William F. Buckley Jr.'s idiosyncratic journal of two weeks in his life — a model of the literary personal essay as self-portrait, blending commentary, anecdote, and confession.
Buckley's style as cultural artifact: Overdrive captures the particular mode of patrician American intellectual life in the 1980s — the yacht, the limousine, the harpsichord, the relentless work ethic, the controversies. Less a conventional autobiography than a performance of a persona. Demonstrates how a strong personal style can make the mundane details of a single fortnight worth reading.
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