The Eric Metaxas Show - Lawrence Perelman

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Author Lawrence Perelman shares his book "American Impresario William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Elements of American Character".

Noble gold investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Mataxis show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noble gold investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. It's the show featuring Go-Go-Go the Chimp. Nothing like a chimp to liven up the radio show. Easy there. Go-go, go, go. Go-go. No, go-go! No! Hey there, folks. As I have mentioned, and I am so excited, we are this month, March, 2025, doing our campaign, our annual campaign with our friends at food for the poor. Look, we do this every year, and I say this, why do we do it? Because we know that there's suffering in the world, and we always want to know where or how can I help.

And one of the ways we can help is to give. to an organization that we know is doing God's will that is going to stretch the money we give dramatically. That's why every single year, we on the Eric Metaxis show, partner with our friends at Food for the Poor. And I thought, maybe we can get somebody from Food for the Poor on to help you, my audience, understand what you are doing when you help. So Paul Jacobs, Welcome to the program. It's great to be with you, Eric. Thank you. Well, you can tell them excited about this because it's, I think so many times people feel like, you know, their money's being wasted or what's the point?

A lot of people have been stunned at the waste. I mean, you pay taxes and you think, oh, the American government is doing it. And you find out, no, it's bloated bureaucracy, it's waste. And it makes people cynical. So that's why I get excited about organizations like Food for the Poor, because we know the trash. record. So what is the need right now? I know that we're focusing this month on helping hungry children in El Salvador. Most of us find it hard to believe that they're hungry children, like really hungry, not just sort of like really suffering with malnutrition. What's the focus

of food for the poor as people give? Well, I want to touch on something you just said a moment ago. You talk about track record. And for those of you that are just watching and hearing the name, Food for the Poor, for the very first time, this is new to you. but it's not new to the four decades that Food for the Poor has been ministering to those in need in 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Just, you know, Salem Radio News, SRN has been working with Food for the Poor for the last 20 plus years, helping those same families, working with pastors on the ground. And when you talk about the need, the urgency of why we're here right now, there is one in four children. One and four children. So maybe you're a big family.

You've got about four kids of your own. Maybe you have a few more. Look at one and four of those children and just put them aside and say, and just look at them and think that in El Salvador, that child is chronically malnourished. Now, that's chronically malnourished. That's acute malnutrition where children are not getting the food, not getting the nutrients that they need. And unfortunately, with something as simple as a common cold, because they don't have the immune system to build up in their bodies to fight back those things, it could cause death. And the other three, well, the other three are not far behind. And why you're needed right now is beyond just making sure that these children get nutrition in the schools,

where it's going to help them get educated and thrive. But it's also going to make sure that those children and their bodies and their future is put back on track. I mean, I have to say, I want to keep speaking the action point. Folks, we're asking you to go to metaxis talk.com, and you'll see the banner at the top of the page. And we're going to be brutal on this. I'm going to be brutal throughout this month. I'm going to bug every single one of you to give something. We're asking $100 that that's kind of the basic because that's the amount of money,

$100 U.S. dollars that can help feed a kid for one year. Think about that. Think about how efficient food for the poor is, that they're asking you for that and saying, oh, for that, no, this doesn't provide a week's worth or a week's worth or a month. This is a year. How do they do that? Now, I should ask you, Paul, I know the answer, but how does Food for the Poor operate that they're able to take a hundred U.S. dollars and stretch it this far? Because this is why I partner with Food for the Poor, because I know the work they're doing. It is effectiveness and efficiency at its finest. Working with Food for the

poor means that you're working with a network of pastors and local ministries, partners that are vetted on the ground in El Salvador, that are making sure that they are doing the work. and very many of those ministries are doing the work at no additional cost. There's no taxes, no tariffs. There's no government involvement in El Salvador that is going to basically get in the way of your compassionate giving and those children that are in need. And here's the best part of all of this. And that is, well, it's local farmers. Local farmers that are being supported.

It's not food being shipped in. It's food already being grown in the country of El Salvador through over 500 local farmers that are growing. the products needed for this product to be able to feed and give nutrition to children in schools? I mean, I was, I'm reading my notes here. So think of this, folks. And again, the action point is go to metaxis talk.com. At the top of the page, you'll see the banner. You click on that and you can do everything. But imagine that food for the poor is supporting local farmers and food producers to strengthen the local food production so families can stay. in El Salvador so they can exist where they have grown up so that they don't think to feed my kids, I have to migrate to the United States of America. I mean, this is basically what Americans should be trying to help. This is long term. I should also say there's a phone number. And if anybody wants to text, you can text my last name. We should get this changed to my first name,

so it's easier. But my last name, Metaxus, M-E-T-A-X-A-S. You can text my last name. You can text my last name. text metaxis to 5155.5.5. If you text metaxis to 51555, they'll send you a link to this campaign. I can't believe, I mean, again, I'm reading the notes that kids in El Salvador under five years of age face hunger and anemia rate of 25%. Can you imagine, folks? And I think that that's the bad news. The good news is we have it in our power for very little. Maybe you can't give $100. You can give $20. Maybe you can get your kids involved and say, hey, kids, these are the values we have as a family. We believe what the Bible says about helping those who are suffering, feeding the poor, and we've chosen to give as a family this much.

Maybe you can give a little bit out of your allowance and we can pool together. It's a beautiful opportunity to teach our kids. How do you live out your faith? You don't just talk about it. How do you live it out? If there are children that are hungry in El Salvador, that's where we're focusing on, I mean, it's a lot of Central America and South America, but right now we're focusing on El Salvador, how can we help them?

What can we do? How can we give out of how we? been blessed to give a little bit. So as I said, every hundred dollars, it's a one-time gift provides life-altering nutrition for a whole year. So you can text my name Metaxus, M-E-T-A-X-A-X-A-S to 5-1-5-5-5. Again, text Metaxus to 5-1-5-5. Or you can go to Metaxus talk.com. You'll see a banner that's feed their future. Metaxistalk.com.

That's my radio website. Or if you prefer to call, some of you, you can call right now. You can write this down. I hope you'll do it. We, the need is urgent, folks. I don't know how else to put it,

when you have little kids that are hungry. This is as basic as it gets. Let's live out our faith together. The phone number 844-4-4-8-6-3-4-6-6. 673, 844, 8663, 8673. We hope that you will be generous. I also wanted to mention that we talk about education a lot on the program and how our nation's public schools have been taken over by lunatic ideologues. You know, just like corporate America, I was saying like Target, well, Target has reversed course. We need to take back our schools as well, which is why.

I'm exhorting you to visit our friends at the Herzog Foundation, Herdsog Foundation.com. They are the trusted source on American K-12 private education. They have a remarkable suite of free resources for parents and grandparents. Think about making the switch from public schools to a Christian education or to homeschooling, which is the best of the best. They have an online publication, The Lion, sorry, you can go to readlion. com, R-E-A-D-L-I-O-N.com.

They have a podcast called Making the Leap. These guys are heroes, folks. If you've encountered them, you already know they're on the same page as we, and I want to say that it's important that we're aware of them. And again, they're there to help. Hertzog Foundation.com. Numbers don't lie. The impact that Balance of Nature makes every single day is astounding.

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Call 844-863-4673. Make your most generous contribution, please. The nutrition these kids get in school is often their only meal of the day. Food for the Poor School Nutrition Program effectively addresses malnutrition and increases children's school attendance. Your donation will also support local farmers who produce the nutritional supplements. You are needed to improve children's nutrition in El Salvador. Your gift will allow them to focus on learning rather than worrying about their next meal.

Today you have the power to feed a child or an entire classroom for a year. Please click the blue banner at metaxis talk.com or call 844-863-4673 with a gift of $100 to feed their future. Hey there, folks, welcome back. If you know me, you know that I'm a political conservative, and you may have heard me tell the stories of having met William F. Buckley, a real great hero, which means that it's fun for me to talk about William F. Buckley because he's such an amazing character. And I have the privilege today of having the author of a brand new book called American Impressario. It's a portrait of William F. Buckley, the book American Impressary, was written by Lawrence Perlman, who is my guest right now. Lawrence Perlman, welcome to this program.

Thanks, Alex. Thanks so much for having me. So what is the provenance of this book? What's the story behind you're writing a book about the great William F. Buckley? It's one of the great privileges of my life to be able to write a book about William F. Buckley, Jr. he was one of my great friends. I was very, very fortunate to meet him. I'm the son of Soviet Jewish immigrants who came over 50 years ago for the Soviet Union and escaped and were able to build an incredible life here.

I was born not long after my parents came to America. And growing up, studying to be a pianist, one of the lights in our house was William F. Buckley, Jr. My parents really loved him very much. really considered him to be an influencing bachelor in there being able to make it in America. Everything that he stood for, the program Firing Line, National Review, all of his values. And another thing that really stuck out for us was his love of classical music. So as I was studying piano in Ronald Reagan's era of the 1980s as a Cold Warrior kid growing up in Minnesota of all places, kind of like Mondale's Minnesota,

here was William F. Buckley Jr. in the middle of all of it. So when I moved to New York City to study piano at Manhattan School of Music, I had very few friends in the city, and who else to write a letter to than William F. Buckley, Jr. I was reading one of his books and called Happy Days We're Here Again. And I thought, you know, here are these articles about classical music. And it reminded me he loves classical music, but not only that, he studied piano, he studied harpsichord, he played with orchestra.

There were all these amazing tales that he was telling. and I realized he lives here in New York City. So why not write him a thank you letter for having emboldened Soviet Jews to come here to make it in America and offer him a piano recital? And this was 30 years ago. I wrote this letter. I was a very ambitious 18-year-old in 1994. I sent it off to National Review. I couldn't wait to get a reply from him.

So I called his office very boldly and I asked if he received my letter. And I got his assistant on the phone. and she said, how would we know if he received her letter? He receives hundreds of letters every week. And I said, but I'm the 18-year-old pianist. And she said, oh, we did receive your letter. And he'll reply and do chorus. And she put the phone down on me.

And one week later, in my modest bedroom and a four-bedroom apartment, very modest on the Upper West Side, I had this one room. I found a letter sitting in the corner of my door, and it said, William F. Buckley, Jr., emblazed on this. beautiful white envelope. And it was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, basically. I was opening it up and inside was my golden ticket. There was a letter from William F. Buckley Jr. offering me to come to his house and to play piano for him. And that was the beginning of my adventure with William F. Buckley, Jr. going to his house 30 years ago next month. Now, now, hang on, hang on. It's one thing to

write a letter to William F. Buckley and to get a response. But he invited him. He invited him. He invited, you to come to his apartment on Park Avenue and, what was it, 73rd Street. Yeah. To play piano with him. Basically to play a recital for him. He accepted my invitation, my gift. And he said in the letter, I'm off to Europe in the spring. But when I come back in spring of 95, I'd love to hear you play and to meet you.

And I came over to his house. And people will read about this, obviously, in the book. But the incredible thing was I walked over, you know, I went over to the east side. I walked up to these amazing gilded iron doors on 73rd in Park, rang the doorbell. I was just 19. And the door opens up, and it's William F. Buckley, Jr., letting me into his house to play piano. It's pretty incredible. I mean, I claim his world.

Yeah. It really is like something out of a dream. Yeah. And I experienced some of that because I did meet him a few times. And it is, it's an interesting thing, too, because the younger you are, the more it feels that way. The older you get, the less, in a sense, you're able to have those kinds of feelings. There's something about, you know, being young.

And you just look up to these men or whomever, like a living God. You can't believe that he's stepped out of the pages of myth and you get to see him in the flesh. So what an amazing thing. So tell us more about your encounter with him. Well, I can't agree with you, first of all, more in terms of the mythological side of this. Because, yes, it was in part because I was a kid that I looked at that way. But even now, just having turned 49, I look back at this. And it's as amazing as it was then.

because I think about how busy he was. He was at that point writing three columns a week, editing National Review, host of firing line, doing all these public speeches, traveling all over the place, had all his hobbies, and he found time for me. And that day it was one hour. It was around 5 p.m. And I recount this actually. I think it's a really great anecdote that I'll give away.

There's much more in the book. It was one of my favorite stories that I would recount about Bill Buckley. I didn't know what to buy for the man who had everything. And out of, you know, in silliness, it seems really silly looking back. But one of my friends said, you know, I couldn't buy alcohol. I couldn't buy anything else, really. I was thinking, what do I get him? And a friend of mine said, why don't you buy fresh squeezed orange juice for him?

Because everyone loves fresh squeezed orange juice. And the naivete on my part, I thought, okay, great. I lived across the street from Zabars. I went and I got two, you know, quarts of fresh squeezed orange juice for William F. Buckley, Jr. I go to the east side. He opens the door. And I said, Mr. Buckley, I have something for you. I fresh squeezed orange juice. And he looked inside and he said, is it from Israel? And I said, not from Israel. It's from Zabars. In all serious. Close enough. Close enough. He says he's going to get to Israel. He's not going into Zabars.

you're not going to get a super waspigoy from the east side in Park Avenue to darken the door of Zabar. So you had to bring it to him. It was pretty amazing. So we walked through the door and I walked by this amazing harpsichord that he had. Everything lived up to the myth. That's the other thing. It's one thing when you walk into a mythological person's home and it doesn't live up. But there's another thing when everything that you imagined actually exists, right?

So there was his harpsichord. There were all these paintings. There's this incredible sweeping staircase, you know, up to the second floor of this masonet, 5,000 square foot, you know, gilded age. They always call his apartment a masonet. I mean, I still pass it because I don't live too far from there. But I always remember that they called it a masonet. And I thought, why does he get to call it a masonet?

You know, it's just a funny thing. It's like somebody just decided it's a masonet. It's like they call the bus to the Hamptons. No, that's not the – it's a jitney. It's a jitney. It's a jitney. But I have been, just after he passed away, a friend of mine was involved in selling the property and we got to spend some time there. But it's a magnificent, it was a magnificent space.

It's the kind of place you would imagine William F. Buckley would live in. And of course, he also had a huge home on the water in Stanford. That's another story. Did you ever get to visit that place? I did. I visited there. And it also lived up. But, you know, it was more modest in a way that that, that, that, that,

home. He and Pat, they built up over decades. And of course, when you walked in, it felt like a kind of a Victorian home, a little bit of a Gainsborough type of, you know, painting or something. But she really made this kind of modest home into this magical place as well. And, you know, but back to the Masonette, going into the library there, which is this red room. And again, it was plush. You know, everything was plush about it and everything like that. And we sat down. We had an amazing conversation. You know, he just welcomed me. in such a wonderful way. And he had someone there to break the age as well.

There was a younger guy there, Drew Oliver, who I think is the son of the former FTC chairman. And we basically walked in to the piano room, which was the living room, which was about 1,000 square feet on its own, maybe more. And he had this amazing Bezosendorfer piano, which is a Viennese, Austrian imperial piano. Of course, that's what William F. Buckley Jr. would have.

And it came from Pat Buckley's side of the family, actually. And I sat down and I played a piece by Bach, a piece by Debussy, a piece by list. And in between, he asked me about my family, about the works of music, all of this. And had that been, Eric, the only thing that I've ever experienced in my life, it wouldn't be enough for a book, of course. It would be something as a tale of lore and I would carry it around for the rest of my life. But everything else that happened after that was Buckley is what ended up becoming a book. and it really is the story of my life in many ways. Well, and the title of the book, which is just out, is American Impressario,

referring, of course, to William F. Buckley Jr., the great William F. Buckley, Jr. The book is American Impressario. It is by my guest today, Lawrence Perlman. We will continue the conversation with Lawrence Perlman about the book, American Impressario. Don't go away. My pillow is having a huge sale on overstock clearance and brand new products. Right now you can save $40 on bed sheets in any size and color. Body pillows are only 2998 and the multi-use 2.0 pillows with a pillowcase are just 998.

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Folks, welcome back. We're talking about William F. Buckley, Jr. I've got to say, it's one of my favorite subjects. William F. Buckley, Jr. We're talking about somebody who was his friend, Lawrence Perlman, who's written a book called American Impressario. So before we go too far, what have you been doing since you met him at age 19 in the three decades since? Are you a professional musician?

Did you follow that path? Well, what ended up happening was I really, realized a couple years later that the world did not need another concert pianist. As talented as I was in some ways in musical, I didn't have the capacity for a career. And I always wanted to advise artists in a way. I was always very fascinated about the business of music. And one of the big dreams that I had was to start a channel for classical music and performing arts here in the States because many channels from PBS onwards kind of gave up that territory. And I felt that a big part of our culture, if you're not visible in media, of course, you're invisible. And for something that's a great achievement of our civilization, that being classical music, we need a place. We need a place at the table in terms of a piece in the media landscape. And an idea that I had that I even bounced off with Bill many years ago was working on making Carnegie Hall into a channel in some way. And so that's a dream that did come true 20 years later.

I'm a co-founder and business strategy consultant for a streaming service called Carnegie Hall Plus. But in parallel to that, I've worked with many of the great conductors and institutions around the world, including the Saltsbrid Festival and many others on communications, general strategy, and other things. I've been living the dream in terms of the performing arts and classical music in particular to keep us visible and relevant. And Bill Buckley is the big catalyst. You know, just to segue for a second, that firing line, when Bill had all this power, if you think about a three or four-channel universe four decades ago,

which is hard to believe today when everyone has a channel in their pocket, imagine what power in a way he had on a cultural level with a program like firing line in a four-channel universe. And we have to be clear for people listening. So, yeah, in the days of ABC, CBS, NBC, NBC, And then there'd be maybe a few local affiliates.

And then there was PBS. And every single week on PBS, William F. Buckley Jr., the Arch Conservative, amazingly, had a conversation program of about a half an hour. I do something called Socrates in the city, which in some ways is similar. But the idea that PBS allowed him, this voice of genuine conservative, to be on PBS every single week. And people tuned in, even people who hated him, tuned in because he was so fascinating, so extraordinarily compelling. And so you're quite right, he had an amazing footprint in the culture. So you were going to say more about that.

Yeah, I mean, his footprint in the culture and his decision about what to talk about. So he would bring up sometimes, very often, he would bring up classical music and Bach in particular. He would have Rosalind Turek, who was one of the great pianists and harpsichordists on the program, and she would not only talk about Bach and his relevance and what she was doing and Bill asking incredible questions, you can watch some of these episodes on YouTube, but then she would actually play Bach. She would play for 15 minutes on this program. And so I imagine that in that time, to be able to hear that for millions of people were influenced in a major, major way, but only because Bill saw to it as relevant.

So one week he would have Mother Teresa or Muhammad Ali, but then another week he would have Alan Ginsberg, and then he would have a great pianist on to talk about Bach. And you mentioned it already that Bill's capacity for today, when we think about it's such a quaint idea. But talking to others that did not align with him was not only sport, but it was something that he welcomed. He wanted to hear other.

sides of issues and kind of dig deep into it. He was one of the great debaters, of course, in history at Yale, but he used that talent to also build friendships. So he was friends with John Kenneth Galbraith, who was diametrically opposed to Milton Friedman, who was another friend of his. So his ability to bring people together was kind of astounding by today's measure. And one of the lines that stuck out really in my 13, 14 year friendship with Bill, which we'll come back to, was that he said to me once at a dinner party when I asked him a political question at the end of an evening. He looked at me and he said, Larry, politics is my vocation, not my avocation. And I think that those couldn't be more valuable words today in many respects, that he,

who's the ultimate conservative, who is the ultimate political thinker, who ran one of the most important publications and programs, et cetera, et cetera, for him moving away from that in the evenings, going sailing and doing other things, but then coming to music was so important. And it kind of, it speaks volumes to the kind of person that he was and the importance of culture outside of just the political battle 24-7. And it's interesting, and I have wondered many, many times what he would have made of Donald Trump. It's interesting because I think Trump seems so dramatically different than Buckley that it's hard not to think that Buckley would at least on some level wrinkle his nose at Trump. But who knows?

Because the landscape has changed so dramatically that, you know, if you have a choice between Kamala Harris and And Donald Trump, well, it strikes me that, you know, you have to side with Donald Trump, but we'll never know. And I just find it absolutely fascinating. We're going to go to another break, folks. I'm talking to the author of a brand new book about William F. Buckley, Jr. The book is American Impressario, and my guest is Lawrence Perlman. Don't go away. Folks, welcome back.

I'm talking to the author of American Impressario about William F. Buckley Jr. The author is Lawrence Perlman, who said, I can call him Larry. Larry, it's fascinating and delightful to speak with Hugh about this. And I think when I think of Buckley, as I said, having met him a number of times, he was a larger-than-life figure. There were figures like that when I think of old New York. I had the privilege of knowing Thomas Wolfe. there are in fact the first time I ever met

Ed Koch speaking of old New York was at Buckley's Maisonet it was shortly after Buckley had passed away and they were selling it and there was kind of a gathering of people there but there were these larger than life figures from old New York and they seem mostly gone New York is not the New York that it was when Buckley was walking around no I agree and those

basically after I met Bill that initial time in 1995, what was astounding about it was I participated in many, many dinners. And I can get to that in a moment by setting the table a little bit here. After writing this first letter for Bill, I stayed in touch with him for a few years. And I wondered, how do I get back through the door? Because, as you know, getting through the door the first time is tough. But getting through the door the second time is really a lot harder. And I transferred back to Minnesota, where I grew up, to finish up political science and music and McAllister College, definitely not one of the conservative colleges in America. And I finished up in McAllister, and I was sitting at graduation, and Kofi Annan was the commencement speaker of all people.

And I was thinking, you know, what do I do as my next act here? Like, how do I get back to New York and become kind of an impresario myself? I want to be in the music business. What do I do? And I thought, what better than to write to William F. Buckley, Jr., again. But this time with a very bold statement. And basically I said in a nutshell, I want to do for classical music that, which you've done for conservatism in America. And I got a phone call from the same assistant this time saying he wants to see you. And it turned out that my letter came in at the right time for Bill and the right time for me. He had just had lunch with Skyler Chapin, who was then the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs in the Giuliani administration, who was telling Bill over lunch that music and

arts education were being reintroduced in the city schools after a 30-year absence. And Bill, sitting there, of course, having grown up homeschooled in Sharon, Connecticut, with nine brothers and sisters practicing piano every day or every other day and listening to classical music in a closed-up room with tutors, couldn't believe that people would go decades without hearing classical music. And he was wondering, what happened to generations of New Yorkers who never heard the sound of Mozart, Beethoven, etc. And so here's this young kid, 22, writes this letter and says this bold statement.

So he thought, why not give him a grant? And he gave me a grant through his foundation, which brought me back to New York to work on this research project for him personally. And that was a $25,000 grant. Now, think about it. This was the second time I ever saw Bill Buckley in my life. And he on spec basically gave me this grant. And this is transformative power. This is something that makes me truly believe in an extraordinary side of humanity and the generosity that people are capable of.

Who was I? I was just the average kid from St. Paul, Minnesota, writing a couple of letters. And he opened up his entire world. And that is where I became privy to these dinner parties, these larger-than-life gatherings. And basically, this continued until the end of Bill's life in 2008. And after I worked on this project, we started a tradition where every six or eight months, I would learn a different piano work for he and the editors of National Review and their friends and Pat's friends. And I would play these recitals at their home on 73rd and then out at Wallach's Point in Stanford.

Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. And you were near him when he passed away. Yes, I was. It is. actually right now, 17 years ago this past week that Bill passed away. And the final work that he had asked me to learn was Beethoven's magnum opus Diabelli Variations. And for the uninitiated listeners here, it's a tough, it's a tough piece to both play and to listen to it, but worth it. Do it for William F. Buckley, Jr. and listen to this piece.

So I learned it for Bill reluctantly at the end. We had this back and forth saying, you know, I didn't like the piece. I told him I hate the piece. and another piece that I offered him, the Liss Sonata he hated. But finally, I gave in, and he won. And I played it for him and his siblings in what turned out to be the last gathering

of the Buckley siblings the week before. Tell me again the name of the piece that we're talking about. It's called the Diabelli Variations by Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Okay. Dea Belli variations, yes. And it runs about 40 minutes. It is the last major piano work

that Beethoven wrote. It's totally, completely celestial in nature. And it is the end of a person's life. In a way, I think Bill, if I'm going to project on to Bill here, I would say that he wanted to hear something that was the summation of a life. And this was a summation of Beethoven's output in a way through this piece of music. And I was to play it at his house on February 27, 2008, for a gathering of his friends.

He really wanted to hear it again. And he invited me the night before. He said, come have dinner and practice in the house on the 27th. So I came out there on the 26th in the evening. We had this incredible dinner. We toasted with vodka at the beginning. I mean, it was, again, one of these surreal situations where he knew I was a Russian Jewish kid, you know. And he said, would you like some vodka?

We were having some red caviar, of course, why not? And I said, sure. And we went from cocktails to vodka to wine and everything in between. And of course he was on his oxygen tank and he wasn't as mobile as he had been. He'd been through struggles physically and everything. But mentally everything, it was Bill. And the next morning, I was practicing piano. I was practicing the Diabelli.

And Bill was in his study, which was right next door to the house, a converted barn. I like to say kind of conservatism's Sistine Chapel with all of his memorabilia, everything from his long life. And he was writing his final book on Ronald Reagan, his protege, Ronald Reagan. And as I was practicing, Bill passed away. And the recital never happened that evening. That is almost unbelievable, but it's true. What an amazing story. Amazing. We just have a few minutes left. I know in the book you talk about his virtues. Virtues. Virtues. were important to him. His faith, obviously, was important to him.

But when we come back, we just have a few minutes to talk about how you hope your book, American Impressario, will help inspire readers to emulate Buckley's virtues, which you cite as being a return to civil discourse, anonymous philanthropy, faith, patriotism, and fostering relationships between mentor and protege, as part of a goal to reweave the fabric of our nation's character. We'll be right back. Welcome back talking to Lawrence Perlman, whose new book is out, American Impressario,

just in time for the 100th anniversary of the birth of William F. Buckley, Jr. So in the book, you talk about having witnessed firsthand his virtues and how you hope this book will inspire people to emulate those virtues. Absolutely. Well, I think the subtitle of the book, is William F. Buckley Jr. and the elements of American character. And I think that what makes Bill's character and other virtues so American and so extraordinary is the willingness to bring people into the fold. I mean, for me, writing a letter to William F. Buckley Jr., as everyone you heard here,

was an unlikely kind of master's stroke of luck. But at the same time, should it be luck? I think that in Bill Buckley's world, it wasn't luck. In Bill Buckley's world, he created, a culture around him that made sure that every letter that was sent to him was answered. He dictated thousands of letters. When he passed away, the Yale Archive received 1,100 shoeboxes full of his correspondence. And when you think about that, that is a testament to who William F. Buckley, Jr. was for me, above everything else, because it drove everything. It drove his communications. It drove his friendships. It drove his faith in that understanding that, If someone writes to me, I'm going to write back to them because who knows what might actually be there on the other side.

And that drives your patriotism, your love of country. You know, call me quaint in this, but I believe that these are fundamental elements of what makes this country America, that a kid from who's born of parents who just came to America can meet one of the most consequential figures who's a Catholic, who comes from an old family, an established family, and were both human beings. He was the most accessible in a way person. He was completely normal and more comfortable in his skin than really anyone that I've probably met outside of my family. I would say that he was extraordinary comfortable.

And that allowed him to create this world around him. That is the tale of this book. And what I want to leave readers and listeners with is try to emulate this in answering communication, you know, in speaking with people that we don't necessarily agree with and taking a page out of his book, not to be too metaphorical. Well, I mean, Buckley is, you know, when people talk about a legend, he's a legendary figure. He was a legendary figure before he passed away. an extraordinary figure. I, you know, somewhat similar to you, my mother grew up in East Germany,

communist East Germany. My father grew up in Greece, war-torn Greece, which was almost taken over by the communists. So my parents hated me, raised me to hate communism. And my father loved Buckley because of that, an immigrant to this country who would read Buckley's column,

who knew that Buckley was an extraordinary man who stood strongly against communism and obviously was one of the people that helped Reagan become president, which ended the Cold War, brought down the Iron Curtain, just an extraordinary mythical figure. So the idea that I, the son of European immigrants, got to meet Buckley, it's, it, there is something beautiful and fitting about it as you, as you share your story. I'm just, I'm glad you wrote a book about it. I'm glad it's available. Who's the publisher for the book? The publisher is Postal Press, the imprint, Bumbardier Press.

Okay. Bumbridea Books, exactly. So Postal Press, Bumbris dea books. Well, the book is American Impressario. The author is Lawrence Perlman, P-E-R-E-L, Perlman. Lawrence Perlman, it's been a joy to speak with you. Since you live in New York, I look forward to meeting you in person. Absolutely.

In the meantime, thank you for writing American Impressario for coming on this program. God bless you. Thank you, Eric. I really appreciate the opportunity and for getting the message out there of this book. Thank you. To be continued.