William F. Buckley Jr.

Founder of National Review (1955) and the figurehead of postwar American conservatism. Mailer's most regular sparring partner across the political spectrum — beginning with their 22 September 1962 debate in Chicago and continuing in print and on television through Buckley's Firing Line and beyond, into the 1970s and 1980s.

William F. Buckley Jr. — founder of National Review (1955), host of Firing Line (1966–1999), and a lifelong cultural-political adversary of Mailer — debates Mailer for the first time on 22 September 1962 in Chicago, moderated by Irv Kupcinet, on the role of the right wing in American life (62.13a in Gay Talese‘s New York Times account; 62.13b in Pete Hamill‘s New York Post account). Talese reports the bout “a draw”; Hamill, “good fight, no decision.” Mailer’s line — “It is the right wing that wishes to blow up the earth” — and Buckley’s — Mailer is “a writer of genuine talent who was also the most politically ignorant man I have ever met” — set the tone for the dozens of subsequent encounters that will follow across the 1960s and 1970s on platforms ranging from Firing Line to print exchanges in Esquire and the Times.

The Mailer–Buckley public debate sequence continues across the early 1960s with the January–February 1963 Playboy statements and transcript (63.15, 63.22) and the late-January 1964 Mailer–Buckley debate on David Susskind‘s Open End television program (64.10a) — at which Buckley, the apparent winner, told Mailer: “You are a magnetic field in this country.”

Stub; to be expanded as later Mailer–Buckley encounters are ingested.

Related pages

• 1962 | 1964 | Mailer Debates William Buckley: Chicago Political Bout a Draw | Mailer vs. Buckley: Good Fight, No Decision | Mailer and Buckley Talk on 'Open End'

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Last updated: 2026-05-27