The most interesting people in real life are people about whom you could say, ‘He’s something out of a novel.’ ” “Because Scalia is something out of a novel himself. And by the time I got to Silvio, I was just thinking, ‘Maybe let’s just borrow him,’ ” Buckley says. “I actually had to sit down with a legal pad and devise names for. Dexter “Hang ‘Em High” Mitchell bears an intentional resemblance to a certain Delaware senator now running for vice president.Īnother character, Justice Silvio Santamaria, is clearly based on the pugnacious character of Antonin Scalia. With her bespectacled “naughty librarian” look, Pepper Cartwright anticipates Sarah Palin. Yet Buckley is struck by the ways in which life has also imitated his art. And the book features a contested presidential election put in the court’s hands to decide. He offers a tongue-in-cheek take on “Borking,” recounting how a Supreme Court nominee is disqualified because he gave the film version of “To Kill a Mockingbird” a lukewarm review - in grade school. Like Buckley’s other send-ups of the proud, the pompous and the politically clueless, it is a laugh-a-page lampoon that makes the Supremes seem anything but dull.Īs is usually the case in Buckley’s political satire, art imitates life. Pepper Cartwright, a feisty Texan, is nominated by a president who doesn’t care about re-election (his slogan: “More of the Same”) and is ticked off by the rejection of his earlier nominees. I’m not that guy.”īut Buckley eventually located the path for “Supreme Courtship” (published by Warner Twelve), developing the tale of a sexy TV judge tapped to fill a vacancy on the high court. A better novelist could make a novel out of Brown v. The court, he jokes, “is both monumental and dry, except at certain convulsive moments. “And I thought about it and thought about it, but I couldn’t find a way in.” “He said, ‘I want you to do the Supreme Court.’ And my first reaction was, ‘Uhhhhh,’ ” says Buckley, his palms up in a gesture of puzzlement. But when his longtime editor, Jonathan Karp, suggested he tackle the judiciary branch, Buckley struggled to find his funny bone. In past books, Christopher Buckley has made humorous hash of Washington institutions from the presidency on down. In “Supreme Courtship,” art imitates life - and vice versa.
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