EXECUTION EVE

This weighty (that's poundage, not profundity) miscellanea of the comments of WFB, as Buckley signs himself, spans three years of National Review, and Washington Star syndicated columns plus the occasional piece for Esquire or Redbook. Here are Buckley's thoughts on detente ("I, for one, yearn for the days of the Cold War"), the 1972 presidential campaign (the best defense of the Nixon camp was a vicious offense against McGovern), Watergate ("to remove a President is to remove the sovereign"). Buckley also continues his friendly feud with Galbraith and Schlesinger in these pages, initiates a not so friendly libel suit against Gore Vidal, cheers on sister Priscilla for her slap at Ti-Grace Atkinson, ridicules Germaine Greer (who creamed Buckley in an earlier debate) and from time to time jumps on Jack Anderson. His solutions to the Mideast crisis include annexing Israel and raising the tariff on OPEC oil. There's some flapdoodle about "the lash of black nationalism," several polemics on the fights of unborn fetuses and on-going general hostility toward students ("kids")—those pot-smoking, sexually immoral, liberal bigots who supported McGovern. And so on. Mr. Buckley is an arrogant, facile wit and could be considered a very amusing writer indeed if only one could be certain that no one took him seriously.