A Torch Kept Lit

October 15, 2016
Shortly after crowds gathered in Central Park for candlelight vigils in memory of the murdered John Lennon, one irreverent eulogist reminded mourners that the sex-and-drug episodes of Lennon's life sustained the theme, How I Wrecked My Own Life and Can Help Wreck Yours. That outspoken iconoclast, William F. Buckley, Jr., never lacked for a piquant phrase when the death of famous figures focused the public mind. And many of those pungent phrases have here been gathered by editor Rosen in 50-plus Buckley obituaries and eulogies. As a leader of twentieth-century conservatism, Buckley predictably remembers Reagan as the resolute opponent of Soviet imperialism, LBJ as the misguided architect of a bloated welfare state. But funerals could prompt surprising judgments: Buckley praises the honeyed voice of Elvis Presley but questions the global legacy of Winston Churchill. But it is the elegiac reflections on his father, wife, and close friends that give readers a glimpse of the vulnerably human side of this glittering intellectual celebrity. Unexpected literary life in postmortem essays.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)