Getting It Right: A Novel [Hardcover]

William F. Buckley (Author)

Book Description

Series: William F. Buckley | Publication Date: January 1, 2003

Giving birth is arguably the most difficult physical event of a woman's life, yet most women - even those in great shape - enter the delivery room wholly unprepared for the rigours of labour and demands of early motherhood. But you can train for childbirth as you would for any other athletic event to minimise your discomfort, prevent injury, and ease your delivery. Bridson, an exercise coach and four-time marathoner, decided to prepare her body for the impending trials of childbirth and recovery by training her muscles, much as she had trained for her marathons. She bounced back so quickly from her pregnancy that she was able to complete her fourth marathon only seven months after giving birth. In Nine Months Strong, Bridson shares her groundbreaking plan for pregnancy fitness and training for delivery. With the added expertise of medical advisor Karin Blakemore, M.D., and numerous instructional illustrations, Bridson provides medically sound, easy-to-follow guidance on how to: Prevent backache during and after pregnancy Strengthen the abdominal and pelvic muscles necessary for labour Maintain healthy posture despite physical discomfort Bulk up arms for carrying baby Condition nipples for nursing Stretch vaginal muscles for less painful labour Choose the right positions during labour and delivery Minimize postpartum weight gain and recovery period Drawing from her experience as a coach, athlete, and mother, Bridson presents the most complete pregnancy fitness guide available. From marathoners to fitness novices, all women will benefit from Bridson's honest advice and proven approach to materal fitness.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Author, columnist and National Review founder Buckley offers a sentimental bildungsroman about a young man's initiation into the mid-century American conservative movement. In 1956, a 19-year-old Mormon missionary, Woodroe Raynor, is assigned to fieldwork in Austria, near the Hungarian border. He loses his virginity to a Hungarian woman and is wounded as he watches Russian tanks quell the Hungarian uprising. The bullet wound is nothing, however, compared to the psychic pain of learning that his paramour is a Communist sympathizer. Woodroe later attends Princeton and begins working for the John Birch Society. He has a love affair with an Ayn Rand acolyte, leading to some heady epistolary debates about whether Rand or Birch Society founder Robert Welch is better prepared to eradicate Communism. Rand is unmasked (yet again) as a sexually and intellectually manipulative egomaniac, and the wisdom of the National Review and its staff is affirmed regularly. Vivid historical passages about the Cuban missile crisis and the Kennedy assassination, as well as cameo appearances by John Dos Passos and Alan Greenspan, are a welcome diversion from the mostly stilted prose (a sex scene between Rand and a lover is described this way: "Today her lover was being welcomed with synaesthetical concern for all the senses.... But as he lay and later groaned with writhing and release, he brought the full force of his mind to transmuted, voluptarian elation in this physical union..."). Between the self-congratulatory tone and the flat characters, the novel will appeal primarily to Buckley's devoted fans.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

It's become a truism that the groundwork for GOP success since 1980 was laid in the 1950s and in the 1964 Goldwater presidential campaign. Buckley himself was a player then--part of what this historical novel's characters label "the National Review crowd"--but that group is absent here. Instead, Buckley focuses on two of the conservative movement's more controversial elements: the fervently anti-Communist John Birch Society and Ayn Rand's "objectivism." Woodroe (Woody) Raynor witnesses (and is shot in) the 1956 Hungarian Revolution while doing Mormon missionary work across the border in Austria. He returns to attend Princeton and becomes a Birch Society operative on graduation. At the founding meeting of the Young Americans for Freedom (at Buckley's mother's Connecticut estate), Woody meets Leonora Goldstein, an acolyte in "the Collective" surrounding Ayn Rand. Through the eyes of these committed young conservatives, the reader examines Birchers and Randians and witnesses key events: the enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, the Cuban missile crisis, JFK's assassination, the Warren Commission's deliberations, the 1964 presidential campaign, and growing U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. In a sense, this novel is "triumphalist" history: Buckley's crowd largely won the 1960s battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Expect his latest novel to appeal most powerfully to readers whose political attitudes match those of National Review. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing; First Edition edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895261383
• ISBN-13: 978-0895261380
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,984,264 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Witness, May 4, 2003

By 

Keith Levenberg (New York, N.Y. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Getting It Right: A Novel (Hardcover)

If you have George H. Nash's /The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945/ on your bookshelf and have thought its themes fertile for a novel of manners, William F. Buckley Jr.'s /Getting it Right/ is the book for you. It presumes substantial familiarity with the figures and institutions that shaped the modern right, so readers who have not followed conservatism's internecine philosophical struggles will find little in this book that anchors their interest. Those well-acquainted with the patriarchs of such fixtures as National Review and Young Americans for Freedom will appreciate /Getting it Right/ as an illuminating chronicle of an ideological revolution of which Buckley is one of the last surviving witnesses. The book is also a fitting companion to /The Redhunter/, Buckley's novelization of the rise and fall of Joe McCarthy, as both books contribute an important perspective to the emergence in the 1950s of an anti-Communist eddy that helped invigorate an ascending conservative movement.

During this era, Buckley, Russell Kirk, Whitaker Chambers, and others were defining, in the pages of National Review, the parameters of conservatism as we understand it today. In so doing, they strove to establish their breed of conservatism as the dominant ideology of anti-Communism, while such firebrands as Ayn Rand and the John Birch Society's Robert Welch adopted a fiercer, more confrontational demeanor. /Getting it Right/ is Buckley's account of how Rand and Welch estranged themselves from the emerging conservative silent majority. Buckley is fair to both and displays a keen understanding of how Rand and Welch each captivated their respective sects. Presently, Rand's legacy is more enduring and I expect that Buckley's portrayal of Rand as a shrew who may have "created an entire . . . philosophical system[] to deal with her own psychological problems" will earn this book hysterical reproachment from those who still adopt Rand's "Objectivism" and style themselves Randian heroes. But Buckley has in no sense whatsoever adopted the Aaron Sorkin model of political fiction wherein one makes ideological opponents look silly by putting words in their mouths that they would never speak. Buckley clearly acknowledges Rand's literary brilliance and her gift for rigorous analytical deduction. He uses her personal implosion as an object lesson in how the most studious fidelity to capitalism and freedom cannot yield genuine happiness without a corresponding commitment to the traditional social virtues.

But did this have to be a novel? Not until the final pages will readers develop much affection for the major fictional characters, each of whom serves as little more than a deus ex machina to hurry along the narrative. The author was a major participant in many of the events chronicled, and history would have been better served by a well-documented first-person account than by a half-fictionalization in which Buckley at times clumsily renders himself as a supporting character. The novel's copious citations to National Review editorials also harmonize rather poorly with its literary form. Yet the struggle for the soul of American conservatism does have the character of an epic. The drama reaches its crescendo at the 1964 Republican National Convention when a defiant Barry Goldwater declares, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. . . . Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." By itself, the sentiment was and is beautiful, but Buckley places it in context, and, as always, stands athwart history, yelling Stop.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More Fiction Than Historical?, August 14, 2003

By 

Don Milne - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting It Right: A Novel (Hardcover)

Being from Utah, this book attracted my curiousity when the book jacket showed the main character, Woodroe was a Mormon. It is not too often that you see a name author choose to make someone of my faith the center of a story.

I was disappointed that Mr. Buckley did not seem to conduct the level of research one would except from someone of his stature. The number of inacuracies about Mormons and Utah is surprising. Couldn't he get a NR intern to do some basic fact checking? Some things are minor like his mentioning the University of Salt Lake City which does not exist, or that Woodroe is from a town north of the Salt Lake. Look at a map, there are no towns on the north end of the Great Salt Lake.

Most incredible are the situations he puts Woodroe in early in the book when he is serving as a missionary. LDS missionaries always work and travel in pairs, but Buckley totally ignores this basic tenant so he can get his main character into situations that would not happen to a normal missionary.

Later in the book it turns out that Woodroe is not all that commited to his faith. Buckley could have developed his character better to show why this happened.

I am not as familiar with the other institutions that he tackles in the book (The JBS and Ayn Rand) but if he was as sloppy in representing them as he was the Mormons than there is probably more fiction in this work than meets the eye.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Buckley's Hero Is LDS!, September 3, 2006

By 

R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting It Right: A Novel (Hardcover)

"Getting It Right" is a historical novel by the godfather of modern American conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr. I don't think I've ever read a historical novel written by one of the actual participants, but here's one. Buckley was present at the creation of "the vast right-wing conspiracy:" the post World War II conservative movement (that would later remake American politics) as it took form in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Buckley tells the story of two extremist groups that could have derailed the new insurgency: the John Birch Society and Ayn Rand's "Objectivists."

Buckley's protagonist is Woodroe Raynor, who we first meet as a young Mormon missionary in 1956 in Austria, along the Hungarian border. I must say young Woodroe's mission is unlike any I experienced as an elder. He lives with a young American couple, teaches English to the natives, and builds houses on the side. It could be that Buckley is familiar with more recent LDS humanitarian missions, or he may be thinking of the effort led by Elder Ezra Taft Benson immediately following the second world war, or he could be making up this part of the story out of whole cloth. But it's very unlikely that a 19 year-old elder would have served a non-proselyting mission like this in 1956. Then there's the little manner of his girlfriend, Teresa, who he sleeps with. She is Hungarian, and she draws him into the 1956 Hungarian revolution against the Communist Russian occupiers. Woodroe is shot trying to help refugees escape, and Teresa turns out to be a double agent. This political and sexual betrayal helps make Woodroe a convinced anti-communist.

Woodroe then attends Princeton University where his mentor is professor Theo Romney, a Mormon from Utah who is the only conservative on the history faculty. His hobby is painting from memory as massive mural of the Wasatch mountains. Together they meet the circle around Robert Welch, a wealthy candy manufacturer who founds the fiercely right-wing John Birch Society in 1958. Buckley doesn't display much curiosity about distinctive LDS beliefs. He assumes for the purpose of his narrative that Mormons believe in Jesus and are bound by a code of comprehensive morality, which makes them Christian enough for him. Buckley must have noticed during these years the fervency and numbers of LDS members involved with the John Birch Society. A little later in the novel Woodroe attends a local meeting of the Birchers in Salt Lake, where Ezra Taft Benson is seated on the dais.

Meanwhile a young Jewish woman, Leonora Goldstein, becomes involved with the intimate circle in New York City around Ayn Rand, the novelist and libertarian philosopher. There she witnesses at first hand the sexual intricacies of Rand and her very married lieutenant Nathaniel Branden (later one of the fathers of the "self-esteem" movement.) Buckley is witheringly satirical about the Randoids. He targets their cruelty, self-deception, and intellectual arrogance. (The very title of the novel could be a double-entendre about the romantic entanglements of the various right-wing characters.) The word "creepy" comes up more than once in referring to the Objectivists. It's pretty outrageous material, but
Buckley appends a "Notes" section where he lists the sources for every chapter (when he's not relying on his own recollections.)

Woodroe progresses through the JBS and begins to meet some its more colorful characters. There's Major General Edwin Walker, who tries to seduce Woodroe even as Lee Harvey Oswald fires a shot at Walker through a glass window. Then there's Revilo Oliver, an academic classics genius who spins increasingly elaborate, paranoid conspiracy theories to explain every bad aspect of American life. (Both these men were real people who Buckley came to know.) Woodroe becomes appalled by the racism, meanness, and downright looniness of the Birchers and breaks with them. He writes to Theo Romney:

"Us folks from Utah aren't racists. I never even felt the urge to look down on Jews and Negroes. So many people do. You commented in your course how the Chinese railroad workers were treated when they crossed 'God's country'. That's *our* God, Theo. Other Christians get it almost right. We get it *all* right."

Woodroe goes to work for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, which is vividly described. We also meet along the way Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, a young Alan Greenspan (who was a Randoid), and other prominent figures from the time. Buckley himself appears as a supporting character. So does this make "Getting It Right" a Norman Mailer ish "nonfiction novel"?

Woodroe meets yet another Mormon, Than Koo, a refugee from Communist terrorism in Vietnam. The climax of the novel comes when "National Review" in 1966, Buckley's hugely influential magazine, publishes a special issue denouncing the JBS as dangerous and deranged in its paranoid analyses of America. The novel ends as Leonora leaves the Objectivists, becomes a Catholic, and becomes engaged to Woodroe, who is leaving to fight in Vietnam. I see a sequel in the works.

Buckley's Mormons are defiantly idealistic, even as they are backsliders who drink and cohabit with their girlfriends. They are tolerant, compassionate, and committed to truth. Although their forceful presence in the JBS suggests they are susceptible to unwise fanaticism. Buckley captures well the feverish intoxication of extremist ideas, of how systematic ideologies take flight from reality. (Buckley seems to imply that some Jewish people has a similar cultural predisposition for Rand's cult.) Buckley himself has always been a model of civilized humanity. He comes across an an emotionally intact, jolly man who is able to successfully integrate faith and reason.

It appears that in recent years Buckley is constructing a fictional narrative history of post-war America in his novels "Nuremberg", "The Redhunter", "Spytime", "Elvis in the Morning", and this volume, which fairly screams "to be continued." For sheer literary value these novels are no threat to the "American chronicle" novels of Buckley's old nemesis, Gore Vidal. Vidal creates deeper characters, more involving plots, and infuses his history with stinging wit. But his political views grow more extreme and paranoid the closer he gets to his own lifetime. Buckley's books radiate sanity and reasonableness and they are pretty funny in their own right. Plus he is arguably the most influential American journalist of the past 50 years. Some may find his books too abstruse for their tastes. Me, I eat 'em up like candy.