obituaries and eulogies, gives us more insight into the life and intellectual development of its author than his subjects. What's interesting about Buckley is that he was utterly inflexible when it came to his core beliefs, without the least hint of self-doubt when it came to the unquestionable evil of Communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular or the failure of the welfare state. For an educated, cosmopolitan man to hold such views with reflexive, almost religious self-assurance is highly interesting. He also had no time for sentiment or respect for the dead. He has absolutely no hangups about using the occasion of Eleanor Roosevelt's death as an opportunity to argue (not without reason) that she was, in as many words, a big dumb stupid. But he also especially late in life was perfectly willing to make friends and write kindly about people from the other side of the political aisle, assuming they met his rather arbitrary, patrician social standards. A fascinating man, and clearly a relic. The version of conservatism he championed died with him. If anything this book made me nostalgic for a time when political operators at least maintained the appearance that they cared about being gentlemen.
• 
  William

  This book, a collection of eulogies and obituaries written by William F. Buckley, Jr., was enjoyable because of Buckley's writing style, his wealth of anecdotes, the fact that it touches on the lives of notable and sometimes obscure Americans, and it reminds us of a time when people could disagree with each other and still have respect for a life well lived.
  
  I should also say that just about the time you're ready to give up on this, you get to the pieces about his adversaries, when it gets really good. He usually has something generous to say, and if not, it's usually pretty funny.
• 
  Dallin

  One of the more enjoyable, well-written books I've read in a long time. I would recommend this book to all comers.
• 
  Simon

  I like Bill Buckley's literary style, and I especially like his appreciations written for friends, family and public figures --- most of them after they passed. He had the rare gift of making people sound as though you would want to know them, too, although to be fair, Buckley really only wrote about those kinds of people. This collection is a little odd --- there are some notable folks missing that I know he did cover (I think I have every collection of his works ever issued), but there are several nuggets that make the read worthwhile, whatever your politics. I was most taken with Rosalyn Tureck's tribute, and the frenemy-flavor of the loving piece he wrote about John Kenneth Galbraith. Buckley loved wit, even when it was used at his own expense. The last letter between Galbraith and Buckley made me put the book down because I was laughing so hard.
  
  Not a "great" read, but an unfailingly entertaining one. And at several points, moving.
• 
  Bibliomama

  I would say that WFB, Jr was an unspeakable prig but he spoke and wrote quite eloquently. So he was just a prig and a vindictive one. His obituaries for family and friends were loving and inspiring. But there was no eu in his eulogies for his “nemeses”. To find fault in Eleanor Roosevelt for her altruism and in Ayn Rand for her lack of altruism is just a bit hypocritical. And to blame the death of an intern on Jerry Garcia is completely hooey.
  
  I have often lamented his absence in the current world of illiterate conservatism, but mostly because I laughed at him not with him.
• 
  Paul Conroy

  A collection of obituaries written by Buckley, not that interesting.
• 
  Sherman Langford

  Kurt Vonnegut called Buckley "a man who has won the decathlon of human existence". A patrician par excellence, he rubbed shoulders with an unbelievable array of 20th century luminaries. He was expert in the art of friendship. He had a gift for the form of eulogy and a writing style is inimitable. So the book was a very engaging read, a wonderful history lesson, in brief eminently consumable bites. And evoking for me all the emotions and solemnity that a collection of eulogies should.
• 
  Kevin

  A wonderful collection of WFB eulogies/obituaries. Reminds you of his unique style and wit but also his historic role in American public life. His personal interactions and historic perspective make each of these fascinating and informative. A must read obviously for Buckley fans but a great gift for those who simply enjoy great writing and historic personalities.
• 
  Zachary Littrell

  Yessir, WFB sure could write himself a darn good eulogy. I'm certainly not agreeing with everything Buckley ever wrote, but it's hard to not be enchanted by his skill at writing smooth, erudite, and very readable prose (and flinging around 10 dollar words). And occasionally, he even liked the person he wrote about.
  
  Like how funerals aren't really for the deceased, the eulogies in this collection aren't really about the deceased either (shoot, the one for Jerry Garcia barely mentions the guy!). You get a good view of what Buckley valued in politicians and friends, and what character flaws aggravated him. And, for better or for worse, you get the very distinct feeling Buckley lead an incredibly privileged life, with, y'know, ski trips in Switzerland and going sailing across the Atlantic and hobnobbing with celebrities.
  
  This was a surprisingly quick read -- each name in big bold typeface like "TRUMAN CAPOTE" or "PRINCESS DIANA" or "RONALD REAGAN" kinda dares you to keep reading. And when WFB truly missed someone, like his father, he packed quite a punch. WFB could tell a story, and there are some really good yarns here.
  
  While fascinating to read, I do have a few reservations. Biggest is that as fun as WFB's witty ripostes were on TV, his Enemies section felt...kinda petty to be honest. His venomous bites at Ayn Rand are a little amusing (boy howdy did she make a bad first impression), but the rest weren't fun at all. And it was odd sometimes his takeaway from deaths -- he mildly implies that Princess Diana's death was because we don't value marriage as much anymore? That sure doesn't track...
  
  But, that's part of the charm of this book: Buckley's unrepentant attitudes towards his work, his religion, his country, and his friends. And his editor ain't too shabby of a writer either! If I had it my way, though, I would've ended on the obituary for Charles Wallen, because his lingered with me the most. He was an absolute nobody, and the closest to a regular joe in the whole damn book. A Southern gentleman with a sweet tooth for literature, an eagerness for correspondence, and a little bit out of his league. And yet he won the affection and friendship of Buckley and Buckley's circle of friends. And, in exchange for his friendship, Buckley gave the man a dog. That's how I'd like to remember WFB.
• 
  Julie D.

  When I saw this book, I knew I was going to have to read it. William F. Buckley is one of my favorites but the fact that James Rosen edited it, clinched it for me. I'm a huge James Rosen fan and knew that he would add greatly to this book and I was right. The book is worth reading for the introduction written so well by Mr. Rosen.
  
  This is a book of eulogies written by Mr. Buckley for friends and people of note. They are eloquent and informative and make for great reading about some of the well know, and not so well-known, people. The book is divided into six categories - Presidents, Family, Arts and Letters, Generals, Spies, and Statesmen, Friends; and Nemeses. I enjoyed having the eulogies categorized like this as it made for easier reading about certain people.
  
  The thing that really stands out to me about the writing of Mr. Buckley is he tried to say only kind and positive things about the people he wrote about. This included those he really didn't care for. It's a very positive thing to see something written like this. It would be nice to see this kind of journalism today.
  
  I absolutely love this book and it has a permanent place on my book shelf. I know I will return to this book again and again when I want something great to read. It's a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.
  
  *This book was provided to me by the Blogging for Books program
• 
  Brent Jones

  William F. Buckley  Jr. died in 2008, but a new book has been just released, "A Torch Kept Lit", put together by James Rosen, his editor over many years.
  
  It has 50 eulogies that Buckley had wrote. They are presented in 3 main categories. Close friends and family, successful people in general, and then those he didn't like.
  
  I found it particularly interesting to read some of those from the "not liked" group". 
  
  His life long support for his own Catholic Faith never changed and is impressive.  He often expressed his love for the religion.  So many intellectuals are quick to tell you that they are not "believers".  It seems to be a badge of honor for them. 
  
  The eulogy on Ayn Rand that was reprinted in his new book and is one from his not liked category.  He said that the first time he met Ayn Rand she came up to him at a party and asked him why someone as intelligent as he was believed in God.  
  
  He was put off by that but then he mentioned that she also said of herself that "she was the 2nd most influential philosopher next to Aristotle".  
  
  She is known for a couple of books which I will mention, Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead.  
  
  Buckley mentioned a couple of her quotes and they seem like good ones to go on her tombstone, in my opinion.
  
  She said: "Greed is Good, Compassion is Bad". She added: "Capitalism rewards the rich (good) and punishes the poor (even better, cause they deserve it)". 
  
  (Wow, her books won't be on my recommended reading list)
• 
  Anson Cassel Mills

  In the first week of March 2008, syndicated columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick (1920-2010), a close friend of Buckley’s, perceptively wrote his obituary, somewhat in Buckley’s own style.
  
  Buckley’s gifts as a writer, wrote Kilpatrick, “were best employed in the short form. He was a master of the bullet—i.e., the pithy sentence that captures an idea and mounts it instantly on display. When he remembered to restrain that formidable vocabulary, he wrote very readable political commentary. His greatest skill as a writer was manifested, curiously, in a form of art not often recognized: He wrote superb obituaries.
  
  In this regard, he perfectly exemplified the first rule of literary sepulcher: If you would move your readers to tears, do not let them see you cry. Bill functioned in memoriam as a kind of Greek chorus. In his obituaries, a sense of shared grief was both palpable and restrained. I remember comparing one such piece to Bill’s fondness for the harpsichord. There was no loud pedal in his prose, and every string was carefully plucked.”
  
  This volume of collected obituaries, edited and introduced by columnist James Rosen, is a testament to Buckley’s skill at softly plucking the strings of memory. Certainly not all the individuals here memorialized are “great lives of the twentieth century,” nor are they even all interesting as people, but Rosen provides more than fifty examples, and the reader can choose which to sample and which to skip.
  
• 
  Frank

  I think this book is mistitled. “Great Lives of the Twentieth Century” implies biography, but this is a collection of very short eulogies, most of which offer little in the way of biographical information. One simply doesn’t learn much about the people featured here. Most of the content is centered around Buckley’s personal interactions with those he eulogized. Buckley certainly had interesting relationships with many towering figures in politics and the arts, but these eulogies are mostly devoid of the type of background information that a person unfamiliar or only passingly familiar with the subjects would need in order to glean much enlightenment from them. This is not a criticism of Buckley: he wrote these long ago for audiences that generally had that familiarity. But younger readers, even historically informed ones, will probably struggle to connect.
  
  Buckley was a great intellectual and a rightly revered figure, but his aristocratic voice and academic vocabulary can be off-putting. As a conservative, he was a rebel within the ivy-league, artsy-fartsy world he inhabited, but he was still a product of that insular, ivory-tower world, and his prose style reflects it, even when his ideas refute it. The harder-hitting, comparatively working-class voices of more recent conservative spokespeople are just easier for many people to relate to.
• 
  Bob Ryan

  The book is a collection of fifty previously published eulogies of notable people in the 1950s through the 1980s. If you're of a certain age this book seems like a walk through your own life. I grew up and lived among these people, to have them reprised in an eulogy format is to remind one of my childhood, my teen ages, and the cultural influences I had becoming an adult. If you're younger than that age you'll find a group of interesting people. most of whom were outstanding in a particular field. To think that Buckley had met or knew a lot of the people in this book is an amazing thing. And what list of people it is. Five presidents, Eisenhower through Reagan; media celebrities, such as Johnny Carson, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, Norman Mailer, and Elvis (no last name needed); world statesmen, such as Churchill, Stalin, Princess Diana, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jackie Onassis; and his political opponents, such as John Galbraith, Nelson Rockefeller and Eleanor Roosevelt.
  Each eulogy has a short introduction by James Rosen, noted television journalist, who adds historical context and reflections from his own time with Buckley. Any one with an interest in American history in the 20th century should read this book. Enlightening as well as entertaining.
• 
  Joe

  An excellent collection of obituaries written by William F. Buckley Jr. mostly written for National Review but some for such diverse publications as the New Yorker. Buckley was well known as a great eulogist and once said you needed two things to write an obituary; know your subject and either love them or hate them. He certainly fulfilled both requirements in this collection.
  
  Two of the essays in this collection caught my attention. His obituary of Winston Churchill was surprisingly negative. He blamed Churchill for the Soviet Occupation of Eastern Europe. He didn't mention that Clement Atlee became Prime Minister in July of 1945. Perhaps instead taking Churchill for underestimating Stalin, Buckley should have attacked him for underestimating Atlee. (Churchill once said that Atlee was very modest man who had much to be modest about.)
  
  He also mentioned that Martin Luther King Jr. assassin (identity not known at the time) probably shared King's philosophy that personal conscience trump the law. A valid point but one that was not appropriate at the time.
  
  Still a great collection of great lives.
• 
  Gregory Eakins

  Part of what readies a man for death, of course, is his steady exposure to it.
  
  I picked up this book with no knowledge of who William F. Buckley Jr was, as I have no interest in the political commentary that made up the lions share of his life's work. Yet a collection of obituaries and eulogies, no matter the author, is bound to be insightful and contain many deep reflections on life that are only revealed in death. For the most part, though, Buckley failed to deliver anything substantial.
  
  The number of people Buckley writes on and knew in his life is incredible. Some of the people are very well known - such as Elvis Presley, Dwight Eisenhower, Princess Diana, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Countless others I had no familiarity with and their obituaries meant nothing.
  
  The biggest problem with Buckley's eulogies is that they offered little to no background on the person he was writing about. Most of them covered Buckley's personal interactions with that individual, and Buckley seldom brings to light any deeper ideas, such as the legacy or impact that person had on the world. There was potential here, but it was squandered.
• 
  David Corleto-Bales

  William F. Buckley, Jr. was the eloquent voice of American conservatism from the 1950s until his death in 2008, and this book contains several National Review eulogies that he wrote for the magazines from the 1960s until the first decade of the 2000s. The eulogies are always well-written and elegant, often complimentary and often barbed, (from Eleanor Roosevelt's in 1962: "Mrs. Roosevelt looked at the world as her own personal slum project.") but almost always conciliatory to a point, ("a great lady with a great heart"). Buckley pretty much knew everybody in the world of American and international politics during his era, but sometimes takes a moment to write a eulogy for someone he didn't know, (Jerry Garcia) in a humorous and mystified summing up of the hippie era from whence Garcia came. Here, with commentary from Buckley's biographer, are included eulogies of Winston Churchill, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Norman Mailer, Johnny Carson, John Lennon and many others. Although a liberal, I always liked Buckley's insight and wit and miss his mostly intelligent commentary.
• 
  Robyn

  For what seems an incredibly odd book (a collection of obituaries), this was a very enjoyable read. William F Buckley Jr. was an amazing writer. Politics aside, the man could turn a phrase like no one else. He was, however, also a bit stilted and sometimes dry and liked using a very high-brow, intellectual style when writing obituaries. For that reason, I couldn’t maintain focus long enough to read more than one or two at a time. I’ve put this book down and forgotten about it for months, but when I picked it up again it was always a delight to read another entry. James Rosen did a good job selecting interesting people and introducing them in their historical context, which was crucial considering many of them lived and died before I was born. I dog eared many of these obituaries because I enjoyed them so much I want to read them again, which feels like a strange thing to say about obituaries, but that just shows how good WFB was.
• 
  Katie

  Great lives eulogized by Mr. W.F.  Buckley, Jr., himself a true Renaissance man, and collected here for us by James Rosen.  These artful essays are shaped by Buckley’s unique intelligence and insights and, to quote Mr. Rosen, his “…oceanic view of the world…”.  With elegance, humor, irony and his hellacious vocabulary, Mr. Buckley shares with us the famous and infamous, friends and family, presidents and artists, the sanctified and the damned.   From those who changed the course of history to history’s footnotes, praise is given, puffery is punctured, evil is recognized….according to Mr. Buckley.
  
  Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by Crown Publishing / Crown Forum via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.
• 
  Greg Mathis

  Particularly for those disposed to agree with Buckley, or to understand him, these sketches provide an entertaining review of great lives of the 20th century. Buckley’s was a mind of salient dexterity. His impressive personal network included more prominent Americans than thinkable. Moreover, Buckley had an uncanny ability to endear himself to many of these connections on so intimate a level. His friends included his political allies and foes, evidencing a praiseworthy ability to retain civility in the thick of worldview dissent. Only a conservative of such dogged commitment to principle and geniality like Buckley could have both Allard Lowenstein among his friends and Ayn Rand among his enemies.