Life
After a classical education at the Portsmouth Abbey School, Buckley graduated from Yale University in 1975. He was a member of Skull and Bones like his father, living at Jonathan Edwards College. He became managing editor of Esquire Magazine.
In 1981, he moved to Washington, D.C., to work as 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 17 March 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 many 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, Conde Nast Traveler and numerous humorous essays in The New Yorker.
Read more about this topic: Christopher Buckley (novelist)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“When he who adores thee has left but the name
Of his fault and his sorrows behind,
O! say wilt thou weep, when they darken the fame
Of a life that for thee was resign’d!”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“Ecouraging a child means that one or more of the following critical life messages are coming through, either by word or by action: I believe in you, I trust you, I know you can handle this, You are listened to, You are cared for, You are very important to me.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“That poor little thing was a good woman, Judge. But she just sort of let life get the upper hand. She was born here and she wanted to be buried here. I promised her on her deathbed she’d have a funeral in a church with flowers. And the sun streamin’ through a pretty window on her coffin. And a hearse with plumes and some hacks. And a preacher to read the Bible. And folks there in church to pray for her soul.”
—Laurence Stallings (1804–1968)