I recently completed the Blackford Oakes novels by William F. Buckley, Jr. and wanted to commemorate the occasion with my usual overview-and-rankings sort of post.
This is intended more for those readers who’ve no familiarity with the series rather than the seasoned Oakes reader and as such will be mostly spoiler-free. Happy to hear from any who’ve read the books, of course – seasoned or not.
Who is Blackford Oakes? He’s referred to as a super-spy in several places. This is perhaps misleading. Sure he’s super as in superior in most categories to most men, and he’s super at his job. But super-spy conjures up certain fantastic elements that are not at all a part of things here. While not mirthless meditations on good and evil, there’s little of Moonraker or boat-cars in the Oakes books. (Although at least one of Oakes’s adventures does seem to be channeling Fleming’s Moonraker a bit, if not the movie.) Perhaps a better way to put it is that Oakes is indeed a super-spy, but these books are not of the “super spy” genre. The villains are (for the most part) real people, and (likewise) all the situations really happened. Not the actual plots, mind you, but the situations that give rise to them.
Certainly the character’s background is extraordinary. Born to wealth and aviation royalty (his father’s best friend is Charles Lindbergh), startlingly handsome, English public school (at least briefly), decorated WW2 pilot, Yale class of 1951), etc. This tracks for the backgrounds of most real-world CIA recruits in the years after the war, something the Soviets were able to use to their advantage. As someone says in one of these books, it was a lot easier for the Soviets to get intel on the West (by, say, writing Yale and having the yearbook of each graduating class delivered to anywhere in the world) than it was for western agents to get anything out of Russia.
In addition to being a fellow Yalie of extraordinary background, Buckley was a CIA agent himself. Only for nine months and certainly not at the Blackford Oakes level. (To distinguish their two careers further, Buckley quipped he made his protagonist irresistible to women.) He was moved to write the books by an offhand suggestion suggestion from his publisher and as a reaction to then (as in now) trends in media concerning this agency:
Blackford Oakes shares the same view, although it is his friend Anthony Trust who is the real anti-communist crusader. Oakes is more of a realist:
This is not to say the books are literary agitprop or propaganda for propaganda’s sake. I agree with David Beilstein: " A story anchored on propaganda — being didactic — is antithetical to the soil upon which good storytelling germinates. (…) These books are not tools to give conservative readers their own propaganda … these novels do not ignore the reality of a complex, divergent world of the repercussions of a human condition mired in sin and misery. Consequently, Buckley’s Oakes novels are revelations rooted in the culture and organic nature of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War."
I think that’ll do for background, won’t it? Like I mentioned, it’s tough to find comprehensive info on Oakes out there. In addition to the usual googling and Goodsread-ing, I utilized both the forum and archives of the magazine he founded (National Review) but couldn’t find the answers to some of my questions. We’ll deal with the biggest mystery of them all in the first book we’re going to look at. (It is also the only book of the below that is NOT spoiler-free. There’s no other way to discuss this one, trust me.)
Let’s run the Oakes books through the Dog Star Omnibus Least-to-Most-ifier and see what happens!
This is an outlier to the series. From a narrative POV, Oakes is very passive here; everything more or less happens to him rather than the character driving any events. Which is fair, but it doesn’t make for the most exciting finish to the series. Even the very end is an orchestrated move by the antagonist, it seems to me, more than the agency of the protagonist. (Things that matter only to English majors. And probably only ten percent of them.) Another oddity is how the same plot motif (Reagan sends Oakes to the USSR to stop an assassination plot on Gorbachev) from A Very Private Plot is used. This conspicuous repetition may be a clue; I’ll get to that. The best part of it is the very ending, particularly the last couple of lines, which moved me despite not really being happy about everything leading up to it.
Perhaps what happened is that the author read the memoir of Philby’s wife (as he mentions in the afterword) along with a couple of other post-Cold War Soviet books and thought “I know – I’ll have (here comes the spoiler) Oakes kill Kim Philby! Why didn’t I think of that before?” Philby is indeed an appropriate nemesis/ shadowy reflection of Blackford Oakes (even if he is occasionally camp villainy in LCFBO), and, had this been how A Very Private Plot ended, well then: that might have worked, sure. But it wasn’t. That also makes the ending of Last Call rather impossible, doesn’t it? Oakes is killed (or at least that’s what we’re led to believe) shooting Philby, in 1988 or 1989, whatever it is. But he’s alive in 1995 – as is Sally, whose death in LCFBO allows his whole romance angle with the Russian urologist – what?
Is this a what-if/ alternate timeline? There’s some precedent to the idea, as the series (in Saving the Queen) starts with a clearly fictitious Queen of England. So, we’re already IN an alternate universe to begin with. Another thing the author mentions in his afterward is how his long-time first-draft-readers were now deceased. Perhaps they would have caught any of these errors, if they are indeed errors, or suggested Buckley be clearer in his intentions.
It’d be nice if someone would set the record straight on this. It seems inconceivable that such a meticulous mind as Buckley’s would forget such details, but it seems equally unlikely such a thing would have happened (affixing a what-if coda to the series) without telling someone about it.
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| The author with canine companion, Cavalier. |
This is intended more for those readers who’ve no familiarity with the series rather than the seasoned Oakes reader and as such will be mostly spoiler-free. Happy to hear from any who’ve read the books, of course – seasoned or not.
Who is Blackford Oakes? He’s referred to as a super-spy in several places. This is perhaps misleading. Sure he’s super as in superior in most categories to most men, and he’s super at his job. But super-spy conjures up certain fantastic elements that are not at all a part of things here. While not mirthless meditations on good and evil, there’s little of Moonraker or boat-cars in the Oakes books. (Although at least one of Oakes’s adventures does seem to be channeling Fleming’s Moonraker a bit, if not the movie.) Perhaps a better way to put it is that Oakes is indeed a super-spy, but these books are not of the “super spy” genre. The villains are (for the most part) real people, and (likewise) all the situations really happened. Not the actual plots, mind you, but the situations that give rise to them.
Certainly the character’s background is extraordinary. Born to wealth and aviation royalty (his father’s best friend is Charles Lindbergh), startlingly handsome, English public school (at least briefly), decorated WW2 pilot, Yale class of 1951), etc. This tracks for the backgrounds of most real-world CIA recruits in the years after the war, something the Soviets were able to use to their advantage. As someone says in one of these books, it was a lot easier for the Soviets to get intel on the West (by, say, writing Yale and having the yearbook of each graduating class delivered to anywhere in the world) than it was for western agents to get anything out of Russia.
In addition to being a fellow Yalie of extraordinary background, Buckley was a CIA agent himself. Only for nine months and certainly not at the Blackford Oakes level. (To distinguish their two careers further, Buckley quipped he made his protagonist irresistible to women.) He was moved to write the books by an offhand suggestion suggestion from his publisher and as a reaction to then (as in now) trends in media concerning this agency:
“The point I sought to make and continued to do so in subsequent novels is that the CIA, whatever its failures, sought, during those long years in the struggle for the world, to advance the honorable alternative. When I wrote it wasn’t only Robert Redford who was however obliquely traducing the work of our central intelligence agency (by starring) in a movie the point of which was that the CIA is a corrupt and bloody-minded secret instrument of an amoral government, and that it routinely embarks on stratagems that beggar moral justification. Many others making similar points in every branch of the media: in novels of the recent past (Graham Greene, John Le Carre, Len Deighton) The point, really, wasn't that there really wasn’t much to choose from in a contest between the KGB and the CIA. Both organizations, it was fashionable to believe, were defined by their practices. I said to Johnny Carson when on his program he raised this question to say the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes the old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the way of a hurtling bus, on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing an old lady around.”
Blackford Oakes shares the same view, although it is his friend Anthony Trust who is the real anti-communist crusader. Oakes is more of a realist:
“Black felt himself curiously affected by the invisible network being managed at one end by Josef Stalin, the principal agent - now that Hitler was gone - of human misery; and at the other end, by Washington DC, a network of its own, protective of human freedoms in design, but, also, necessarily engaged in the same kind of business: lying, stealing, intimidating, blackmailing, intercepting. Quod licet Jovi: That which is permitted for Jove to do is not necessarily permitted for a cow to do. We might in secure conscience lie and steal in order to secure the escape of human beings from misery or death; Stalin had no right to lie and steal in order to bring misery and death to others. Yet, viewed without paradigmatic moral coordinates, simpletons would say simply 'Both sides lied and cheated - a plague on both their houses.'"
This is not to say the books are literary agitprop or propaganda for propaganda’s sake. I agree with David Beilstein: " A story anchored on propaganda — being didactic — is antithetical to the soil upon which good storytelling germinates. (…) These books are not tools to give conservative readers their own propaganda … these novels do not ignore the reality of a complex, divergent world of the repercussions of a human condition mired in sin and misery. Consequently, Buckley’s Oakes novels are revelations rooted in the culture and organic nature of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War."
I think that’ll do for background, won’t it? Like I mentioned, it’s tough to find comprehensive info on Oakes out there. In addition to the usual googling and Goodsread-ing, I utilized both the forum and archives of the magazine he founded (National Review) but couldn’t find the answers to some of my questions. We’ll deal with the biggest mystery of them all in the first book we’re going to look at. (It is also the only book of the below that is NOT spoiler-free. There’s no other way to discuss this one, trust me.)
Let’s run the Oakes books through the Dog Star Omnibus Least-to-Most-ifier and see what happens!
11.
 |
| (2005) |
On a special mission to Moscow in the dying days of the Cold War to safeguard Mikhail Gorbachev, Oakes poses as book publisher Henry Doubleday. (Except when he’s referred to – as he is in several places – as “Harry.” Is that a common nickname for Henry? I’ve never heard it if so, but maybe so.) While in the Soviet capitol he meets and falls in love with a Russian urologist and crosses paths with Kim Philby, once the head of UK anti-Soviet operations but in actuality an agent of the Kremlin, long since defected to the USSR. Though his mission is successful, tragedy strikes, leading to a showdown between Oakes and the infamous English turncoat.
“He walked, unmolested, through empty streets in that fabled city from whose fortress terrible despots had done so much to hurt so many.”
This is an outlier to the series. From a narrative POV, Oakes is very passive here; everything more or less happens to him rather than the character driving any events. Which is fair, but it doesn’t make for the most exciting finish to the series. Even the very end is an orchestrated move by the antagonist, it seems to me, more than the agency of the protagonist. (Things that matter only to English majors. And probably only ten percent of them.) Another oddity is how the same plot motif (Reagan sends Oakes to the USSR to stop an assassination plot on Gorbachev) from A Very Private Plot is used. This conspicuous repetition may be a clue; I’ll get to that. The best part of it is the very ending, particularly the last couple of lines, which moved me despite not really being happy about everything leading up to it.
Perhaps what happened is that the author read the memoir of Philby’s wife (as he mentions in the afterword) along with a couple of other post-Cold War Soviet books and thought “I know – I’ll have (here comes the spoiler) Oakes kill Kim Philby! Why didn’t I think of that before?” Philby is indeed an appropriate nemesis/ shadowy reflection of Blackford Oakes (even if he is occasionally camp villainy in LCFBO), and, had this been how A Very Private Plot ended, well then: that might have worked, sure. But it wasn’t. That also makes the ending of Last Call rather impossible, doesn’t it? Oakes is killed (or at least that’s what we’re led to believe) shooting Philby, in 1988 or 1989, whatever it is. But he’s alive in 1995 – as is Sally, whose death in LCFBO allows his whole romance angle with the Russian urologist – what?
Is this a what-if/ alternate timeline? There’s some precedent to the idea, as the series (in Saving the Queen) starts with a clearly fictitious Queen of England. So, we’re already IN an alternate universe to begin with. Another thing the author mentions in his afterward is how his long-time first-draft-readers were now deceased. Perhaps they would have caught any of these errors, if they are indeed errors, or suggested Buckley be clearer in his intentions.
It’d be nice if someone would set the record straight on this. It seems inconceivable that such a meticulous mind as Buckley’s would forget such details, but it seems equally unlikely such a thing would have happened (affixing a what-if coda to the series) without telling someone about it.
10.
 |
| (1987) |
The year is 1963, and Fidel Castro and John Kennedy are plotting against one another. Castro seeks revenge for his humiliation during the missile crisis, and Kennedy approves a plot to assassinate the Cuban tyrant. When the CIA’s ace agent Blackford Oakes is called upon to carry out the agency’s plan, he discovers he himself is a pawn in a counterplan that calls for his own demise and could lead the death of millions of people. The result is a tale that roams from Miami’s Cuban quarter to Castro’s inner sanctum and features betrayal by friends and lovers alike.
Another one that revisits ground already trod in the series and I suspect for a similar reason (i.e. the author read something, in this case The Riddle of AMLASH by George Crille III) and thought oh, that would've worked well for the book I just wrote; why not write it again? Not necessarily a dealbreaker. But if the puzzling incongruities in the above didn’t exist, this would be my least favorite, mainly because even though parts of it really hum along – such as some of the Cuban/Soviet intrigue (how little things can have dire consequences in totalitarian systems is a design feature of the whole series) and the big twist involving Sally – much of it is simply too contrived, particularly in the third act. We’re back to spoiler-free, here, so I’ll say no more.
Speaking of Sally, let me get this out of the way: I think Buckley should have re-thought this character, or at least her being a part of every book in the series. For too much of the series she’s just the long-suffering always-a-bridesmaid in the background, while Blackford is hardly monogamous. When that changes, it get s more interesting, but it’s a bit late in the game. Again: not a dealbreaker, but I got a little bored with the character and their relationship (and the constant allusions to Jane Austen.)
9.
 |
| (1979) |
It is the year 1952. With the Cold War raging, Blackford is sent to Germany. Ostensibly there to help restore the thirteenth-century chapel at the Palace of St. Anselm, his real mission is to penetrate a movement begun by the owner of the chapel, Count Alex Wintergrin, who is spearheading a campaign for a unified fatherland, an idea that creates panic on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Oakes must either betray a friend or find a way to change the rules in a high-stakes battle of wills between the CIA and the KGB.
"What do you believe in?"
"I believe in the life of the mind, and in human fancy, and in the everlasting struggle against vulgarity."
"What do you mean you believe in the 'struggle against vulgarity'? Does that mean you believe that the struggle is going to happen, or does that mean that you believe that the struggle is worth winning?"
"It is obviously worth winning. But it will never be won. That is why I qualify it by calling it an everlasting struggle."
"The Communists believe more than you do."
"That is certainly correct. So do African witch doctors."
This one started off very interesting for me and then kind of plateau’d. The title suggests a central theme of something beautiful that once served a whole different social order, being restored, while also the double entendre of "stained" glass/class. But once it got into the Wintergren campaign stuff and beyond, I found my attention wandering. It won the National Book Award the year it came out, which probably means there's a lot going on under the surface here that a second read will bring out.
At several times in the series, Buckley indulges in some self-parody, usually through the mouth of some character or another. Here he has one of Wintergren’s dinner guests deliver an imitation of a German writer appearing on television at the time, who was widely known, and widely caricatured, "because of his depressing ubiquity.” (Buckley was the host of Firing Line, a frequent guest on other's shows, a syndicated columnist, a magazine publisher, and a fiction novelist: there was a period of time in America life when he was inescapable.)
“’The court's decision in favor of Count Wintergrin,' said Himmelfarb, imitating the tired, tiresome archness of Razzia and his euphemistic style, 'is a tergiversation for the German people...'” When you read enough Buckley, you’ll see he has certain vocab go-tos; tergiversation is one of them. (Demisemiquaver is another. Blogger is even telling me these words don't exist. Go read some Buckley, Blogger!)
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| Heck, he was even parodied (briefly) in Aladdin. How many people got this reference in 1992? I sure didn't, but I love that it happened. |
“’The court's decision in favor of Count Wintergrin,' said Himmelfarb, imitating the tired, tiresome archness of Razzia and his euphemistic style, 'is a tergiversation for the German people...'” When you read enough Buckley, you’ll see he has certain vocab go-tos; tergiversation is one of them. (Demisemiquaver is another. Blogger is even telling me these words don't exist. Go read some Buckley, Blogger!)
At novel’s end, there is an exchange between Dulles (CIA head) and Oakes, which touches on one of the central themes of the series. When Oakes – disgusted with how things went in Germany – confronts Dulles about the dubious morality of their actions, he gets this dressing down from his superior officer: “To this question of ‘did we do the right thing, the question you ask I do not admit. (In this world) if you let them, the ambiguists will kill you (…) And I hope you will understand, because if you do, it will be easier for you; if you do not, you are still too inexperienced to discuss these matters with me."
8.
 |
| (1994) |
The year is 1995, and an ambitious US Senator wants to weaken the power of the CIA, perhaps to the point of its elimination. To accomplish his goal, he tries to enlist Blackford Oakes – now retired – into his cause by forcing him to testify before a senate committee about CIA covert activities in 1985-1986. The senator demands to know the secret of "Cyclops", a covert operation President Reagan authorized to prevent the assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev. Oakes tells him to pound sand though later he feels bad about it. (“It left me feeling sanctimonious, and I try to avoid that. Maybe you’ve noticed. I hope so.”)
This one drags in spots, but parts of it are great. I was curious how Buckley would handle the Reagan years. Of all the Presidents who appear in these books, Reagan was the one with whom the author was personal friends.
Most of the things I liked about it - including the relatively feel-good ending, and the appearance of an old frenemy - are kinda spoilery, so I'll leave it be. I enjoyed it, though. Buckley's put downs crack me up, such as when he refers to a department chairman as “a bloated, baby-faced zealot given to intellectual pettifroggery” and “a corpulent visual mess.”
7.
 |
| (1990) |
The year is 1964. Lyndon Baines Johnson and Barry Goldwater are vying for the presidency, and Oakes has been sent to South Vietnam to halt its infiltration by men and materiel coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Working out of Saigon with Tucker Montana, who designs a brilliant system for breaking the North’s supply route, Oakes is caught up in the ambiguity and confusion generated as America’s involvement in the conflict escalates. As Tucker’s murky past, his torrid romance with the seductive Lao Dai, and the growing menace of global war come into focus, both men find their loyalty called into question.
“The whole purpose of the Geneva Accords was to end the war in South Vietnam. But after they were signed, the North Vietnamese, a party to the agreement, withdrew exactly forty men. The South Vietnamese pulled out nine thousand. Everything is proceeding exactly as before, but with greater intensity, through Laotian territory. Laos is supposed to be neutral – never mind that it isn’t.”
Vietnam fascinates me. It's such an intersection of dramatic elements and contradictions: intense individual achievements and heroism against a backdrop of systemic dysfunction and tragedy. I figured I'd love this one, but mostly the aspects of it I found enjoyable were the historical considerations, not the dramatic ones. This takes place in that window of time where it was thought irrefutable that they could simply seal off the South from the North and the problem would take care of itself. Was it the will of the North to penetrate the South or the will of the VC to persevere that was underestimated? Is it an anti-communist affair or an anti-colonial struggle? By the book’s end, BO and even Rufus can't say for sure, but they know it will prove a fatal mistake for both the US and the South Vietnamese.
Crikey, I haven't mentioned Rufus yet, have I? He's Blackford's mentor and a CIA asset, though never a director. The man whose word everyone from Oakes to Eisenhower to the KGB takes very seriously.
Tucker’s story just didn’t grab me, mainly, so its resolution (spoiler free) didn’t do much but annoy me. (And rob a little agency of the North Vietnamese, who certainly evaded the sophisticated attempts to stop them on the Trail without any American's help. To my knowledge, anyway.) The problem of Vietnam is stated pretty well here, though:
“When a country declares war it is expected to use its maximum resources to win that war. We can’t use the bomb in Vietnam – we all grant that. But the general fear of the bomb extends to a failure to use the next echelon of modern weaponry. Hanoi and Haiphong would cease to exist if we were to drop half the bombs that we’re prepared to drop on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So we go with with a third echelon – supplies, training, intelligent: support systems, essentially, while the enemy’s use of the third echelon is decisive. Contingently decisive: the NVA are prepared to kill and to torture the entire South Vietnamese clerical class, the whole intellectual, educational, political, and religious infrastructure: that is what the Viet Cong are doing right now, in the countryside. How much of that, backed up by conventional North Vietnamese military, will they need to do before winning?”
~
Next Time: the Top 6
