Garry Wills - Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man

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PRAISE FOR GARRY WILLS

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

National Humanities Medal

Sooner or later, anyone who writes about America must reckon with Garry Wills. Not that its easy to do. The books are demanding enoughnot the prose, which is graceful and elegantbut the arguments, which are unfailingly original, often provocative, occasionally subversive and, now and again, utterly perverse, yet stamped every time with the finality of the last word. In his 50 or so books, a handful of them masterpieces, Wills has ranged further than any other American writer of his time, covering much of the western tradition, ancient and contemporary, sacred and profane. Prospect Magazine

Perhaps the most distinguished Catholic intellectual in America over the last 50 years. John L. Allen

NIXON AGONISTES: THE CRISIS OF THE SELF-MADE MAN

Mr. Wills achieves the not inconsiderable feat of making Richard Nixon a sympatheticeven tragicfigure, 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. John Leonard, The New York Times Book Review

The wit of Nixon Agonistes is a constant delight. Heckling, breezy, allusive the author is a born reporter, a cartoonist in words, master of a tradition of tongue-in-cheek sassiness that goes back well over a century in American political journalism. Commentary Magazine

Astonishing a stunning attempt to possess that past, that we may all of us escape it. John Leonard, The New York Times Book Review

Nixon Agonistes reads like a combination of H. L. Mencken, John Locke and Albert Camus. The New York Times Book Review

Only a man who cant stand to be around people would allow such a figure to be compiled about himself. Garry Wills has caught that quality in Nixon Agonistes, which must be the best book so far about the man, the best written, the best thought out. The New York Review of Books

Wills succeeds, in the end, in making his point, about Nixon, and about America the topic is fascinating, and Wills has ideas which never occurred to other writers. The Harvard Crimson

[Nixon Agonistes is] still the one indispensable primer on modern American politics aprs le dluge of the clamorous 1960s, part Mencken, part Aristotle, part Moby Dick. Prospect Magazine

THE KENNEDY IMPRISONMENT

The ultimate Kennedy book. New Republic

[The Kennedy Imprisonment has] an important thesis and a ringing climax. Kirkus Reviews

REAGANS AMERICA

Ambitious and insightful, this study examines aspects of Ronald Reagans life and career that account for his extraordinary popularity with the American public. Wills, author of Nixon Agonistes and Inventing America, portrays a Reagan whose optimistic personality is in harmony with the deep instincts of Americans. The President, he maintains, embodies the countrys values and its collective dreams and memories. In his show-business years, Reagan was the voice of midwestern baseball and the plain-spoken hero of horse epics; later, as Hollywood union leader and California governor, he was the complete company man. As President, his simple answers in the face of troubling complexities have let Americans feel positive about themselves. While sometimes overdetailed, Willss study succeeds admirably in isolating the sources of Reagans appeal. Publishers Weekly

Reagans America is a fascinating biography whose impact is enhanced by techniques of psychological profile and social history. Los Angeles Times

The best book yet by a profound student of the culture of the American presidency. Mr. Wills illuminates the symbiosis linking Middle American religion, the illusory reality of Hollywood, Ronald Reagans career, and the meaning of his presidency. The book is consistently entertaining. The conclusions about American politics are disturbing. Foreign Affairs

A timely and brilliant analysis that presages and enlightens the current Presidential crisis in foreign policy. Written with all the wit, originality and intelligence that Wills brought to Inventing America, Nixon Agonistes and The Kennedy Imprisonment, this book, though cutting a swath through a now-familiar collection of mythopoeic falsehoods, serves not to indict Ronald Reagan, but to unearth the roots of his indestructible and charismatic faith A provocative, readable, unique account with sources, inspirations and implications far beyond mere politics. Kirkus Reviews

Nixon Agonistes

The Crisis of the Self-Made Man

Garry Wills

To Mayno Collins Wills

who lived for others

Contents

O lastly over-strong against thy self!

Milton, Samson Agonistes

When youre alone like he was alone

Eliot, Sweeney Agonistes

Nixon Agonistes: The View from 2017

Nixon is a perpetual font of interest. I was reminded of that in 1995, a year after Nixon died, when Oliver Stones publicist called me to say, Oliver wants you to be on the set of the movie he is making about Nixons life. I asked whether the film would take the same conspiratorial reading of recent history that Stone had advanced in his JFK. I had read that an early version of the script was criticized by veterans of Nixons White House (like Alexander Butterfield) who had been consulted by Stone. I was assured that the later scripts had been purged of such material (by Robert Scheer, among others). So, with some misgivings, I went to Los Angeles.

Stone said that Anthony Hopkins, too, had doubts about the movie when he was first offered the role of Nixon. He objected that he is Welsh, and it would not be seemly for him to play an American president, especially if the portrayal was critical of that president. Stone said that he was not making an attack on Nixon. He wanted, in fact, to show some sympathy for Nixon as a tragically frightened manmuch like the picture I presented in my book, which he asked Hopkins to read. When I met Hopkins in his trailer on the set, Richard Rogerss Victory at Sea was booming outside ita favorite recording of Nixons (what Camelot was said to be for Kennedy). Hopkins told me he had done a lot more homework than just reading my book. He had visited the Nixon library and talked to various people who knew him.

He was resolved not to try an impersonation of Nixon. He rejected the attempt of the makeup people to give him a prosthetic nose, though he did let them adjust his hairline. He studied the mans walk. But his real effort was to get the voice rightthe voice of a hollow man, with echoes from a depth of despair. Nixon always felt encircled by dire perils, driving him deeper into the well of his loneliness. Whom did he ever trust? Ike deserted and almost destroyed him. In his head he heard the Kennedys and their cultists always mocking him. His own agents, like Charles Colson and E. Howard Hunt, became mini-mes who competed with his paranoia and brought on real trouble by fighting all his imagined troubles for him. The most loyal, like his daughter Julie, Pat Buchanan, and Rose Woods, were protective verging on pitying. Even his wife was frightened by his demons.