Wills, Garry 1934–

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WILLS, Garry 1934–

PERSONAL:

Born May 22, 1934, in Atlanta, GA; son of John H. and Mayno Wills; married Natalie Cavallo, 1959; children: John Christopher, Garry Laurence, Lydia Mayno. Education: St. Louis University, B.A., 1957; Xavier University, M.A., 1958; Yale University, M.A., 1959, Ph.D., 1961. Religion: Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, Northwestern University, 1881 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208-2220. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Richmond News Leader, Richmond, VA, associate editor, 1961; Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC, fellow, 1961-62; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, associate professor, 1962-67, assistant professor of humanities, 1968-80; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, Henry R. Luce Professor of American Culture and Public Policy, 1980-88, adjunct professor of history, 1988-2005, professor emeritus, 2005—. Regents Lecturer, University of California, 1971.

MEMBER:

American Philosophical Society, American Antiquarian Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Historical Society, American Association for Applied Linguistics, American Academy of Arts and Letters.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Merle Curti Award, Organization of American Historians, 1978, National Book Critics Award, 1979, and John D. Rockefeller III Award, 1979, all for Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence; National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, 1992, and Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, Columbia University, 1993, both for Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America; Peabody Award; Wilbur Cross Medal, Yale University; Presidential Medal, Endowment for the Humanities; John Hope Franklin Award; First Freedom Award, Council for the First Freedom; honorary literary doctorates from more than a dozen colleges and universities.

WRITINGS:

Chesterton: Man and Mask, Sheed & Ward (New York, NY), 1961.

Politics and Catholic Freedom, Regnery (New York, NY), 1964.

(Editor) Roman Culture: Weapons and the Man, Braziller (New York, NY), 1966.

(With Ovid Demaris) Jack Ruby, New American Library (New York, NY), 1968.

The Second Civil War: Arming for Armageddon, New American Library (New York, NY), 1968.

Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1970, revised edition, New American Library (New York, NY), 1979.

Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1972.

(Editor) Values Americans Live By, Arno (New York, NY), 1974.

Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1978.

Confessions of a Conservative, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1979.

At Button's (novel), Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1979.

Explaining America: The Federalist, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1980.

The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1982.

Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1982.

Lead Time: A Journalist's Education, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1983.

Reagan's America: The Innocents at Home, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1987.

Under God: Religion and American Politics, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1990.

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1992.

Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1993.

Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's "Macbeth," New York Public Library (New York, NY), 1994.

John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

Saint Augustine, Viking (New York, NY), 1999.

A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.

Venice: Lion City, the Religion of Empire, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

James Madison, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2002.

Why I Am A Catholic, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2002.

Mr. Jefferson's University, National Geographic (Washington, DC), 2002.

Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2003.

St. Augustine's Conversion, Viking (New York, NY), 2004.

Henry Adams and the Making of America, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2005.

The Rosary: A Prayer Comes Round, Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

(Translator and author of introduction) Saint Augustine, Confessions, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Bush's Fringe Government, preface by James Carroll, New York Review of Books (New York, NY), 2006.

What Paul Meant, Viking (New York, NY), 2006.

What Jesus Meant, Viking (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to books, including What Is Conservatism?, edited by Frank S. Meyer, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 1964; and Generation of the Third Eye, edited by Daniel Callahan, Sheed & Ward (New York, NY), 1965. Author of column, "Outrider," Universal Press Syndicate, 1970-1999. Contributor of articles and book reviews to numerous periodicals, including Esquire, New York Review of Books, and New York Times magazine; contributing editor to Esquire, 1967-70.

SIDELIGHTS:

Although his formal educational background is in classical studies, Garry Wills has written on topics as diverse as Jack Ruby (killer of President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald), race relations in America, and the Catholic Church. He is known for his incisive political commentaries, especially such books as Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man and Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Wills is unique in his criticism of both the liberal and conservative establishments.

In the case of his study of Richard Nixon's political career, Nixon Agonistes, most reviewers were "quite startled to receive a description of Richard M. Nixon as a liberal," reported George Reedy in the Washington Post. "But that is precisely the characterization set forth by Garry Wills in Nixon Agonistes, and he marshals an impressive array of quotations to support his thesis…. Basically, Mr. Wills regards Richard M. Nixon as a framework for studying the philosophical patterns of that part of the electorate which is politically effective….In the analysis that follows, [the book] becomes fascinating, although controversial, reading…. Even though many of his conclusions are arguable, Mr. Wills has produced a very good book." John Leonard of the New York Times agreed. He deemed Nixon Agonistes "astonishing" and added: "Mr. Wills achieves the not inconsiderable feat of making Richard Nixon a sympathetic—even tragic—figure, while at the same time being appalled by him. But superb as it is, his 'psycho-biography' of Mr. Nixon is merely prelude to a provocative essay on political theory."

Others, however, found Nixon Agonistes less appealing. A Newsweek critic, for example, noted: "Garry Wills is a bright young man who left his Yale Ph.D. in classics behind him only to bring the academic vices of preciosity and obfuscation to his new career as a political journalist. Now Wills has produced a galumphing, endless and endlessly roundabout tome on Richard Nixon and how he got that way….In the course of his chaotic book… Wills roams wide and far and everywhere…. [This is] a book that manipulates historical abstractions instead of asking the hard and pressing practical questions of policy and direction that have made our current political life almost a day-to-day crisis." Frank S. Meyer in the National Review was even more critical of Wills and his approach. He described Nixon Agonistes as being "a strange book. Its avowed subject is Richard Nixon; yet its real subject is America today—an America about which there is nothing good to be said." Meyer further observed: "Since it is an indictment of America couched as an indictment of Richard Nixon, the seriousness of the indictment would seem to demand serious argument; what argument there is, however, is scattered here and there in a few dozen of its 617 pages…. I have not been Mr. Nixon's warmest admirer, but this book has raised him inestimably in my esteem."

A New York reviewer felt that Nixon Agonistes, despite its alleged weaknesses, is nonetheless worthwhile reading. The reviewer wrote: "Wills provides some of the most revealing insights into the roots and nature of [Nixon] yet written…. Although [the author] devotes more space to grappling with theory than with personality, his quick, deft thrusts at leading political figures of the day, inserted throughout, enliven [ Nixon Agonistes ]…. There are, of course, invitations to arguments in this long book… but in the main, Wills paints a broad and provocative landscape of the nation's—and now Nixon's—travail."

A later Wills effort, the award-winning Inventing America, was almost equally controversial. Basically a revisionist account of the life of Thomas Jefferson and his most famous written work, the Declaration of Independence, Inventing America seeks to prove that Jefferson was influenced primarily by philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment rather than by John Locke and that our interpretation of the Declaration does not correspond to what the Founding Fathers originally intended. The result of Wills's "demystification" attempt, according to a reviewer for Time, "is a scintillating tour de force of historical detective work…. His most original achievement is his exorcism of John Locke as Jefferson's alleged inspiration…. To Locke, society was an aggregation of fundamentally separate individuals, but to the Scots, sociability was the very essence of man. If Wills is right—and his case is formidable—the roots of our political culture are far less individualistic than they are communal." "No one has offered so drastic a revision or so close or convincing an analysis of the [Declaration] itself as Wills has now presented," wrote a New York Review of Books critic. "[His] interpretation offers a fresh perspective both on Jefferson and on the Congress…. Since Wills gives us so much to think about in this brilliant book, it is perhaps churlish to suggest that he might have given us more. But one cannot help wishing that he had pursued [certain questions] somewhat further than he did."

New Republic reviewer Judith Shklar felt that Inventing America is incomplete for a different reason. "Garry Wills is an investigative reporter uncovering a conspiracy to distort the Declaration of Independence…. Since [he] is prosecuting charlatans rather than arguing with fellow-scholars he uses evidence selectively to score points, and his tone is generally sly and snide. The outcome is terrible intellectual history, but oddly a convincing picture of Jefferson does emerge. [Nevertheless,] we are still without a really good book on the Declaration." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., commenting in the Saturday Review, called Inventing America a "discursive but often brilliant" book that "illuminates both the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the nation that thereafter revered it." Schlesinger further noted that Wills "sustains [his thesis] persuasively. He carries forward his exploration of the mind of the young Jefferson through a series of ingenious suggestions and digressions…. In short, Inventing America is a rich and original, if somewhat disorderly, book."

Commonweal critic Robert V. Remini concluded that Inventing America "is an important book, perhaps one of the most important books published in American history in the last ten years. Its subject is the Declaration of Independence and the author has approached it with such originality and high scholarship that the results of his research and thinking are little less than breathtaking…. This penetrating, original and exciting book, written at times with a Jeffersonian felicity, only begins to uncover the lost world of Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries. Much more remains to be revealed. Perhaps in the future Wills will help provide it."

Wills has won recognition for several volumes, including Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, which received the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1993. In this book, Wills contends that President Abraham Lincoln, with his mastery of oration, irrevocably altered public perception of the American Constitution when he delivered his stirring speech at the Gettysburg battleground during the Civil War. One New York Times Book Review critic called this volume "bracing and provocative," and another reviewer, William McFeely, wrote in the same publication: Lincoln at Gettysburg is "a brilliant book demonstrating that Lincoln's words still have power."

Books such as Nixon Agonistes, Inventing America, and Lincoln at Gettysburg are scarcely Wills's only publications to provide radical reconsiderations of American history. In Explaining America: The Federalist, for example, he draws stark contrasts between the Federalist essays and the Constitution that they allegedly inspired. Marvin Meyers, writing in the New York Times Book Review, affirmed that in Explaining America Wills "contrives a novel Scottish-Virginian 'Federalist' that uninspired readers of that ancient American political classic and constitutional textbook have never seen." In Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment, Wills contends that General George Washington, first American president, deliberately emulated the legendary Roman leader who helped save his country from ruin before returning home to resume plowing his land. Patrick Anderson, in his New York Times Book Review assessment, deemed Cincinnatus "unconventional political analysis" and a "provocative commentary."

Still another of Wills's incisive works is Reagan's America: Innocents at Home, in which he examines the American public's complicity in the shaping of Ronald Reagan's image. C. Vann Woodward wrote in the New York Times Book Review that Reagan's America constitutes a "remarkable and evenhanded study." A similar volume, John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity, explores the notion of film actor John Wayne, who played heroes in many westerns and war dramas, as what Molly Haskell, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called "a symbol of manhood for generations of Americans." Haskell added: "The book's crowded agenda, with its generous dose of debunking and deconstruction, yields fascinating insights and revelations but also irritating and tedious passages as well. Mr. Wills's prodigiousness lies in gifts not usually found together: a zeal for meticulous research combined with the head-spinning leaps and pirouettes of the essayist." Virginia Wright Wexman observed in the Film Quarterly that Wills had produced "a thoughtful, evenhanded study."

Wills endeavors to deflate cultural iconography in The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power, in which he contends that the presidency of John F. Kennedy, far from constituting an American Camelot, was more indicative of leadership by what Joe McGinniss, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called "a callous, cunning, almost pathologically narcissistic manipulator." McGinniss saw The Kennedy Imprisonment as "an energetic attempt to stamp out any last glowing embers in the ash heap that once was Camelot." In A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government, Wills produces another characteristically compelling analysis. Here he examines the contrast between ideology and action and relates that contrast to the American public's suspicions with regard to its own government. A Publishers Weekly reviewer proclaimed A Necessary Evil "a master extended essay," while Booklist reviewer Mary Carroll recommended the work as "a timely analysis" and summarized it as "provocative and enlightening."

Wills has also written about religion and religious figures in various works. Notable among these volumes is Under God: Religion and American Politics, which analyzes subjects ranging from the Scopes trial, in which Biblical and Darwinian ideologies clashed, to the candidacy of Reverend Jesse Jackson. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Hugh Brogan found the book "somewhat eccentric but undeniably worth reading." In Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's "Macbeth," Wills speculates that the tragedy, with its supernatural elements and its ties to the Gunpowder plot, in which Catholics contrived to bomb England's Parliament in 1605, "may have had greater appeal for its original audiences than is readily apparent today," Stanley Wells wrote in the New York Times Book Review. Wells added that Witches and Jesuits "is accessibly written and ranges widely in treatment of the play." Saint Augustine, another book on religion, relates the life of the Catholic bishop who lived from 354 to 430. New Republic reviewer Jaroslav Pelikan lauded Saint Augustine as a work that "deserves to be taken seriously," and a Publishers Weekly critic described the biography as "captivating and accessible." In Library Journal, David Bourquin hailed Saint Augustine as a "marvelous contribution to St. Augustine studies," and in the New York Times Book Review, John T. Noonan, Jr. called the biography "brilliant" and acknowledged Wills for his "agile mind."

Wills has supplied contributions to various periodicals, including Esquire and the New York Times magazine. Nearly forty of these pieces are collected in Lead Time: A Journalist's Education, which includes essays on political figures such as presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Robert Sherrill, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called Wills "a fascinating writer" and affirmed that he "elevates his profession even when he strikes out."

Wills studies contemporary and earlier American presidents in a number of books, including another about Jefferson titled Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power, in which he studies Jefferson's "role as a defender and extender of the slave system." Jefferson was dubbed the "Negro President" by Timothy Pickering, a Massachusetts Federalist, based on the fact that at least twelve of Jefferson's electoral votes garnered in the 1800 election were a result of the slave population of the Southern states. Wills notes that three-fifths of their numbers were added to the number of free men, along with the number of representatives and senators, in order to determine the number of electoral votes. With the tie-breaking vote by Aaron Burr, Jefferson defeated John Adams who, along with John Quincy Adams, were the only two preabolition presidents to oppose slavery. In the case of John Adams, it cost him the election won by Jefferson.

Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had one vote, but the Constitution provided for the fractional counting of slaves, which influenced the location of the federal capital and the pursuit of other slave-holding regions. Jefferson was a proponent of Southern agrarianism over commerce with the North. Gene A. Smith commented in History: "In Wills's telling, Aaron Burr and Pickering emerge as heroes trying to end the hold of the slave power. Yet both ultimately become branded conspirators: Burr because of his western schemes and Pickering because he advocated for New England secession."

Earl M. Maltz noted in the National Review: "Throughout, Wills emphasizes what he sees as the overwhelming influence of the slave power and downplays the importance of congressional actions that limited slavery." Maltz, who felt that the history "is almost as much about Pickering as it is about Jefferson," further found Wills's information about Pickering to be lacking. Maltz cited the fact that Pickering voted against the Hillhouse amendment in 1804. Proposed by Senator James Hillhouse of Connecticut as Congress was contemplating the Louisiana Purchase, it would have mandated that slavery be forbidden in all states that had been acquired from France. Maltz also questioned Wills's portrayal of the importance and impact of the three-fifths vote.

In Henry Adams and the Making of America, Wills emphasizes the importance of the monumental history written by Henry Adams that documented the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Originally published in nine volumes, it is now available in a Library of America two-volume edition. Adams had earlier published a revisionist history of John Smith and Pocahontas, relying on archival materials and private papers. He used the same technique in writing his sweeping American history, which Wills feels has not received the attention and reading it deserves. For example, Wills responded to Richard Hofstadter, a critic of Adams's caricature of the early period, by noting, as Richard Lingeman stated in the New York Times Book Review: "Hofstadter's view, Wills counters, is largely derived from his misinterpretation of the first six chapters of the 'History,' in which Adams produces a sociological portrait of American society and culture in 1800…. These chapters indeed portray America as an uncultured backwater. But Wills argues that Adams intended the opening chapters as a prelude to his historical narrative, and that they foreshadow the optimistic summing up in the final four chapters of the work." Lingeman complimented Wills on this rereading of Adams's work, particularly for his "lucid style, imaginative analysis and… talent for historical elucidation."

Over the years, Wills has become a Saint Augustine scholar, translator, and historian. Among his other volumes with religious themes is The Rosary: A Prayer Comes Round, a small book that studies this form of meditation, its history, and its importance to modern spirituality. He begins with an introduction and names notable Catholics who have commented on their own use of the rosary. Wills provides an explanation of how the rosary is said in "Elements of the Rosary," and includes the four prayers of which it consists. Patrick T. Reardon wrote in the U.S. Catholic: "Wills, like a retreat master, walks the reader through meditations on each of the twenty mysteries of the rosary." These are the Luminous, Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious. Included are quotations from scripture and reproductions of seventeen Tintoretto paintings that represent the gospel. Reardon, who felt that Wills's interpretations of the paintings are the most valuable component of the book, wrote that Wills "lets his words soar with poetic wonder." Writing in First Things, Francis Martin felt that Wills's handling of the Joyful Mysteries is the most valuable component of the book. "The information is helpful and the use of historical studies judicious," wrote Martin. "The section on the Sorrowful Mysteries is solid, and the best treatments are those dealing with the Agony in the Garden and the Crucifixion."

Wills interprets the lives and teachings of Jesus and his disciple Paul in What Paul Meant and What Jesus Meant. In the latter, he dismisses the concept of Jesus as proposed by both the Christian right and the Christian left. Although Wills wrote for the conservative National Review for years during what Newsweek contributor David Gates described as the publication's "more intellectually respectable days," in this volume, Wills describes Jesus as a "radical egalitarian," profeminist, and revolutionary who dismissed "just about every form of religion we know." Wills contends that Jesus would defend gays in opposition to the conservative position, and he argues with the liberal view that Jesus performed his good works for purely humanitarian reasons. "This devout contrarianism is no less than you'd expect from Wills," wrote Gates. "He's a tough-minded, many-minded man: a historian, a critic and a social and political observer, as well as a Christian apologist."

Wills's Jesus is a Jesus of faith, but he dismisses the idea of accepting the gospels without question. As Jon Meacham wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "Jesus was neither a politician nor a prelate, and this book's most significant contribution may lie in its reminder that faith is far too important to be considered solely, or even mainly, in political or ecclesiastical terms." Meacham felt that What Jesus Meant "is like a rich conversation with a learned friend and is, Wills writes, a devotional exercise, not a scholarly one. His is a kind of devotion, though, that engages heart and mind, to the ultimate benefit of both."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, August, 1999, Mary Carroll, review of A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government, p. 1984.

Commonweal, October 27, 1978, Robert V. Remini, review of Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, p. 691.

Film Quarterly, summer, 1998, Virginia Wright Wexman, review of John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity, p. 24.

First Things, April, 2006, Francis Martin, review of The Rosary: A Prayer Comes Roundxg, p. 62.

History, spring, 2004, Gene A. Smith, review of Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power, p. 98.

Library Journal, May 1, 1999, David Bourquin, review of St. Augustine, p. 85.

National Review, July 18, 1970, Frank S. Meyer, review of Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man; December 22, 2003, Earl M. Maltz, review of Negro President, p. 45.

New Republic, August 26, 1978, Judith Shklar, review of Inventing America, p. 32; July 19, 1999, Jaroslav Pelikan, review of Saint Augustine, p. 41.

Newsweek, October 19, 1970, review of Nixon Agonistes, p. 115; March 20, 2006, David Gates, review of What Jesus Meant, p. 72.

New York, October 19, 1970, review of Nixon Agonistes.

New York Review of Books, August 17, 1978, review of Inventing America, p. 78.

New York Times, October 15, 1970, John Leonard, review of Nixon Agonistes.

New York Times Book Review, March 1, 1981, Marvin Meyers, review of Explaining America: The Federalist, p. 11; March 14, 1982, Joe McGinniss, review of The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power, p. 22; July 3, 1983, Robert Sherrill, review of Lead Time: A Journalist's Education, p. 2; August 5, 1984, Patrick Anderson, review of Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment, p. 9; January 11, 1987, C. Vann Woodward, review of Reagan's America: Innocents at Home, p. 1; October 28, 1990, Hugh Brogan, review of Under God: Religion and American Politics, p. 1; June 7, 1992, William McFeely, review of Lincoln at Gettysburg, p. 1; December 6, 1992, review of Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, p. 89; November 20, 1994, Stanley Wells, review of Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth," p. 50; March 23, 1997, Molly Haskell, review of John Wayne's America, p. 3; July 25, 1999, John T. Noonan, Jr., review of St. Augustine, p. 9; September 11, 2005, Richard Lingeman, review of Henry Adams and the Making of America, p. 17; March 12, 2006, Jon Meacham, review of What Jesus Meant, p. 28.