A Convert to the Write Stuff

By Jamie Murphy

Conservative Pundit William F. Buckley Jr. has long had an unbridled passion for writing machines. He once mailed an unsolicited testimonial to the president of Smith-Corona, praising the company's $170 portable as "the most wonderful electric typewriter" he had ever used. Now the syndicated columnist, author of 24 books and editor of the National Review, has found a new object for his techno-literary affections. Buckley has shifted his allegiance to word processors, demonstrating his loyalty by accumulating eight of the machines and scattering them among his offices in New York City, Connecticut and Rougemont, Switzerland. "I don't compose anything on a typewriter if I can help it," says the irrepressible author. "Now I do all my editing on the screen."

One obvious reason for Buckley's conversion is speed. "Writing on the word processor takes less time," he declares. So much less, in fact, that even his professional friends are impressed. "It takes Bill 20 minutes to write a column," says Peter McWilliams, an acquaintance and the author of several best-selling, how-to computer books (The Word Processing Book, The Personal Computer Book). "Word processors were really made for him."

Buckley provided evidence of that earlier this year while vacationing aboard a yacht off the Pacific island of Bora-Bora. With the help of an Epson PX-8 lap-size machine, he fired off a 7,500-word draft of a children's book in two hours, a feat that can be compared with writing a college term paper during lunch break and getting it published. The Temptation of Wilfred Malachey (Workman, $10.95) is a morality tale for children from eight to 13, in which a demonical IBM 4341 mainframe teaches a New England prep-school student that computing can be more profitable than petty theft. Says Buckley, referring obliquely to an ancient Roman philosophy of virtue: "There is a tug in the story toward right reason." The book shows no sign of having been tossed off in half an afternoon. "I think it's a lot of twaddle that using a word processor affects the quality of writing for the worse," says the author, who claims a touch-typing speed of 110 words per minute on the computer keyboard.

Buckley's microelectronic baptism took place late in the winter of 1982 while he was visiting the Baltimore home of Critic Hugh Kenner. There, Kenner introduced him to a vintage Heathkit/ Zenith model Z-89 computer. The next month Buckley purchased his first system: a secondhand Z-89 with a Diablo printer and a copy of the pioneering Pie word processing program. Buckley took the gear along on his annual winter pilgrimage to Switzerland where, guided by 16 pages of instructions prepared by Kenner, he turned out in only five weeks his 20th book, Overdrive (Doubleday, $16.95).

Buckley has since abandoned the Heathkit. Aside from the seagoing Epson, he has four Kaypro portables, two IBM PCs (an AT and an XT), and a TeleVideo terminal. The IBM AT, which he keeps at his home in Connecticut, is able to store an entire novel in its customized internal memory. All the computers run the best-selling WordStar program. "I'm told there are better programs," says Buckley. "But I'm also told there are better alphabets." Despite owning all this equipment, he has never played a computer game, tapped into a data base or run numbers through an electronic accounting program, and has only just learned how to use software to organize his list of telephone numbers alphabetically.

Like many other computer converts, Buckley has drawn a number of his friends into the fold, and the roster of his recruits reads like a literary Who's Who. He bought one of the first editions of McWilliams' The Word Processing Book and dispatched copies to Television News Commentator John Chancellor and former New York Times Editor Harrison Salisbury. He advised Editor Sophie Wilkins to purchase a Heath for her work as a translator. He regularly corresponds with an elite user group, which includes New York Times Book Reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt and Pulitzer-Prizewinning Author David Halberstam. But Buckley tries hard not to sound over-zealous. Unlike his friend Halberstam, whom he once described as "impossibly evangelistic," Buckley takes great pains not to be 100% boring on the subject of computers. "I'm about 75% boring," he estimates. Nonetheless, when he is home for dinner with Wife Pat and Son Christopher, 33, talk frequently turns to smart keys and modems. Says Buckley: "My wife has asked me if, some time before she dies, we couldn't have a meal where the topic of conversation is not computers." --By Jamie Murphy