Wm F. Rickenbacker, RIP - editor, pianist - Obituary

National Review, April 17, 1995 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

HE FIRST surfaced for us at NATIONAL REVIEW when he challenged the government of the United States. The Census Bureau had gone to work collecting its data in 1960, and Bill Rickenbacker received what they called the Long Form, designed to elicit detailed information, the better to complete the decennial inquiry into how many Americans were living where, earning what, doing what, living how. Bill looked at the form, put it in his wastebasket, and addressed one of his inimitable letters to the secretary of commerce, whom he addressed as Dear Snoopchief, denouncing the long form as an invasion of his privacy. C. Dickerman Williams, NATIONAL REVIEW's distinguished lawyer, undertook his defense. He lost, was fined $100 and, put on one day's probation: and at the end of the succeeding decade, tasted finally the fruit of his struggle when the Commerce Department announced that the long form would be completed only by those U.S. citizens who wished to complete it.

Rickenbacker came then to NATIONAL REVIEW as a senior editor, and life was wonderful in his company. He retreated after eight years or so, went into business for himself, wrote eight books, and continued his studies of music, of languages, and of the canon of Western thought.

But he never lost touch with us, and in 1991, with Linda Bridges, he published the book The Art of Persuasion. A few years ago, responding to a rebuke for his failure to visit New York more often, he wrote me, ``I too wish I could move around a bit more, but I seem to have simplified my life a good deal in recent years. Three or four hours a day at the old piano will nail a fellow down good and hard. But I have dreams, dreams in full color, not to mention aroma, of lunch at Paone's [the reference is to the restaurant around the corner, heavily patronized by NATIONAL REVIEW], which, by the way, why doesn't somebody burn it down and rebuild it up here in God's country?'' The formulation of that last sentence is an inside joke, dating back to the opening sentence of an editorial written by the late Willmoore Kendall. It began, ``Last week at Harriman House, which by the way why doesn't somebody burn it down . . .'' There was some concern not over the sentiments expressed, but over the diction used, until Bill relieved us by declaring that Kendall had used an anacoluthon, defined as ``an abrupt change within a sentence to a second construction inconsistent with the first, sometimes used for rhetorical effect; for example, I warned him that if he continues to drink, what will become of him.''

Bill, in his letter, went on about his schedule. ``Now I'm moving steadily through the 15 volumes of the collected utterance and effusions of Edmund Burke, and the more I see of him the less I trust him. He keeps reminding me of Everett Dirksen -- not that Dirksen ever reminded me of Burke.''

Bill was a professionally qualified pianist. ``I've recorded,'' he wrote me, ``to my satisfaction, four short pieces of our great teacher, the Bach of Bachs. Schubert comes next, and then a dollop of Chopin. I find this project far more difficult than it was 25 years ago. Two trends have been in play: my standards have risen, and my physical capacity has fallen. When I piled up my airplane and broke a dozen bones including my right wrist, I didn't advance the cause; my right hand, if I don't pay good attention, is still in danger of being shouted down by the unruly Bolshevik in my left -- a faction that gathered its preternatural strength during ten years of intensive club-gripping on the golf course.'' He had been captain of the golf team at Harvard. And, like his father, Captain Eddie, he flew, until glaucoma stopped him.

His curiosity was boundless. ``Did you see my Unamuno in the current Modern Age?'' The reference was to an essay he had just published. ``Next comes Ortega y Gasset. I've read 21 volumes of his and am now organizing my notes. I'll probably have sixty pages of notes in preparation for an eight-page piece. I don't think the name for that is scholarship; more like idle dithering.''

It seemed endless, his curiosity. ``I've been studying Hebrew very hard and loving it all the way. A wonderful language. Since college days I've wanted to read the Psalms in Hebrew; now I shall.''

He was not altogether a recluse. A couple of years ago he consented to address my brother Reid's public-speaking school in South Carolina. Reid asked how he should introduce Bill's speech. He sent me a copy of Bill's suggested titles:

-- How I Spent My Summer

-- What the North Wind Said

-- Counselor Said I Couldn't Eat Dinner Till I Wrote Home

-- Why I Hate My Sis

-- Legalization of Crime: Pros & Cons

-- Was Mozart Queer?

-- The Bartender's Guide to the Upstairs Maid

-- Merde! Golfing Decorum in Postwar France

-- Are Lasers Protected under the Fourth Amendment?

-- Public Speaking Minus One: A Tape Cassette of Wild but

Intermittent Applause, with Stretches of Silence to Be Filled

with Remarks by the Apprentice Orator

-- Sexual Repression in Emily Dickinson's Punctuation