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Supreme Courtship
by Christopher Buckley
A President has the right to nominate anyone . . . but just anyone?
Christopher Buckley: Reading his books, it feels like the reader is in on a joke with Buckley, while the rest of Washington is on the outside. His political satires/comedies sometimes (if not always) are based on real-life characters, who he morphs into the caricature we so love . . . or is it the other way around?
This time around, the person skewered most pointedly in Supreme Courtship is Joe Biden, Senator from Connecticut. A book with many funny moments, the best moments occur when Senator Dexter Mitchell is self-aggrandizing or turning the worst situations around, to his benefit. It's hard not to see the parallels; both men are long-standing senators from Connecticut who commute back and forth on the train, both were heads of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both have been known to . . . change facts . . . and both clearly like themselves quite a bit.
Interestingly, Mitchell still manages to steal the show, and perhaps rightly so. Author Christopher Buckley may paint him as many things, but charismatic he is. The story begins when a popular, attractive television judge, who also happens to be a sassy Texan, is offered a seat on the Supreme Court. Judge Pepper Cartwright, the star of Courtroom Six is flabbergasted, but eventually agrees to go along with it. Along the way, she has to deal with remembering who she is, amidst the confusion and honor of the Supreme Court and its either other Justices.
Reading your first Christopher Buckley book is like the first time you go to a special new restaurant: Everything is exotic, new wonderful, and you feel that you could go back forever, that it will never get old. For me, that was Florence of Arabia, quickly followed by No Way to Treat a First Lady. As one reads his books, however, a similar pattern emerges, of the same archetypes, the same women, and the same love interests. His ideas can be fresh, but only when he is original Buckley. In his latest outing, Supreme Courtship, he falls prey to popular notions at times, forgetting that his following is of independent-minded thinkers who like his skewering of Washington, of being in on the jokes, not winking at Washingtonians and laughing *with* them. Better luck next time, Christopher.
Title: Supreme Courtship
Author: Christopher Buckley
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 0446579823
Review written by: Susie Kopecky
Reviewer's Rating:7.5
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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