SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000200920012-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: March 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200920012-9
NEW YORK TIMES L
3 March, 1985 IRE 0011
BOOK SECTION
SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR
By William F. Buckley Jr.
351 pp. New York:
Doubleday & Company. $16.95.
By Peter Andrews
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.'S fictional
C.I.A. agent, Blackford Oakes, is an es-
timable character in many respects. For
one thing, when Oakes is in really desper.
ate trouble, he says' his prayers. To the best of my
knowledge, no secret agent has sought divine advice
since John Buchan's novels and It's rather nice to see
Heavenly guidance again. In a time when most fictioxu.l
secret agents are busy staving off the imminent inciner
ation of the planet, Oakes is content to measure his job
in small and reasonably credible triumphs. Oakes gen-
erally manages to bed down with at least one beautiful
woman during the course of his travails, but he is not
the sort of fellow to break any furniture while doing so.
If there is killing to be done in a Blackford Oakes novel,
the mayhem is doled out judiciously so the reader is not
forever tripping over dead bodies. Compared with the,
wholesale bloodletting that is the hallmark of so many
novels in this genre, a visit with Blackford Oakes Is like
a weekend at the shore.
Heaven knows all of us in the Western world sleep
more comfortably knowing that Blackford Oakes is on
the prowl. But, considering all of his admirable qual-
ities, I wish I liked him more. The problem, I suspect, is
that in common with many virtuous people, Blackford
Oakes is just a little bit on the dull side. He is an awfully
good man and you never get a chance to forget it.
This time, Oakes is sent by President Kennedy to
Cuba to engage in secret negotiations with Che Guevara
in the months immediately preceding the missile crisis.'
And as it turns out, it was a good thing he was there. Mr.
Buckley is too meticulous a scholar to twist history
around just to suit 'the purposes of a spy story; and he
sticks to a basic outline of the affair, while providing a
loophole just large enough for Oakes to make his contri-
bution. Since the novel cannot provide us with any
major surprises, it has to rely on execution for its effect
and here the work is surprisingly leaden. Very little of
the deft Buckley prose style evident in his columns is
present here, and even less of his sharp-edged wit. Al-
though Mr. Buckley probably has not constructed. a
graceless sentence since he was in prep school, there
isn't much energy here. "See You Later Alligator" is
not full of sound and fury but, then again, it doesn't sig-
nify much either.
Perhaps Mr. Buckley needs a looser story line to
show off his good moves. He is so busy setting the histor-
ical background of the missile crisis that he has little
room for novelistic maneuver. Oakes spends nine
months and some 100 pages chatting with Guevara,
swimming nude in the ocean and making love to a
Cuban apparatchik until one night she takes him to see
the hidden missiles. At one point, Mr. Buckley gets so
mired in his story the only way he can push the plot for-
ward is to have the brilliant Blackford Oakes make a
stupid security blunder. It is a fairly good indication
that a,spy story may be in trouble when the reader is
-smarter than the hero.
Mr. Buckley mixes ;`fictional and historical charac_
ters with indifferent results. Having Mr. Buckley write
dialogue for Jack Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev
should have been fun but here the execution is lacklus-
ter. Guevara is the only one who comes off with any kind
of vitality. A man with an interesting mind who chafes
Oakes for his genteel manners in the face of revolution
and gives his adversary all the debate he can handle,.
Guevara is a well-drawn character whom one remem-
bers even after the plot is forgotten, So Mr. Buckley
knows how to do the job when he sets his mind to it. "See
You Later Alligator," however, sometimes reads as if It
had not always fully engaged the author's attention.
Which is not to say there are not some very good
things In this novel. Mr. Buckley blows up an airplane
as neatly as anything I have read in a long time and
there is a crackerjack boat chase. The final scene, in
which Oakes meets Guevara for the last time in Bolivia,
when the string has run out for the troubled visionary, is
touching and fine. But essentially these are grace notes
in a routine story. This Oakes outing is a bit off form;
but form counts a lot for Blackford Oakes and doubtless
we shall see him in fitter, fettle the next time. ^
Peter Andrews is a freelance writer and critic.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200920012-9