Christopher Buckley on "Mum and Pup"

The definition of "bliss:" Sitting at Top Pot this morning with a latté and a doughnut while reading an excerpt in the New York Times Magazine from Christopher Buckley's new memoir about his famous parents, William F. and Pat Buckley, "Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir."

Buckley senior was a well-known conservative writer and TV host. His wife's life was devoted to her husband and to being the glamorous Mrs. Buckley. Together, they were icons of '60s cultural chic.

Christopher is a well-known author. He's a witty and agile writer and his memoir is funny, touching and fascinating. How many of us have wished we'd grown up in a family like the Buckleys', surrounded by smart and glamorous people, taking winter vacations in Gstaad, Switzerland, where dinner guests might include Princess Grace, David Niven and Ted Kennedy (and where the post-dinner activity was to go paint in a room specially set up for that), or hobnobbing with famous politicians in Washington, D.C.?

But, as Christopher points out, it wasn't always easy. His father, he says, was a Great Man and Great Men must have their way, whether it's running the TV remote control ("We watched parts of five movies last night," a friend tells him) or insisting on moving a quietly moored boat in the Caribbean, a move that ended with the boat aground in a storm on Christmas Eve. And his mother was an unrepentant fabricator who could upend a dinner party with her caustic comments.

Buckley is both sad and humorous when describing the final days of both his mother and father. Going to see his mother as she lies unconscious in the hospital, he brings some help:

"I’d brought with me a pocket copy of the book of Ecclesiastes. A line in 'Moby-Dick' lodged in my mind long ago: 'The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.' I grabbed it off my bookshelf on the way here, figuring that a little fine-hammered steel would probably be a good thing to have on this trip. I’m no longer a believer, but I haven’t quite reached the point of reading aloud from Christopher Hitchens’s 'God Is Not Great' at deathbeds of loved ones."

Christopher's memoir is filled with love but also recognition that his parents were complicated people and not saints. As his mother lays dying, he strokes her hand and is surprised to find himself saying, "I forgive you."

The New York Times excerpt is so marvelous that it makes me think I'll have to read the whole book and some of Christopher's other books as well (the film version of "Thank You for Smoking" was excellent).

A couple of links:

• Christopher Buckley narrates an audio slide show of family photos in the New York Times.
• NPR's Scott Simon interviewed Christopher Buckley yesterday on Weekend Edition.
  

UPDATE: Turns out not everyone is as enamored of "Mum and Pup" as I am. Howard Kurtz has an interview with Buckley in today's Washington Post that begins:

The book is not even out and already, Christopher Buckley says, he is hearing about certain Manhattan society ladies sniffing that he should "never darken their dinner table again."

When they take it from our cold, dead hands

I was intrigued this week to see a young reader’s question to Richard L. Berke, the New York Times assistant managing editor for news. It was a variation on that ancient generational challenge: When will you old people get out of the way and let us younger folks run things? Berke’s response has generated a bit of controversy in the blogosphere.

The question from Josh of New Orleans related to the train-wreck that is the news business these days:

“Newspapering as we knew it — its economic sustainability and moral righteousness — died sometime in the last decade. Yet the people who sank the ship, namely those of the baby-boomer, Woodward-and-Bernstein era, are still at the helm, and giving up their lofty newsroom positions only with cold, dead hands. …

“My question is, both cheekily and seriously, when will your generation quit and let my generation try all these ideas we have about how the news should be presented?”

Berke’s response went something like this: It’s always been hard to land a news job, especially now. But, think of all the opportunities you have to innovate and try new forms of reporting:

“Maybe I'm refusing to face reality, but I believe that if you're enterprising and talented enough, there are more opportunities than ever in the world of journalism.”

That caused a harsh reaction on Jim Romenesko’s web site from some younger journalists. They complained that they have bills to pay (sometimes big bills), can’t afford the time to innovate, and that it was wrong to leave the people who ran the news biz up on the rocks at the tiller of the industry.

Good points, all.

I think I’d side with Berke, but for slightly different reasons. If you really want to fix what’s wrong with this business (and who doesn’t?), the last place you want to be is at a property owned by a big media company. Big companies are, by nature and with rare exception, conservative places. The people who are hired to run them aren’t hired to be daring or make cutting-edge moves. They are hired to be careful, preserve what has been built over many years, add to it some, and then pass it along to the next batch of managers.

That’s one reason why they missed what was coming with the web. They had a good and profitable thing going with print and it didn’t seem necessary, or prudent, to start tinkering with another delivery model that might endanger those profits. The big money was always in print and it always would be, wouldn’t it?

If you’re looking to innovate and find the new models, the best thing is to do it at smaller companies that are more nimble and willing to experiment and, possibly, fail. Jason Preston expressed it to me best many months ago: The big media companies need to act like startups, investing in people and ideas like a startup would: with an eye toward the future. And I’m not sure that they can or will.

I was struck while attending The Pitch, Jason’s media discussion event the other night, that there were few representatives of established media companies in attendance. And those who were there weren't the people making the big decisions. The topic was what business models might work for journalism for the next five years. Lots of good ideas were batted around and they were free for the taking. But, as far as I know, no one from a mainstream Seattle media company was there.

The people who were there were mostly academics and entrepreneurs (and a few folks from Microsoft). Those entrepreneurs are the fertile ground where these new ideas will be found and nourished. If the big media companies were smart, they’d spread a little money around to these folks and see what grows. Call it digital fertilizer. But, maybe that’s too far outside their comfort zone also.