Nuremberg: The Reckoning

Rating:
Summary: Buckley makes a good Judgment of Nuremberg!
Review: William Buckley has made his living with words (is there anyone alive with a greater vocabulary?). Some of his scholarly works are, indeed, scholarly and rest on their own merits.

With his fiction, however, he takes the famous Buckley I'm-an-Ivy-Leaguer-and-you-are-not approach. Even his Blackie Oakes adventures have that tongue-in-cheek appearance. It's almost as if he condescends to the rest of us mortals when he publishes his fiction.

That said, however, it is rather difficult to dismiss his attempts at "common fiction" in "Nuremberg: A Reckoning." Told, basically, from the point of view of Sebastian Rheinhardt, whom we meet as a 13-year-old in l939 about to be spirited away to the safety of America in a time when critical signs were showing the imminent Nazi stranglehold on Europe, the book looks at the war from different perspectives, least of all a German-emigre part Jewish. Sebastian and his mother are permitted to leave The Fatherland, but his father is not. What happens from this point on is a critical issue in the plot development. "Nuremberg: A Reckoning" perhaps should read "the Reckonings," as Buckley uses wide-vision here.

Taking this setting--and particularly the Nuremberg trials--is a daunting task; indeed, not one to be taken lightly. And Buckley doesn't take it lightly. Knowing full well that Nuremburg (and the Nazis) have been written by so many and in so many ways, Buckley sets about to present his take on this entire picture. It's his personal spin on the subject and via the fiction genre.
His scholarly background shows through in the sensitivities he portrays, in the description of the landscape (such as it is in 1945) and atmosphere in the immediate aftermaths of the war. And he certainly reflects what Nuremberg was like in l945 and of the frustration of the entire trial. Buckley in his inimical style is at times bitchy and poignant. Never one to suffer fools lightly, he doesn't here, feeding us tidbits of titillating information about various judges trying the case. Too, it's clear that his personal animosity towards things Soviet shows up here, but perhaps justifiably so, as history seems to have revealed.

Young Sebastian, however, finds himself in the sort of dilemma that Stephan Crane presented in "Red Badge of Courage," although Sebby is not in a conflict within himself over his courage. One can see the reflection of Buckley in Sebastian (examples of sharp wit and energetic thought processes), yet the narrative and plot development don't become author self-centered. Buckley's attitude is that you can accept or not, but the story's still there. C'est tout, c'est fini.

Buckley's "take" on various segments of our society (his society) is more than just "interesting" (his "Elvis in the Morning" illustrates this perfectly!). Buckley seems to feel that he has a right (and he does) to make commentary (fictional or otherwise) on any subject. His talents are well known.

In "Nuremberg" he spares us from much of the customary horrors of any work relating to the Holocaust, as terrifying and unacceptable as it was. Still, that said, this work holds up well and to those who really know Nuremberg in the post war years, he's done a credible job. ...

Rating:
Summary: Buckley makes a good Judgment of Nuremberg!
Review: William Buckley has made his living with words (is there anyone alive with a greater vocabulary?). Some of his scholarly works are, indeed, scholarly and rest on their own merits.

With his fiction, however, he takes the famous Buckley I'm-an-Ivy-Leaguer-and-you-are-not approach. Even his Blackie Oakes adventures have that tongue-in-cheek appearance. It's almost as if he condescends to the rest of us mortals when he publishes his fiction.

That said, however, it is rather difficult to dismiss his attempts at "common fiction" in "Nuremberg: A Reckoning." Told, basically, from the point of view of Sebastian Rheinhardt, whom we meet as a 13-year-old in l939 about to be spirited away to the safety of America in a time when critical signs were showing the imminent Nazi stranglehold on Europe, the book looks at the war from different perspectives, least of all a German-emigre part Jewish. Sebastian and his mother are permitted to leave The Fatherland, but his father is not. What happens from this point on is a critical issue in the plot development. "Nuremberg: A Reckoning" perhaps should read "the Reckonings," as Buckley uses wide-vision here.

Taking this setting--and particularly the Nuremberg trials--is a daunting task; indeed, not one to be taken lightly. And Buckley doesn't take it lightly. Knowing full well that Nuremburg (and the Nazis) have been written by so many and in so many ways, Buckley sets about to present his take on this entire picture. It's his personal spin on the subject and via the fiction genre.
His scholarly background shows through in the sensitivities he portrays, in the description of the landscape (such as it is in 1945) and atmosphere in the immediate aftermaths of the war. And he certainly reflects what Nuremberg was like in l945 and of the frustration of the entire trial. Buckley in his inimical style is at times bitchy and poignant. Never one to suffer fools lightly, he doesn't here, feeding us tidbits of titillating information about various judges trying the case. Too, it's clear that his personal animosity towards things Soviet shows up here, but perhaps justifiably so, as history seems to have revealed.

Young Sebastian, however, finds himself in the sort of dilemma that Stephan Crane presented in "Red Badge of Courage," although Sebby is not in a conflict within himself over his courage. One can see the reflection of Buckley in Sebastian (examples of sharp wit and energetic thought processes), yet the narrative and plot development don't become author self-centered. Buckley's attitude is that you can accept or not, but the story's still there. C'est tout, c'est fini.

Buckley's "take" on various segments of our society (his society) is more than just "interesting" (his "Elvis in the Morning" illustrates this perfectly!). Buckley seems to feel that he has a right (and he does) to make commentary (fictional or otherwise) on any subject. His talents are well known.

In "Nuremberg" he spares us from much of the customary horrors of any work relating to the Holocaust, as terrifying and unacceptable as it was. Still, that said, this work holds up well and to those who really know Nuremberg in the post war years, he's done a credible job. ...