Wry Martinis

His famous father conducted a legendary literary feud with Gore Vidal, and while Christopher Buckley's dust-up via fax machine with novelist Tom Clancy (who was outraged by Buckley's trashing of one of his novels in the New York Times Book Review doesn't reach that intellectual level, it does make for very funny reading and illustrates Buckley's gift for puncturing pomposity wherever he finds it. To his credit, most of the essays in this collection are quite witty, and he doesn't sink to mean- spirited ideological blather. Included are pieces published in the New Yorker, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. Apart from the humorous essays, Buckley's ruminations on why he didn't serve in Vietnam provide thought-provoking commentary on his generation's defining event.