From a friend:

Whether White has ever written a symphony, I don’t know—but if he hasn’t, I think this one will do.  I say that because, in spite of its size, it really is a big book.  And this isn’t just a book about +W—it’s really two books in one.  The one is a book about the trumpet call—the call that goes out to everyone everywhere (and there is a great deal of trumpeting in this book to prove it).  The other—and it fits snugly into that first—is a small book about +W.  You could probably even say it’s three books in one, the third part being Dr. White’s (final?) lecture to the world. 
But let’s take it one at a time.
           
            First, the trumpet.
            Some books should be read.  This is one that should be heard.  There’s music galore in it—but there’s also a message here.  The musical references help convey the reality of the words.  The musical bars liven up things and offer unexpected relief.  The constant reference to lyrics and notes also show how much music is really a part of everyone’s life—unless you’re a Shylock—and how listening comes with its own risk/reward:  those who listen set themselves in the path of two opposing poles—one up, one down, so White puts it.  His book highlights the tension between the siren song and the trumpet; it illustrates how music can impact the mind and heart one way or the other.  Just like music can help to make or break a movie (think Psycho without Herrmann), music can help to make or break a man.  White’s point:  too much Sid Vicious will quite likely keep you from the .
            The title of the book refers to the voice of God—the trumpet blasts are the answers to the questions everyone’s asked—Ives —they are not unanswered here.
           
Second, the bishop.
The subtitle of the book refers to +W’s life, described in the first half of the book.  Here you see +W’s development as somewhat (not totally) self-directed:  music sustained him and he sought it out independently of any classroom guidance; next came literature and though he took a Master’s in English his big breakthrough in understanding the big questions did not come until he picked up a copy of Vyvyan’s Shakespearean Ethic from a library bookshelf in West Africa where he was, again, on his own, pursuing the significant something calling to him.  (He still recommends it—and I still disagree with him about its merits—but +W got something from it he needed:  a push in the right direction.)  As the bishop once told me, “It’s okay to wander, but keep a polestar.”  White indicates that a love of the Best (i.e., the one, the good, the true) served as +W’s polestar—the thing that enabled him to receive his calling in life.
 
Third, White.
As usual there is a great deal of clarity of thought in White’s words.  He simplifies complex ideas and issues and distills them to their essence.  For instance, he reduces the wreck of the Reformation to three irresponsible, “fatuous ideas—[that] life [could be lived] without moment to moment spiritual drama, [that] life [could be] based on satisfaction of personal desire, and [that there is no connection between free will and grace in] life rendering individuals helpless and dependent” (p. 9)—the doctrines of Luther, Henry VIII and Calvin, respectively.  These points serve as the main foundation for modern thought over the past 500 years and play a definite part in the plot we’re all working through.  They represent the constant threat, while the voice of the trumpet represents the constant reminder that Heaven is not gained by getting a coupon in the mail, by whim or by presumption.  White gives a lot of play to the trumpet—little blasts and reminders sprinkled over the whole thing like salt.  It’s well preserved.  It should last a generation at least.
 
            So with this book you not only get the essence of the bishop’s life—you also get the essence of White’s thought (and, in terms of thinking, White and +W are more or less in agreement).  In the way the book’s arranged, you see the familiar signs of inspiration and of long gestating ruminations and reflections—of thoughts appearing like stars, unapologetically included because they appeared one night—included because they would be gone as quickly as they came (and why waste a vision just because some might view it as inappropriate or cuмbersome?).  So, no, this book is not just about the bishop.  It is also about White’s own way of looking at the world—where we were, where we are, where we are going.  It is White looking not just at his friend.  It is White looking at the grave and settling down in it and looking up and speaking to us from flat on his back.  Whitman loafed and ate a blade of grass.  White goes full corpse pose and gives us the news, both good and bad, from the ground, pointing up at the stars—and reminding us that they have numbered all His bones—so don’t be shocked when they start numbering yours, too. 
 
            But there’s more.  Fourth, juxtaposition.
            Throughout it all is the juxtaposition of the Beatles and the Faith—the former representing a large, musical crap created by youth (idolized, idealized) disconnected from the simple lessons of the old world (namely, that just because it rises to the top of the toilet bowl does not mean it should be fished out and lavished with praise and adoration).
 
The Beatles play a thematic role in the book—they indicate the problem, the sentimentalizing and undercutting of everything good.  One part of the solution, White points out, is better music.  (I’d recommend reading Raymond Chandler every day, too, for some—but check with your doctor to see if Chandler’s right for you.)   But music is what helped +W.  Thus, +W’s discovery of Beethoven.  Everyone remembers his first discovery of Beethoven.  I sat in a car in a parking lot.  The radio was tuned to the classical station.  Then Beethoven’s 7^th came on:  a voice from the past that cut through the years and distance.  “This world is of male energy male pain”—that is how White describes this thing, quoting Berryman.  When the bishop discovered Beethoven, he was like all of us discovering that thing that is often so insensibly, inadequately put in words.  Maybe the Jєωs were wise never to name God.  The children of light, not so much.
 
You can tell White delights in making these connections, bringing out old favorites—references to John Berryman (an old teacher of White’s and a poet of tragic course—see White’s lectures), the constant references to music (White’s other love), the endless associations and juxtapositions—it is White’s style and not what one would expect to find in a traditional biography.  But, again, this is not a traditional biography.  This is a grinding up of everything the man has carried inside him for years, stirred together and hardened into this (thing—whatever this is) that can only be made by one who has long spent hours in the kitchen, pouring over recipes, experimenting with ingredients, learning what tastes balance one another, and finally disregarding all convention and producing something distinct that not one of his guests waiting in the other room will have ever tried before.  Someone looking for a simple biography of the bishop may be puzzled by what White has served—but it’s all there in the title.  This is a book that has to be heard.  It is about a message that has to be heard.  It is about an age that has become so tone deaf, with ears so full of fat, it cannot hear anything at all.  I imagine in the future the book will come with a packet of Q-tips and instructions on how to use them.
           
            Fifth, the moral of the story.
            If you want a big lesson from the book, here it is:  The big lesson of the book is the power of prayer.  The bishop before being accepted into the church spent time praying the rosary—not knowing that he was about to be invited into the Church.  He prayed not knowing what it was he was onto—but he prayed nonetheless—and that devotion to prayer is what he still recommends every EC even today—the same 15 mysteries he said when he was preparing himself for whatever God had in store for him.  White makes it very clear:  if one wants to reach Heaven, one must open up a direct line of communication to God.  One gets out of it what one puts in.
 
            Sixth, if you want something different.
            If you want something different, take heart:  This is not a straight-up biography.  White has three points of focus—three camera lenses that he uses to point at +W:  1) the Beatles lens, 2) the English Catholic martyrs lens, and 3) the reality lens.  Some will recall that Tissier gave a much more thorough and exhaustive biographical account of Lefebvre, while White’s was its own thing.  If Tissier’s could be said to be more fact-centered, White’s could be said to be more idea-centered.  The same here with his +W biography.  White knows ideas have consequences.  Here, the ideas are what matter in the telling.  The facts, when they help create the effect White is going for, are given.  But don’t expect Mr. Gradgrind.  And neither does White suppress facts that don’t fit the narrative (he’s not Pope St. Francis St. John Paul the Great St. Ratzinger or any of the other saints of Conciliarism).  Rather, White seeks to explain, to make clear, to make connections, to understand.  His vision is ordered—and for good reason:  he sees the whole and shines the light on the most compelling parts to present a view which best depicts the subject he is describing.  At risk of plucking out the mystery of the man, White limits himself to a few tools—none of which is a scalpel.  (I myself would use the scalpel—cadaver or no cadaver—scrape down to the bone, pity at having to murder to dissect, and then throw up the hands at not having found the inscrutable something I was looking for—but that’s just me.) 
So do not read this first half expecting controversy or a deep probe into the psychology of +W.  The first half is but the first and second movements of White’s symphony—the first loud but inviting; the second more introspective.  Fans of +W, music, White, poetry, literature, and juxtaposition will appreciate it.  Critics of all those things are unlikely to read it, and no doubt they all receive dead fish in their stockings. 
           
            Seventh, if you want more.
            The book is still more.  Over and above all this, it is primarily a defense of +W against the calumny of his critics, of Fellay, of anti-tin foil hatters (haters) et al.  You know the entire thing was written with the recent slanders and accusations and punishments and exiles in mind.  It is all oriented towards delivering +W from their clutches, and it makes for compelling reading:  in the second half, White goes after sentimentality (in art, in life) with a hammer.  He aims the trumpet at all the other invective sprayed at the “bloody-minded Brit”:  +W is a Mason.  +W promotes rock ‘n’ roll.  +W is not a real Catholic.  +W hates women.  White shows them all wrong—which is easy enough:  +W is not the 1950s and places sense and objectivity above sentimentalism. 
The book dissolves the nonsense arguments of those opposed to +W’s (or God’s) trumpeting before it even really begins to address them directly in the second half.  In movements one and two, White shows +W as a human being—an earnest man developing conviction in the theology of Aquinas and belief in the Catholic Faith.  The picture emerges via the juxtaposition of extremes:  martyrs on one side and mocking musicians on the other—and the bishop in the middle making his way thanks to a number of stops along the road.  First, the home life; second, the discipline of a decent primary school; third, the transcendent sounds of the German composers, whose melodies, harmonies and rhythms hit upon “a whole world of non-moral goodness, the vision of paradisal order which great music conveys,” as Burgess put it in 1973—useful in moving the moody non-believer away from melancholy’s child—error; fourth, reading (books on Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare, man and woman, and Aquinas); fifth and finally, the true religion—which he acknowledged as true and good and practical before even being admitted into the Church (a testament, no doubt, to the power of the humanities as a foundation for serious building of solid temples).
And how did he find religion?  Serendipitously on a surface level—but quite clearly because he put others before he put himself when, as White shows, one looks a little closer:  +W devoted himself to the education of the boys in his London school over whom he had some charge.  He was not a Paul Pennyfeather type, having the boys compose mindless compositions simply to pass the time while he idled away with his own ennui.  No, he put self aside and wrestled with the questions of the young, arguing with them about which way was up, and rejecting the pompous declarations of freedom and license of the post-war world.  He was a teacher, so he set about getting answers.  The first four stops, we are told, are what pushed him forward to Catholicism.  Practically speaking it was a question about contraception from his wards that sent him to a Catholic priest to get the skinny on the matter.  White drops enough hints that one can put two and two together to see how a youthful, honest rejection of the hypocritical positions of those tasked with leading his generation helped pave the way for a staunch disposition to seek consistency, authenticity, and alignment with the one, the good and the true (the Best—the ideals that still flower in some, who knows how)—ultimately taking him to Catholicism, thanks to the grace of a good God (non-Calvinist, non-Sadist, non-inconsequential) and flourishing thanks to an ultimately humble interior willing to acknowledge the truth when it appeared. 
            White ties into the whole deal the efficacy of prayer and makes the case that +W’s soul was particularly prepared for its vocation by the beads—the 15 mysteries a day that +W said during his “forty days” prior to entering the Church.  Truth, prayer, and a distinct desire to never neglect the young moderns, whose number he had.  Just as so many opened their doors to him when he went calling, +W has in turn opened the door to speak to those seeking.  He rather kindly opened the door to me and a friend when we, unsolicited, showed up to pick his brain and offer our sympathies during his internal exile in London.  His devotion to Our Lady is perhaps only rivaled by his devotion to serving others in service of the truth.  Were Socrates alive today, I imagine the two would get on rather well.  These are things White touches upon in the first half of the book.
           
            Eighth, that second half.
The second half of the book consists of Explosive Missives (familiar missives—+W on women in slacks, The Sound of Music, with White referencing Kundera, Solzhenitsyn, a female critic of the Julie Andrews musical, and others to back up the arguments).  This is followed by Veritas Variations.  In the first variation White gives voice to Dante, Leo XIII, Aquinas, Boswell, Orwell, Berryman and contrasts it all with the Conciliar popes from Paul VI to Francis as the latter make war with reality.  The second variation touches on history (and gives a fine rundown of Ven. Holzhauser’s Seven Ages).  In the third variation, White tackles the subject that got +W in so much hot water with those convinced obeisance must be made to the Elder Brothers (the subject is not just the h0Ɩ0cαųst™ but 9/11 as well).  The fourth variation gets to the final battle between +W and Fellay for steerage of the soul of the SSPX.  Entitled “Betrayal,” it is the most unnerving and infuriating portion of the entire book—and rightly so.  It cannot be read without experiencing a tremendous feeling of disgust for the way the confreres of +W (not to mention the rest of the world) reacted with the utmost abject submission to the Father of Lies and his minions on earth.  One will rage reading it—and White, perfectly blending the martyr motif in with his timeline of events, senses as much:  that is why a brief Coda wraps it up.  White seeks to calm the nerves of the reader, lifting the reader out of the mire of outrage and reminding him that this has all been seen before.  He gives one nod to a Beatles hit and thus ends where he begins, intoning the Danish Prince for a final parting lesson.
 
One could spend a great deal of time picking up the various threads that White hangs out for the reader in the second half.  Those who have already spent some time on them may find points to argue over or may write to the publisher seeking to have a Vol. II released with even more Voices to add fuel to the fire.  The construction of the 2^nd half invites scrutiny and debate (particularly the third variation), and one can appreciate the way White’s created a symphony of ideas.  Those who haven’t spent much time on tin foil hat matters may find themselves befuddled by a vague sense of a common theme, the meaning of which eludes them.  Have no fear:  I submit this as addendum one. 
 God knows neither +W nor ABL were remiss in drawing attention to the “elusive theme” (the fourth variation makes that abundantly clear)—but today one has to walk on eggshells or risk being brutalized by wizards operating behind the Internet curtain, using scanning algorithms (and Israeli censors) to determine who gets to stay and who gets booted off the information highway.  Perhaps that’s why White approaches the theme with tact and forbearance, artfully representing the facts in a manner that does not require pontificating on his part.  He gets his point across.  I suspect he’s already on the naughty list anyway though—so forbearance be damned; let the barbs fly.  (Or is this is a failing on my part?  I side with Lennon—I never much liked Let It Be).
Of course, by the time one finishes the fourth variation, the third seems a distant memory and hardly to matter at all.  The martyr motif still echoes in the ears.  So maybe, yeah, let it be.
But still, it pinches…
 
            Ninth, now then…
            So after all that, what is this book exactly?  The book is divided into four sections, but it really consists of two parts.  The first part is written by Dr. White the biographer.  The second part is written by Dr. White the professor/artist/orchestrator/tin foil hat wearer/defender of +W/lover of Catholicism/lover of truth/lover of virtue.  The first part describes the life of BPW.  The second part is exactly as the titles of its sections describe:  missives and truth-telling.  It is White musing on Williamson musing on—well, I’d prefer not to add to the musings; I’ve mused enough already—and theirs are sufficient.  The “variations” section is creatively designed to allow White to disappear and bring in the soloists.  The entire second half works as an apologia pro Williamson, focusing on his more “controversial” pronouncements but also on the wimp-driven betrayal of the SSPX into the hands of limp-wristed sell-outs in Rome.  That is why to describe the overall book as a biography is really somewhat misleading.  It is only half biography.  The other half is something else altogether.