Sam Tanenhaus reflected yesterday, in The New York Times*, on the unexpected similarities between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr. The piece caught my eye because I just finished a section in my manuscript on Mortimer J. Adler’s multiple Firing Line appearances and his interactions with Buckley. In writing about both figures a prominent theme in Tanenhaus’ piece was elitism in U.S. intellectual history—the class solidarity that bound both.  He finds other parallels, which I will point out below. But I’m most interested in larger thing Tanenhaus is trying to do in the article: write about emotion in the Read more