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His ambivalent feelings toward his parents seem to be more resolved as a result of writing his book: “I hesitate to use the word ‘cathartic,’ because it is so overworked. But these are times you’re grateful to be a writer, because you can work it out with words.”
He adds, “I suspect it was a way of spending a little more time with them. During those 40 days I was writing, it was a reimmersion, an intense communion, with their ghosts.” Just what his parents might think of such a public tête-à-tête, Buckley isn’t saying, though one assumes they wouldn’t approve. But maybe that’s beside the point. “Even as I was typing the hard parts, somehow the bad stuff got drained out,” Buckley says. “I feel very much at peace with their memories.”
