I know Gary Wills first as a journalist (primarily for the New York Review of Books), second as a Presidential historian, and third as a scholar of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. A long, thoughtful profile in the National Catholic Reporter redresses the imbalance of my knowledge of this figure, whom I have admired since first discovering his writing a few years ago. It also includes some unexpected (and funny) revelations:
No matter where Wills stood on the ideological spectrum, his writing in venues such as Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post and New York magazine always turned heads. Over time, he entered that select circle of journalists who are almost as much a celebrity as the people they cover.
Wills befriended opera diva Beverly Sills, for example, and became especially close to her mother. He also became close to cult filmmaker John Waters, who rescued Wills from arrest during the 1972 counter-inaugural protest in Washington by claiming him as a member of his film crew. He struck up a friendship with Bill Willis, the drummer at Jack Ruby’s Dallas nightclub. (Wills published a biography of Ruby in 1968, eschewing conspiracy theories about Ruby’s involvement in a Kennedy assassination plot because, as Wills put it, “he was incapable of organizing anything.” He quotes Willis about Ruby’s motive for killing Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald: “I’m downtown anyway … might as well shoot him.”)
I wouldn’t have guessed that the longtime Northwestern University professor was connected to the Hairspray director. Later, the piece mentions Wills’s relationship with Studs Terkel:
Terkel was a particular Wills favorite. He recounts once watching Terkel introduce himself to Federal Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner, a distinguished conservative jurist who also teaches law at the University of Chicago, during an academic function. Terkel informed Posner that he got his law degree from the University of Chicago, and asked the judge what subject he teaches.
“Studs is very hard of hearing, and basically hears what he expects to hear,” Wills said with a laugh. “So when Posner told him his subject was ‘Evidence,’ Studs looked at him and said, ‘What’s that? Avarice?’”
Terkel is the subject of Wills’s newest contribution to the NYRB. It’s available online only to subscribers or those with database access to the journal, but I recommend picking up the December 18 issue to read it. (I say this especially if, like me, you are a Chicagoan.) It begins:
Studs Terkel has a new book out—the fourth one he produced after turning ninety. I was writing a review of it when his son called to tell me he had died (at age ninety-six). Terkel’s astonishing late productivity came from what, for him especially, would seem a crippling development: the fact that he lost most of his hearing during his late years, despite the best efforts of doctors and hearing-aid technicians. Bad as this would be for any of us, it was a special blow to Terkel, whose specialty was hearing others tell about themselves. I have been in cabs with him and wondered at his ability to elicit the driver’s whole life story before we reached our destination.
It was a gift that came from empathy, curiosity, and a willingness to let others express their views, even when Terkel did not share them. On this gift he built a literature—some eighteen books of oral histories and radio interviews with people famous and obscure, all of them unusually willing to reveal themselves in intimate ways. He has given his vast trove of tapes to the Chicago History Museum, where they will be listened to in perpetuity. (Where else can you hear the voices of Dorothy Parker being witty or Zero Mostel being explosive?)
When he was deprived of his ability to listen to others, he dug into his own memories, his vast experience, his range of acquaintances (many now dead), and his observations of the worlds of politics, music, theater, and urban life. With the help of his longtime assistant at WFMT Radio, Sydney Lewis, and the encouragement of his publisher, André Schiffrin of the New Press, Terkel took his isolation from sound as an opportunity to write more than he had in any other part of his life.
Tags: Garry Wills, National Catholic Reporter, New York Review of Books, Studs Terkel
