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Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes and Asides from National ReviewPM | 
| Author: William F. Buckley Jr.
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $16.32
You Save: $7.68 (32%)
Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 25326
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.3 x 1
ISBN: 0465002420
Dewey Decimal Number: 070.92
EAN: 9780465002429
Publication Date: October 22, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Who knew that William F. Buckley Jr., the quintessential conservative, invented the blog decades before the World Wide Web came into existence? National Review, like nearly all magazines, has always published letters from readers. In 1967 the magazine decided that certain letters merited different treatment, and Buckley, the editor, began a column called “Notes & Asides,” in which he personally answered the most notable and outrageous letters. The selections in this book, culled from four decades of these columns, include exchanges with such figures as Ronald Reagan, Eric Sevareid, Richard Nixon, A. M. Rosenthal, Auberon Waugh, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. There are also hilarious exchanges with ordinary readers, as well as letters from Buckley to various organizations and government agencies.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Delightful exchanges from the decades of National Review November 20, 2007
58 out of 61 found this review helpful
National Review and William F. Buckley Jr. have been a delight in my life for decades. One of the great features of magazine was called Notes and Asides. It contained a wonderfully strange mix of letters with responses from Buckley that covered language, politics, arts, challenges, witty exchanges, questions, requests, WFB's posture, and letters from Presidents. They are all wonderful in their way and many are laugh out loud funny. This book is a chronological collection of selections from this department from 1967-2005.
Not only are these exchanges wonderful insights into the times in which they were written, they bring back wonderful memories and fill in some of the things I missed. There is an ongoing joke between WFB and Art Buchwald about the perks Buchwald is getting from his Hertz Platinum card that he assumes WFB is not getting or getting more of than him. It is all good fun. We also get some warmish exchanges between WFB and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., some light tweaking between John Kenneth Galbraith and WFB, and letters WFB sent to various publications correcting statements made about him in their pages.
There is also the wonderful fun Buckley has with language and those who criticize his usage, "accent", and vocabulary. He handles it all with good humor and patiently explains that his first language was Spanish, then French, and didn't speak English until he was five. One of the fun bits recounts the famous phrase "immanentize the eschaton". Did you know it became a motto of Young Americans for Freedom? What does it mean? Simply to attempt to bring from the transcendent from the spiritual world (the eschaton) into this world (the immanent). It is a criticism of hubris in liberal attempts to try and create a literal Heaven on Earth.
Buckley also had long legal battles with certain trade unions because Charlton Heston and Tom Selleck did commercials for National Review gratis. Another union earlier had demanded that Buckley join in order to do Firing Line for free and give it away. There are also nice letters to and from friends that are touching and always interesting. However, I will state that I am not the only one that thinks Buckley wrong to use the name of God as a mere intensifier simply because it is common usage. There are lots of things in common usage that he, as a serious Christian, does not do. Misusing the Lord's name in this way is one of them. But in the balance, Buckley has given me (and others) so much, that it is something I can ignore.
This book is fun and I encourage you to get it, read it, and enjoy the fun the art of letter writing can provide. I know it is an almost extinct art form, but maybe it can be revived if enough people remember how delightful a well written letter and reply can be.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
Immanentizing the Eschaton December 8, 2007
15 out of 24 found this review helpful
It is not what you say - it's how you say it.
I don't remember when I've laughed so often and with such pleasure as I did reading CYOGS. There is wit, sharpness, erudition, and the plain pleasure of sparring with words and ideas that makes you forget what the man actually stands for. Fer crissakes, Buckley was buddies with Dick Nixon and an admirer of Ronald Reagan and Gene McCarthy.
Nonetheless, it has to be said that in this day and age when conservatism has degenerated into the relentless negativism of the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham and Coulter, Buckley has consistently been bringing us conservatism that is refined, principled, good-natured (if acerbic) - and with a foundation that is made of something else that simple venal greed. I may not agree with his ideas, but I 've always respected the man.
No matter how incongruous one's political beliefs, if someone pursues them with elegance and spark a lot can be forgiven. The spark does, after all, come straight from the Eschaton that Buckley lectures us about in CYOGS. While Buckley is busy immanentizing it, we should salute the old man who has brought us so much fun - no matter how many times he cracks the pot he sits on.
 Don't start here March 9, 2008
14 out of 28 found this review helpful
So William F. Buckley Jr. died the other day, most likely quite pleasantly and after a satisfying life, and that reminded me of him. I went up onto Amazon and bought the first interesting-sounding book with his name on it, so as to read something by him and with luck deepen my own impression of him, which so far is the rather superficial one that he's smart and witty, and I disagree with him about quite a few things.
It turns out this particular book wasn't a good choice for that purpose.
"Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription" is a selection of very short pieces, reprints of reader letters that he felt like responding to, snappy answers to other bits of correspondence that came in his mail, and random snippets of other things. There are no reasoned arguments to speak of here, no thoughtful essays, few extended displays of wit. Mostly it's zingers and one-liners and wisecracks aimed at readers of the National Review; not preaching to the choir so much as keeping it amused.
Unless one is a member of that choir (and I'm not), Buckley comes off here as a bit of a jerk, a churl, an overerudite taker of cheap shots. But coming to any firm conclusion along those lines from this particular evidence would be a bad idea. By all means buy and read this book if you're an old-time National Review reader looking for nostalgia. But if you actually want to learn something substantive about Buckley, his ideas, and his quality of thought, this is not the place to begin.
Buckley, The Original Blogger January 23, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
One of the things which first hooked me on "National Review" when I was younger was the hilarious informality of Bill Buckley's "Notes and Asides" column. He set apart space in his magazine to joust with some readers and have fun with others, in a gloriously unbuttoned style that was irresistible to a budding teenage libertarian like me. He has gathered together his greatest hits in "Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription" (a title which perfectly sums up the wonderfully impudent tone of the book.) In some ways Buckley was the original blogger and this book provides a running history of U.S. politics and culture in recent decades from one guy's brilliantly witty perspective. If you are looking for a way to ease into Buckley's voluminous writings this is an excellent place to start.
The Full Buckley... February 28, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
As a committed Liberal, I despise everything Bill Buckley espoused, but I adored the man. National Review was anathema, except for Buckley's columns which would make me seethe, or laugh, or snarl -- but there was no resisting those words. Notes and Asides consists of Buckley at his most entertaining, wielding those $20 words, creating sentences that marched right off the page into battle, and giving us an insight into one of the most complex thinkers in modern history. Love him? Hate him? Doesnt matter. This book will hold anyone who loves words and ideas spellbound for hours. But then that's true about almost anything written by Mr. B (with the exception of his novels, which I have never been able to fathom). Notes and Asides is selected from Buckley's responses to letters to the editor of National Review. His correspondence with Art Buchwald is worth the price of admission. Buy the book. Read it. You'll learn something, the cobwebs will blow out of your brain, and you'll experience some of the best use of the English language in this century. Just don't agree with him.
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