Bill Buckley, Blackford Oakes . . . and me

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William F. Buckley Jr., was born on Nov. 24, 1925, and the US Postal Service is commemorating the centennial of his birth by issuing a "Forever" postage stamp in his honor:

One of the most influential public intellectuals in modern U.S. history, William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) defined the conservative movement of the mid-20th century and was one of its most recognizable spokesmen. Author of more than 50 books, Buckley founded National Review, one of the nation's leading conservative publications, and hosted the Emmy Award-winning public affairs television program "Firing Line" for more than 30 years. Original art by Dale Stephanos features a portrait of Buckley, created by hand with graphite and charcoal on hot-press watercolor paper, then refined digitally. Greg Breeding, an art director for USPS, designed the stamp.

I first discovered Buckley's work when I was a 17-year-old college sophomore. Somehow I had come across an issue of National Review and was soon hooked. The magazine had a powerful influence on my ideological understanding of the world; over time it helped shape my conservative values and develop my political vocabulary. Decades later, I can still recall with pleasure and gratitude the experience of encountering words and arguments that gave shape and coherence to my own inchoate political beliefs. The importance of individual freedom, the dangers of a too-powerful government, the blessings of a free market, the imperative of fighting communism, the indispensability of faith — these were themes I encountered again and again in the pages of NR in general, and Buckley's columns and essays in particular.

"But it wasn't only the magazine's political content that made it so invaluable," I once wrote. "No less wonderful was its style. National Review was feisty, smart, playful, elegant — just like its editor, whose contributions were the highlight of nearly every issue."

Reading Buckley's prose with a dictionary at my side, I acquired a great collection of out-of-town words: asymptotic, ineluctable, synecdoche, eristic. Even after all these years, I recall names and references that could have appeared nowhere else, from the National Committee to Horsewhip Drew Pearson — Buckley's idea of the right way to rein in an egregious columnist — to "the sainted junior senator from New York," the standard NR reference to Buckley's older brother James, who was elected to the US Senate from New York in 1970.

Long before Rush Limbaugh appeared on the scene, Buckley had mastered the art of witty immodesty. ("I don't stoop to conquer. I merely conquer.") Asked once why Robert Kennedy refused to appear on "Firing Line," he replied: "Why does baloney reject the meat grinder?" Humor was as much a Buckley/National Review trademark as erudition. "The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week had all the earmarks of a CIA operation," began one editorial comment. "Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno."

I recall meeting Buckley only once. He had come out with a new book — I think it was one of his essay collections, "Execution Eve" — and as part of a book tour was making an appearance to sign autographs at a Washington, D.C., department store. I saved up enough to buy the book — a significant investment for me in those days — and shyly presented the book for his signature. The whole encounter couldn't have lasted more than 45 seconds and my only lasting physical impression was of Buckley's yellowing teeth and skinny tie.

In the years that followed I would go on to buy and read quite a few of Buckley's books — not only his collections of columns, but his famous debut book about creeping socialism and atheism at Yale, his account of his 1965 campaign for mayor of New York City, his chronicles of cruising across the ocean in a sailboat, the lyrical memoir of his friendship with Ronald Reagan, and a narrative of his religious life. An uproarious volume, drawn from hundreds of interactions he had over 40 years with the readers of National Review, bore the inimitable title, "Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription."

But perhaps best of all were the 11 Blackford Oakes spy novels that Buckley published between 1976 and 2005. Oakes, the protagonist of the novels, is a CIA officer (as Buckley himself had once been, briefly) and his fictional missions involve him in some of the most precarious crises of the Cold War.

Buckley was 50 when he first took a stab at writing fiction. What prompted it was a lunchtime conversation with his editor at Doubleday, Samuel Vaughan. The two men were chatting about fiction and Vaughan asked: "Why don't you try writing a novel?" As Buckley later recalled, his response was something like: "Sam, why don't you try playing a trumpet concerto?"

But the seed, once planted, quickly germinated. "Saving the Queen," Buckley's first novel, landed on the best-seller list a week before its official publication date and stayed there for three months. I read it soon after it came out. In addition to everything else I liked about the Blackford Oakes character — his fresh American self-confidence, his "startling" good looks, his thoroughgoing patriotism, his passionate hatred of communist tyranny — I was delighted by his origin. Oakes, like me, was a native Ohioan.

A passage in "Saving the Queen" gives the hero's date and place of birth as Dec. 7, 1925, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a town in the southwest part of the state. The Ohio connection has no relevance to the plot, but I was tickled to see it.

When the third book in the series, "Who's On First," appeared in 1980, I was again tickled to see Blackford Oakes identified as a Buckeye. But I was puzzled, too. Once more there was a passing reference to his birth. Yet while the date was unchanged, Oakes's birthplace was listed as Akron — an Ohio city 180 miles from Yellow Springs, near the state's northeastern corner.

On the theory that even Homer sometimes nods, I decided the author must have goofed and that I would tell him so. In a (very courteous) letter to Buckley at his National Review office, I expressed my enjoyment of his spy novels and called his attention to the inconsistency. A few weeks later, a once-sentence reply arrived in the mail.

"Dear Mr. Jacoby," he wrote. "I shall have to clear up the discrepancy in the next novel." His brief letter was signed in red ink. "Yours cordially, Wm. F. Buckley Jr."

His next novel appeared two years later. In "Marco Polo, If You Can," Blackford Oakes is shot down over Soviet territory while piloting a U-2 spy plane along the Sino-Soviet border. (Shades of the real-life CIA pilot Gary Powers.) The story was great, but as I read it I was watching for one detail in particular. How would Buckley finesse the question of Oakes's birthplace?

And there it was, on Page 17. In one scene Oakes supplies an interviewer with an abbreviated resume that begins:

Blackford OAKES. Born Toldeo, Ohio, December 7, 1925. Schooling: Scarsdale, N.Y., HS. Greyburn Academy, England (one term). Yale, B.A., 1951, mechanical engineering . . .

Let me save you the trouble of looking at a map: Toledo is in the northwestern corner of Ohio, roughly equidistant from Yellow Springs and Akron and about as far one can get from either while still remaining within the state's borders. Far from clearing up the confusion over Blackford Oakes's birthplace, Buckley had compounded it! Had he goofed yet again? Had he forgotten the letter from his young fan pointing out the mismatch?

No — I decided that it was deliberate. Buckley had purposely expanded the discrepancy for the fun of it! It was an inside joke, a wink from the author to the one reader he knew would catch it. That, at any rate, has always been my theory — a theory I've always been careful never to confirm.

Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission.

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