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Article: Bill Buckley, novelist of right-wing revisionism
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- March 23, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2003 Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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GETTING IT RIGHT
By William F. Buckley Jr.
Regnery. $24.95.
Any author, even one as august as William F. Buckley Jr., who
titles a novel Getting It Right is daring reviewers to dismiss it
with a Dorothy Parkerism like "He didn't." But Buckley is one of our
nation's most eminent political pundits, so Getting It Right deserves
to be dismissed with somewhat more gravitas.
In his recent historical novels, Buckley has carved out an
idiosyncratic subgenre, the historical novel as weapon of
paleoconservative revisionism. His purpose seems more didactic than
entertaining--this is right-wing edutainment, trending more to the
"edu" than the "taining."
Buckley uses novels to teach history the way ...