| Opportunity Lost |
October
2002 |
Nuremburg: The Reckoning by William F. Buckley,
Jr.
The setting has great promise -- The Nuremburg War Crimes
Trials. The characters include the best and worst of humanity. The themes are as
philosophical as they come: good and evil, law versus justice, defiance and
repentance. The author is one of America's finest minds. So, why does this book
disappoint and annoy?
To write a book about a young translator thrust by
chance into the real Trial of the Century (not O.J.'s charade), should have
given Buckley grist for his ever working mill. The ability to hold Socratic
dialogues using Speer, Goering, Hess and the gang as foils should have proved
irresistable.
Somehow the intellectual grandfather of the American right
resisted. We are given a pedestrian treatment of a small tale set in a unique
place and time. Every opportunity to launch into a grand exercise in literature
as philosophy and vice versa is missed. And so, we have 360 pages that leave us
angry that the time invested in reading it could have been put to better use.
Watching "Judgment at Nuremburg" comes to mind.
How refreshing to see a
man who has achieved so much with his pen fail at decent novel writing.
Order
Nuremberg: The Reckoning.