Books

Christopher Buckley is known for his Washington, D.C., novels, which are primarily satiric and often laugh-out-loud humorous. His new novel, Supreme Courtship, fits the mold with a twist: The protagonist is a Texan, and the humor is aimed at the Lone Star State, as well as the nation's capital.

Mr. Buckley's best-known novel is almost surely Thank You for Smoking, in part because of its film adaptation. Thank You for Smoking is also Mr. Buckley's least outlandish novel, because the truth of tobacco-industry lobbying on behalf of its carcinogenic product surpassed anything any writer could invent.

Supreme Courtship, like Mr. Buckley's immediate predecessor Boomsday, is outlandish. And yet it is plausible enough for some readers to suspend disbelief and find the characters worthy of close attention.

Of all those characters, Texan Pepper Cartwright stands out. Once a trial court judge in Texas, Cartwright left the courtroom after meeting and marrying a television producer who invented a reality show with a virtual courtroom that made Pepper famous.

Describing Pepper Cartwright briefly and adequately is difficult. In Texas talk, she is a mix between Ann Richards and Molly Ivins. Not so incidentally, Mr. Buckley supplies Pepper with a Texas daddy who once worked as a Dallas policeman, then suffered a professional crisis and became a wild-eyed television preacher. Pepper's granddaddy was a law-and-order Texas sheriff.

Enter U.S. President Donald Vanderdamp, a decent, principled chief executive with the opportunity to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. He nominates one distinguished jurist, then another, only to watch both suffer indignities in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by presidential enemy and White House aspirant Dexter Mitchell.

As the second nominee meets rejection, Vanderdamp, normally rational, makes a daring choice: to nominate national television idol Pepper Cartwright to the court. After all, she used to be a real judge, and given her stratospheric television ratings, how could Mitchell conspire against her confirmation to the court without outraging his constituency?

As might be expected in a Buckley novel, the satire shoots off in several directions after the primary plot line is established.

I know readers who think that Mr. Buckley's novels have always been over the top. I know other readers who used to count themselves as Buckley fans but find his most recent novels formulaic, the word-play tiresome. Those reactions are understandable, I suppose. But as I reached the final chapters of Supreme Courtship, I found myself rooting for Pepper Cartwright. It turns out Mr. Buckley made me suspend my disbelief after all.

Steve Weinberg is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Christopher Buckley

(Twelve, $24.99)

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