Interview

Christopher Buckley shows his humor while interviewing himself about Boomsday which is set in the near future when a charismatic 29-year-old blogger, and member of Generation Whatever, incites massive cultural warfare when she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75.

So, what was the inspiration for your new novel, BOOMSDAY?
Washington Mutual.

I’m sorry?
The bank that owns my house.

Oh. Well, but seriously….
I suppose I tend to write about things that make me mad. And among the things that get my dander up is the government’s serial fiscal irresponsibility in refusing to confront the inexorable math of Social Security.

That’s a mouthful. So you consider yourself, then, a social critic?
I consider myself a hack novelist with a mortgage. But also, a father of an 18 year old and a 14 year old who are going to spend a large chunk of their working lives paying off the debt incurred by my generation and the ones that went before. What happened to the concept of bequeathing our children a better world? Sorry, feeling a bit grumpy about all this. Really, the book is a laugh riot.

Is it difficult, finding the humor in Social Security reform?
You try it sometime.

No need to get snippy.
I suppose most of my books are elaborate bar bets. With Thank You For Smoking, the bet would have been: can you make a tobacco lobbyist sympathetic? With this it’s: can you make humor out of the government’s incentivizing suicide ...