Buckley and Mailer
The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A lively chronicle of the 1960s through the surprisingly close and incredibly contentious friendship of its two most colorful characters.
Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley, Jr., were towering personalities who argued publicly and vociferously about every major issue of the 1960s: the counterculture, Vietnam, feminism, civil rights, the Cold War. Behind the scenes, the two were friends and trusted confidantes. In Buckley and Mailer, historian Kevin M. Schultz delivers a fresh and enlightening chronicle of that tumultuous decade through the rich story of what Mailer called their "difficult friendship." From their public debate before the Floyd Patterson–Sonny Liston heavyweight fight and their confrontation at Truman Capote’s Black-and-White Ball, to their involvement in cultural milestones like the antiwar rally in Berkeley and the March on the Pentagon, Buckley and Mailer explores these extraordinary figures’ contrasting visions of America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Illinois historian Schultz's social history unfolds as Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley heroes of the left and right, respectively get to know one another in 1962 and become "near-allies in the battle to overturn the Liberal Establishment." The book is not a dual biography, nor does it span entire careers: it ends in 1969, with Mailer's entry into the New York City mayoral race when he was 46 and Buckley was 41. Mailer emerges as the adored protagonist, an all-around mensch, and the political prophet of the radical left. Buckley is treated more formally and critically. The book's central premise that Mailer and Buckley were trusted confidants is a stretch. Schultz also dwells fondly on cafe intellectuals and glamorous literary celebrities such as Truman Capote, whose exploits are amply covered elsewhere at some expense to the book's seriousness. Nevertheless, this "difficult friendship," as Mailer called it, illuminates the decade's larger cultural context. Mailer and Buckley were bright, magnetic intellectual leaders and publicity hounds with superhuman energy; both loved America but in different ways. Schultz navigates the 1960s through these two larger-than-life men, offering plentiful anecdotes in an informed, entertaining style.
