Excellent Profile Of My Idol

If I could be any other writer/journalist, it would be Garry Wills.
http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2605

 

Came across an epic quote from The Prof, earlier today, but don't have it with me. Will post it tomorrow.

And here we go, from Garry's WoodStein review:

"These new Children of God . . . were genuinely righteous, and censorious, and prudes -- which puzzles many
now, when we know they were crooks, too. This was an administration with an equal fondness for
Billy Graham and for break-ins . . . the dingy new Kingdom of Heaven (was inspired by such commandments
as): Seek and you shall find; ask, you will be answered; break and enter, and it shall be given to you."

 

I'd be hard pressed to come up with a writer who has affected my thinking more in the past 20 years than Garry Wills.

I don't agree with him on many things but Wills always has his facts in order and makes both a honest and compelling arguments.

 

Let me just say how sad it is when a great profile of a giant of a writer gets a couple of comments and mindless fluff gets pages upon pages.

 

I really thought this was going to be about Allie McGuire.

 

Thanks for posting this link.

 

Interesting. Surprised he's written that much about religion, and can understand why he's no longer interested in doing so.

 

Seconded. Fascinating piece, and person. What about his work stands out to you FB?

 

bump

 

First, he's extraordinarily smart.
Second, he has an exceptional catholicity -- small "c" -- of interests. Read his work on the Founders -- "Inventing America," about the Declaration, and "Explaining America," about The Federalist Papers -- and his short bio for the American Presidents series about James Madison. Read "Lincoln At Gettysburg." I think "Nixon Agonistes" is one of the four or five essential political biographies ever written. I thought he missed badly with his John Wayne book, but I give him credit for the attempt. And "Bare Ruined Choirs" is a book I can reasonably say changed my life.
His combination of scholarship and lucidity is best seen in an old piece included in Tom Wolfe's "New Journalism" book called "Martin Luther King Is Still On The Case," when Wills goes to Memphis after the assassination and preciently describes the coming splintering of the civil-rights movement.

 

Wills' translation of Martial's epigrams is reviewed in today's NYTBR.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/books/review/Coates-t.html?_r=1