The life and times of National Review
George Will attained prominence when he became National Review Washington columnist (in 1972, I think). During his tenure as NR's Washington columnist Will memorably and relentlessly deconstructed the Nixon administration's statements on Watergate.
In his terrific new history of National Review, Jeffrey Hart describes Will's work for NR in 1973 as Watergate unfolded:
National Review's new Washington columnist George Will began to perfect the style of political comment that combined relentless logic with understated scorn for felons and fools and would make him famous.Hart adds: "His handling of the upcoming Spiro Agnew scandal would alienate some at National Review as too severe a way to treat a friend, but it was also just, and it impressed a national audience with his integrity." The tension ultimately led to Will's seeking greener pastures as a columnist for the Washington Post.
Hart's history of NR is The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and its Times. Tomorrow's New York Times Book Review carries Will's review of the book: "The conservative imagination." In his review, Will briefly follows the thread of intellectual history that is one of the themes of the book and recommends it as a book conservatives will enjoy. (He makes no mention of his own stint at the magazine or of his appearance in the book.)
The book merits the attention of serious readers. As the subtitle indicates, the book is really a sort of life and times of NR -- the magazine that Will has elsewhere described as "the most consequential journal of opinion ever." Although Will does not mention them, a series of brilliant and entertaining profiles of NR founding editors and protagonists are the heart of the book, taking up roughly its first half. Hart devotes two chapters, for example, to the late, legendary Yale political science professor and NR founding editor Willmoore Kendall.
As the second of the two chapters concludes, Kendall seeks to recruit Hart from Dartmouth, where Hart was professor of English (and where I became one of his faithful students), to the University of Dallas, where Kendall had decamped after Yale bought out his tenure in 1961 for $42,5000. (Hart observes: "[T]hat was a lot of money in 1961, about five times his annual salary.") When Hart declined Kendall's offer to join Kendall at the University of Dallas, Hart recalls: "The reply...took the form of a note written in Willmoore's green ink on several small pages of a desk notepad. Among a few other choice things, it said that I was 'more corrupt than Buckley,' whom he evidently regarded as a Sultan of Corruption." In the jacket photo above, Kendall appears with cigarette in hand, between Russell Kirk and Whittaker Chambers.
