Theme: Satirical novels by K. Buckley. Plan: I. Introduction II. Satirical novels by K. Buckley

II.Satirical novels by K.Buckley

2.1 Christopher Buckley exerts a profound influence on satire in American literature.

To begin with, satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usaually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social critism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society.¹

Christopher buckley is considered to be professional critic, novelist, magazine editor and memoirist. His books have been translated into sixteen foreign languages. He is the author of twelve books, most of them national bestsellers. They include: “The white house mess”, “Wet work”, “Thank you for smoking”, “God is my broker”, “Little green man”, “No way to treat a first lady”, “Florence of Arabia”, “Boomsday” and “Supreme courtship”.

Mr.Buckley has contributed over 60 comic essays to The New Yorker magazine. His journalism, satire and criticism has been widely published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Vogue, Esquire, and other publications. He is the recipient of the 2002 Washington Irving Medal for literary excellence. In 2004 he was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

“For more than three years now, people have noted that real events are outstripping satire, that life has begun to intimidate art. With a president willing to say or tweet almost anything, artful exaggeration has seemed less and less possible. So what of satirical political fiction? Is it a light out of the darkness or a flickering doomed lightbulb?

Buckley is an old hand at this, the author of more than a dozen political satires. His recent novels have been set in the 16^th abd 17^th centuries, almost as if he had decided that the modern era was satire proof. Now, in “Make Russia Great Again”, he has returned to test his theory – or have it test him.

Following a promising epigraph Buckley’s novel begins as a kind of memoir by Herbert K. Nutterman, the president’s seventh chief of staff. A prison memoir: As the novel begins, Nutterman is already in federal corections. The story, then, will be how arrived.

“Topical lampoonery piles up quickly. Within the first few pages, there is a statue of the Confederate colonel Robert E.Bigly and a resort called Farrago-Sur-Mer. Buckley’s Trump is sufficiently churlish and childish, but the novel is stranded between White House reflection and funhouse mirror. Some names are changed comically (Sean Hannity becomes Seamus Colonnity), some altered arbitrarily (Jored/Ivunka), others left intact (Rudy Giuliani). There is a blackmail plot against Trump that involves the horizontal judging of Miss Universe contestant. Kim and Kanye attend a Turkish state dinner. As the threat of extortion mounts and the president’s petulance rises to meet it, Buckley resorts to a deus ex machine and then a dense expositional epilogue” ²

Are there pleasures? Of course. Buckley is intelligent and ingenious and at times pitch-perfect. The book’s stand in for Kellyanne Conway has a voice described as “meth-lab Lauren Bacall”. The C.I.A.’s advice to Nutterman about how to disappear blossoms into satisfying absurdity. And there is a standout (and almost standalone) chapter that describes a cult, the Ever Trumpers, who want the president to shoot them on Fifth Avanue. But more punches are thrown than landed”. ³

Christopher Buckley has a remarkable influence on satire and he put valuable portion to it with his intense satirical novels.

“I think Trump is fair game for ridicule. Why do I think this? Because it drives him nuts. In 1999, when Donald Trump was first toying with the idea of giving his countrymen the honor of voting for him for president, the notion was so absurd that Christopher Buckley took to The Wall Street Journal to publish his rendition of a Trump inaugural address. “My fellow Americans,” Buckley’s Trump began, “this is a great day for me personally.”

Twenty years later, Buckley remains the master satirist of Washington life. To be sure, it’s not the most crowded or competitive professional category in the world, but he has again cemented his position at its apex with the publication of Make Russia Great Again. In his 19th book, Buckley takes on a subject that would seem beyond satire—indeed, would itself seem a manifestation of some wild, dark satiric impulse: the Trump presidency”.⁴

“Christopher Buckley is not Christopher Buckley the California poet, nor is he Chris Buckley the Beijing bureau chief of the New YorkTimes. But this Christopher Buckley stipulates that he wishes he had the poetical ability of the former and the reportorial skills of the letter.”⁵ His first novel is “The White House Mess”, a parody of a White House memoir. Mess became a New York Times bestseller simultaneously with a novel by his father, occasioning an entry in the Guinnes Book of Records as the first instance of father-son joint appearance on a bestseller list.

Though most of his books are generically satirical, Buckley disagrees with the notion, expressed by earnest and often morose persons, insisting that literature must be serious, capital S.Buckley is surely not the first to point out that satire is another way of being serious. But whatever.

Here is others’ acknowledgement to the work of Christopher Buckley:

“One of the funniest writers in the English language”.

- Tom Wolfe

“A Banchley with WordPerfect”.

- John Updike

“An effervescent joy”.

- Joseph Heller

“The quintessential political novelist of our time”.

- Fortune

“At a time of high political absurdity, Buckley remains our sharpest guide to the capital, and a more serious one than we may suppose”.

- New York Times Book Review

“Christopher Buckley is America’s greatest living political satirist”.

- Seattle Times

“Christopher Buckley is the nation’s best humor novelist”.

Christian Science monitor

“Little Green Men is a delicious, ingenious treat. Christopher Buckley is an author of many talents, with a range of abilities that includes a penetrating comic intelligence and a deft flair for storytelling that makes this novel a truly joyous page-turner”.

- Joseph Heller on Little Green Men

“Brilliant satires. Buckley gives new meaning to the phrase “He will never work again in politics”

- Bob Woodward

“Life is accidental”, Buckley says. “His speechwriter had resigned, and they needed a warm body. The press secretary had read me in Esquire (where Buckley become managing editor at age 24). It was an adventure – heady stuff for a 29-year-old”.

Out of this experience came his 1986 mock-memoir “The White House Mess”, which parodied the self-importanca of those who serve presidents.

“IT would have been much worse had I not been there…” Buckley gravely intones in the manner of a self-serving memoirist.

A lifelong, if currently disgruntled, republican, Buckley admired and respected the first President Bush. But what, one wonders, might it have been like to write speeches for his son?

“Bush 43 has actually given some rather good speches, though I dissented from the ‘Axis of evil’ speech,” Buckley says. “Speeches have not been his problem”⁶

“ Our time here on Earth being finite, I have never been on Facebook, Tweeted, Tweetered, Skyped, Snap grammed or whatever the hell its called. But as an author trying to hawk books, I was finally persuaded that continuing not to have a website was obtuse and even defiantly fuddy-duddy. My time on earth feeling even more finite as I enter my seventh decade, I prefer to spend what hours remain to me not rummaging for my birth certificate or beseeching the Government in Ottawa to provide an affidavit of non-citizenship”, says Christopher Buckley.⁷