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

2.2 Current scene of satirical novels of K.Buckley on politics and social science.

“Politics is so insane right now satirists can’t keep up.

Christopher Buckley is known for his satires of American politics, including Little Green Men, Boomsday, and Supreme courtship. His 1994 novel Thank You For Smoking, about an amoral PR man who works to downplay the dangers of cigarettes, was adopted into a 2005 film starring Aaron Eckhart. But in Buckley’s new book The Relic Master, he turns his attention from current events to history.

“The reason I went back 500 years and crossed the Atlantic and settled in the Holy Roman Empire was I kind of needed a break from political satire”, Buckley says in Episod 190 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I don’t know how you do political satire today.”

He says that in the age of Donald Trump, it’s possible to dream up anything more exaggerated than reality, whereas Renaissance Europe offered a fresh new playground to explore. And while The Relic Master does involve a change of scenery, the bitting humor from Buckley’s previous books remains the same. Not everyone is happy about that.”⁸

No doubt Buckley spent the first half of his life in the shadow of his famous father, William F. Buckley, Jr. Bill Buckley founded the conservative National Review in 1955 and became the avatar of conservative politics through the magazine, hosting the popular weekly television show Firing Line, and writing several dozen books. His son followed him into journalism (as editor of Esquire in his twenties) and then politics. He wrote his first novel, The White House Mess, based on his experience as a speechwriter for then-Vice President George H. W. Bush. Buckley made news in 2008 when he broke from the Republican Party and the conservative movement to endorse Barack Obama for President. His twelfth satirical novel, Make Russia Great Again, was published in 2020.

The White House Mess (1986) – Here’s proof that Republicans can tell funny stories

Buckley’s first novel masquerades as a White House memoir — a send-up of life inside the White House that focuses on the travails of the First Family and on the high stakes feuds among their staff. The plot revolves around an old-fashioned Marxist-Leninist coup in Bermuda,the First Son’s missing hamster, a young First Lady who aches to become a Hollywood star again, a parody of a weak-kneed and wholly unsuited Democratic President, and a collection of snobs, misfits, and alcoholics who, somehow, manage to hold down jobs in the White House. Oh, and by the way: the title refers to the dining facilities, which are called the “mess” because they’re run by the Navy.

Wet Work (1991)

In Wet Work, Buckley displays considerable knowledge of fine art and artists. He writes in great detail about weapons and other military matters, the business of cocaine production, and the nature of bureaucratic maneuvering at the highest level in the United States government. In some ways, the novel is satirical. But Wet Work is, nonetheless, a grim and unsettling story.

Thank You for Smoking (1994)

I read this hilarious novel long before I began reviewing books on this site. Publishers Weekly began its contemporary review of the book with these words: “Nick Naylor had been called most things since becoming chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, but until now no one had actually compared him to Satan.” So begins the adventures of this protagonist, a shamelessly slimy yuppie and PR flack par excellence for the tobacco industry. The story, such as it is, consists of “Naylor’s attempts to prop up his failing corporate star by expanding his defense of the evil weed.” Writing in the New York Times, Christopher Lehman-Haupt termed the novel a “savagely funny new satirical farce.” Kirkus Reviews seems to have laughed less, noting that Buckley “displays an undiminished appetite for current affairs and a talent for converting some of America’s thornier social issues into light comedy.”

Little Green Men (1999) – Wondered where UFOs come from? Christopher Buckley has the answer

Perhaps it requires a rarefied sense of humor to appreciate Christopher Buckley, but you wouldn’t know it from the sales figures on his books. Anyone who can write a book with endlessly eccentric characters named Sir Reginald Pigg-Vigorish, Col. Roscoe J. Murfletit, General Tunklebunker, and Deputy FBI Director Bargenberfer may be reaching the pre-adolescent in me, but he makes me laugh, dammit, and I’m not going to apologize for it, so there! In Little Green Men, not only does Buckley make me chuckle and wheeze with immoderate glee, but he also solves the mystery of the UFOs! Could anyone possibly wish for more?

“No Way to Treat a First Lady (2002) – Philandering President, long-suffering wife

Whenever as a child I told my mother that something was funny, she would ask, “Funny ha-ha, or funny strange?” Well, this one is a little of both. No Way to Treat a First Lady tells the tale of a philandering President and a long-suffering wife who has, apparently, murdered him in his sleep. See what I mean? However, the leading characters in this novel in no way resemble two recent residents of the White House. And the supporting cast would be a better fit in a Marx Brothers film than in today’s Washington, DC — or at least that was true before 2017. Nowadays, you can practically see them behind today’s headlines.”⁹

Florence of Arabia (2004) – Feminism? In Arabia? Read it here first

The issue the novel addresses — the brutal subjugation of women in ultra-conservative Muslim societies — is simply not funny. However preposterous the characters or improbable the circumstances, the subject just isn’t laughable at all. In other ways, however, Florence of Arabia shows off Buckley’s exceptional talent: deliciously convoluted (if not Byzantine) plotting, overblown characters that somehow still seem true to life, and thorough grounding in the facts on the ground to make the story seem dangerously close to reality.

Make Russia Great Again—Satirizing Donald Trump is a tall order

Christopher Buckley is far and away the most accomplished political satirist writing today in America. In novels such as Thank You for Smoking and They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, he has skewered the nation’s political establishment ways from Sunday. Now, for the first time in nearly a decade, he returns to that field of battle with another of his trademark sendups of none other than Donald Trump himself. In Make Russia Great Again, he has taken on a man who might be thought immune to satire because he does such a great job of making a fool of himself. The book may not be Buckley’s best effort, but it’s far better than anything else in print that finds humor in The Donald’s tragic misbehavior. It turns out that parodying Donald Trump requires a satirist of Buckley’s enormous talent.

“Christopher Buckley’s new novel “Make Russia Great Again” is a rollicking satire of Donald Trump’s White House – and of a president whom Buckley told Yahoo News must not be reelected or “we are all going to be sitting in lifeboats”.

“It is not really funny when you think about it,” Buckley said during a Friday interview on the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast. “If he gets another four years, I don’t think satire’s going to be possible”.

Buckley’s book hits stores and follows the success of earlier books like “Thank you for smoking”, (2010) a send-up of the tabacco industry and political correctness. This latest effort skewers the Trump administration and its various enablers, including a South Carolina senator modeled after Lindsey Graham named Squigg Lee Biskitt “whose ability to adopt was beyond even Darwin’s imagination”. Other characters include speechwriter Stefan Nacht von Nebel – modeled after White House anti-immigration hardliner Stephen Miller – billed as the author of the “thought-provoking essay, ‘The final solution to the Mexican problems’’.”¹⁰

Have I convinced you that Christopher Buckley writes satirical novels that are very, very funny? If not, check out a few of them. You’ll see for yourself.

Mock seriousness is a style Buckley has perfected. His 2004 novel "Florence of Arabia," which centers on a scheme to emancipate Arab women through a Lifetime-like TV channel, was described by its publisher as "a biting satire of how U.S. good intentions can cause the Shiite to hit the fan." His 1994 "Thank You for Smoking," which focuses on conscienceless lobbyists for the tobacco and alcohol industries and the NRA (who dryly call themselves the "Merchants of Death"), became a movie in 2005. "Boomsday" offers the Swiftian modest proposal that the way to solve the Social Security crisis is to offer Baby Boomers the incentive of "transitioning" -- that is, committing suicide in return for generous tax breaks and other perks.

“"Boomsday" in part involves a fictitious software program called RIP-ware that accurately assesses life expectancy, a handy tool for money-hungry insurers and nursing home operators, and Spider Repellent, software that deletes embarrassing stories from computer search engines. For all Buckley knows, such programs may already be in development.

"The hardest part about writing satire is competing with the front page," he says.

What's not hard for Buckley is understanding politics -- his next novel will tweak the famously tight-lipped Supreme Court. After all, his father, William F. Buckley Jr., founded National Review magazine and helped define contemporary conservative thought. And for two years, Christopher Buckley served as a speechwriter for then Vice President George H.W. Bush.”¹¹

Christopher Buckley was in a cab in Manhattan on his way to Grand Central Station when he saw a man walking along with a distinctively yellow and aquastripped book on his hand.

“Excuse me, sir! Are you enjoying that book?” Buckley recalls shouting out the window to the startled passer-by. “I wrote it”.

The man responded in a New York minute.

“Would you sign it?” he yelled back. And Buckley, leaning out the window as the cab accelerated, did.

It was an amusing, slightly absurd moment, not unlike the ones Buckley deftly inserts into his satiric novels, to wonderful effect. The author of 12 books, including the recent “Boomsday” (Warner Books/Twelve, $24.99), as well as founder and editer in chief of Forbes FYI magazine (now called ForbesLife), Buckley will be at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford Tuesday to give its first Clemens Lecture of this year.”¹²

The Relic Master, about a madcap scheme by Albrecht Dürer to forge the Shroud of Turin, certainly paints the Catholic church in an unflattering light. The story is set in the 16th century, when Pope Leo X, a member of the de Medici crime family, spent the church into bankruptcy in order to indulge his sinful pleasures, conduct that enraged Martin Luther and led directly to the Protestant Reformation. Buckley insists that his book is not about axe-grinding, but rather about exploring colorful characters who live in interesting times.

“The book is not an anti-religious book,” he says. “Every fact that I adduce in the book about the church at the time is historically based.”¹³

His new book does make clear that, however nasty and absurd contemporary politics may seem, the past was no improvement. “You can go back and read things that were said about Abraham Lincoln,” he says. “Newspaper columnists called him a baboon. So that wasn’t exactly a kinder and gentler time.”

Christopher Buckley on Little Green Men:

“I am not a believer myself in UFOs, but it fascinates me that many Americans are. … The second epigraph [in the book] was from a story in USA Today. It was a quote from a guy named Webster Hubble, and some of your diligent older listeners may remember him as the number two attorney general in the first Clinton—Bill Clinton—administration. And the quote goes something like this, he said, ‘When Bill Clinton became president, he pulled me into his office and he said to me, “Web”—or maybe he called him Hubb—”there’s two things I want you to find out for me. One, who killed Kennedy? And are UFOs real?”‘ And I thought, wow, you know, this is the president of the United States.”

Christopher Buckley on Frederick the Wise:

“Here’s this guy Frederick of Saxony, the guy with this collection of 19,000 relics. This was an educated, smart, and good man who just had a passion for collecting relics. Now, among his relics were a nail from the Crucifixion and the lance of Longinus—that’s the tip of the lance that the Roman soldier lanced Jesus’ side with at the end of the Crucifixion to finish him off. He had a mummified body of one of the Holy Innocents—these were the 2,000 babies that Herod ordered slaughtered after he heard that a savior had been born. So let’s ask ourselves, did someone called ‘Frederick the Wise’ actually believe these things were real? … I have a hard time believing he thought every one of his relics was actually real.”

Christopher Buckley on Albrecht Durer:

“He may have invented the selfie. Until he started doing self-portraits—he did his first one when he was 13—artists didn’t do self-portraits. They were painting the Crucifixion or the Sermon on the Mount or whatever, they weren’t looking in the mirror and painting themselves. … Dürer not only painted a lot of self-portraits, but he also would, if he was doing a painting of something that had nothing to do with him, he would insert himself in it somewhere. It was sort of like Where’s Waldo? … So Dismas’ nickname for him is ‘Nars,’ from Narcissus, the character in Greek mythology who was always staring at his reflection in a puddle of water.”

Christopher Buckley on book tours:

“After five or six books I got a little bored, and so I started making up [my author bio], and I wrote one that said, ‘He has been an adviser to every US president since William Howard Taft.’ Because why not? So it’s day eight of a 10 day book tour, and I’m in Boston walking into an AM drive-time call radio show. … [The host] is hunched over, he’s got the book in front of him, and he’s speed-reading the ‘About the Author’ paragraph. … And he looks up at me and stares and says, ‘You were an adviser to William Howard Taft?’ And it was day eight, and I was a bit punchy, so I say, ‘Yeah, I was.’ So he frowned and said, ‘So we could talk about that, on the show?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah we could talk about that.’ So we did, and I haven’t been invited back on his show, but it was worth it.”¹⁴