Christopher Buckley

Christopher Taylor Buckley (born 1952) is an American political satirist and the author of several novels. He is the son of William F. Buckley Jr. and Patricia Buckley. His novels include God Is My Broker, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, The White House Mess, No Way to Treat a First Lady, Wet Work, Florence of Arabia, Boomsday, and, most recently, Supreme Courtship.

Life

After a classical education at the Portsmouth Abbey School, Buckley, like his father, graduated from Yale University, as a member of Skull and Bones. He became managing editor of Esquire Magazine and later worked as the chief speechwriter for Vice President George H. W. Bush. This experience led to his novel The White House Mess, a satire on White House office politics and political memoirs. (The title refers to the White House lunchroom, which is known as the "mess" because the Navy operates it.)

Thank You for Smoking is another satire, its protagonist a lobbyist for the tobacco industry, Nick Naylor. He followed that with more humor about Washington in the form of Little Green Men, about the government agency investigating UFO sightings. His No Way To Treat A First Lady has the president's wife on trial for assassinating her husband and Florence of Arabia is about a do-gooding State Department bureaucrat in the Middle East. His one serious novel, Wet Work, is about a billionaire businessman avenging his granddaughter's death from drugs.

Thank You for Smoking was adapted into a movie written and directed by Jason Reitman and starring Aaron Eckhart. It was released on March 17, 2006.

Buckley also wrote the non-fiction Steaming To Bamboola, about the merchant marine, as well as contributed to an oral history of Milford, Connecticut, and is an editor at Forbes Magazine. Buckley has written for most national newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, The Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, US News & World Report, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Conde Nast Traveler . He has also published numerous humorous essays in The New Yorker, and writes the back-page column for National Review, the conservative magazine founded by his father.

Personal

He is married to Lucy Gregg Buckley with whom he had 2 children. He has also had at least one affair with Irina Woelfle, a former Random House publicist, with whom he had a love child. He has refused to have anything to do with the child.

Bibliography

Satirical novels

• The White House Mess (1986)
• Thank You for Smoking (1994)
• God Is My Broker : A Monk-Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth (1998) (written with John Tierney)
• Little Green Men (1999)
• No Way to Treat a First Lady (2002)
• Florence of Arabia (2004)
• Boomsday (2007)
• Supreme Courtship (2008)

Films based on Buckley's novels

• Thank You for Smoking (2006) (Directed by Jason Reitman, Screenplay also by Reitman)
• Little Green Men (Expected to be released sometime in 2008) (Directed by Whit Stillman, Screenplay by Sean Bates and Gregory Mackenzie)

Travelogues

• Steaming to Bamboola - The World of a Tramp Freighter (1983)
• Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation's Capital (2003)

Other

• My Harvard, My Yale (1981) (contributor, segment "Stoned in New Haven") (university biography)
• Campion: A Play in Two Acts (1990) (written with James Macguire) (play)
• Wet Work (1991) (novel)
• Wry Martinis (1997) (collected humor and journalism)

References

External links

• NadaPress.com - The Home of Buckley Prose
• Christopher Buckley at the Internet Movie Database
• NOW. Arts & Culture. Christopher Buckley PBS interview by David Brancaccio.
• Novelist Buckley, Smoking Out the Self-Righteous
• Christopher Buckley - 2002 National Book Festival
• {http://www.nypost.com/seven/10052008/news/nationalnews/no_love_child_of_buckley_132230.htm]