Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription, by William F. Buckley Jr.
Don't start here
(Review posted 9 Mar 2008 17:22:11)

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.