Elvis in the Morning, by William F. Buckley.
New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2001.
$25 -167 pages.

Although the flyleaf announces that Elvis in The Morning is “a novel about friendship, celebrity, and social upheaval, set against the changing landscape of postwar America,” this latest book by William F. Buckley puzzles me. I can’t quite figure out the the point of the story other than to provide a sweet rehash of certain aspects of the life of Elvis Presley. Otherwise, Elvis in The Morning fails to capture any of the various moods of the 1960s, and we are left wondering what Mr. Buckley had in mind when he wrote this book.

Orson Killere is a schoolboy in Germany — his mother is American and works for the Army; his father, a Frenchman, died in World War II –  when Elvis Presley is stationed nearby. Taken by the King’s talent, Orson attempts to steal his records from the PX to give away to those who can’t afford to buy them. When the MPs apprehend him and a judge with a sense of humor sentences Orson to a month without listening to his beloved Elvis, the King comes to Orson’s home and personally sings for him.

One of Orson’s good friends is Priscilla Ann Beaulieu, who will one day become Elvis Presley’s wife. She meets Elvis through Orson, and though she is only 15, Elvis falls in love with her.

When Orson goes off to college in the United States, he gets caught up in a protest against the university and is forced to leave school. He begins a long hitchhiking tour around the country, meeting Susan, the girl whom he will marry, as well as Barry Goldwater, various men who worked on early computers and chips, and an assortment of American eccentrics.

While working on computers, helping Susan regain her health after a terrible car accident, and getting himself clean again after a bout with cocaine, Orson continues his friendship with Elvis. He tries to help Elvis with his marriage, gives him advice about his drug problem, and ends up several times lending a sympathetic ear to the King’s problems. When Elvis dies, Orson attends the funeral, telling himself during the eulogy that “... words were incapable of rendering Elvis, only Elvis could do that, and that was the point of the service, that Elvis wouldn’t be able to do that anymore.” If words are incapable of rendering Elvis, then why did Buckley write a book about him?

Buckley’s prose is, as usual, clean and concise, though his writing in Elvis in The Morning lacks the sparkle of some of the Blackford Oakes novels. Buckley remains the consummate wordman. Here Buckley describes Elvis as he attires himself in a new costume:

The jumpsuit! Elvis accepted it as a new trademark and had a dozen of them made up. The structural design called for a high-collar, low-cut, V-style top, a high waist. No pockets – Elvis didn’t want anything that might so much as intimate a greater girth than was inexorably there. (His regimen called on him to diet down to a maximum of 220 pounds before his concerts. One-seventy was his weight in the army, and he liked to go down to 210). He had brought in three designers to make the stitching unique, and a few months later, he had 20 different suits. Their themes included American Eagle, Blue Prehistoric Bird, Burning Love, Flame, Indian, Sundial, King of Spades, Mad Tiger, Red Lion, Tiffany, Inca Gold Leaf, White Eagle, and White Prehistoric Bird. Each had its own cape and was worn with a long silk scarf.

Yet for fans who have even a slight knowledge of Elvis, the information imparted in this book is negligible, facts that could be picked up in any biography of Elvis.

Although Buckley himself was often at the eye of the political storm that was the 1960s, and though he does give us a feeling for the late 1950s when Elvis served in the Army, we never really feel the 1960s or 1970s come alive in Elvis in The Morning. Nor is it clear what Buckley intends us to make of his book. The friendship between Elvis and Orson seems forced; Orson strikes me as someone who simply wouldn’t get along that well with Presley. The theme of celebrity is also weak; Buckley gives us the excesses of celebrity without really showing us why Elvis felt compelled to give away expensive cars or to take such a wild assortment of pills.

Buckley also fails to explain his characters. Why is Orson attracted to socialism? Why does he marry Susan? Are we supposed to find some meaning in Susan’s automobile accident? Did Buckley intend Orson to be such a dispassionate observer – he often seems not so much cold as just absent – or did Buckley simply not care enough about him to develop him more fully?

Having once enjoyed some of Buckley’s “Firing Line” shows on television, and having followed his magazine, National Review, for several years — NR is now a sort of pacifier for conservative politicos and moneybag marketeers whose perspective of social issues begin and end with tax cuts — I found this latest novel disappointing. For anyone familiar with Presley’’s life, Elvis in The Morning is indeed a waste of time.

(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars bookstore in downtown Waynesville.)

 

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