Garry Wills - The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power

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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

The Kennedy Imprisonment

A Meditation on Power

Garry Wills

To the Other Garry Willses

Garry S. (18841956)

Garry L. (1961 )

Contents

There lurks about the fancies of many men and women an imaginary conception of an ideal statesman, resembling the character of which Alcibiades has been the recognized type for centuries. There is a sort of intellectual luxury in the idea which fascinates the human mind. We like to fancy a young man in the first vigour of body and in the first vigour of mind, who is full of bounding enjoyment, who excels all rivals at masculine feasts, who gains the love of women by a magic attraction, but who is also a powerful statesman, who regulates great events, who settles great measures, who guides a great nation. We seem to outstep the moenia mundi, the recognized limits of human nature, when we conceive a man in the pride of youth to have dominion of the pursuits of age, to rule both the light things of women and the grave things of men. Human imagination so much loves to surpass human power, that we shall never be able to extirpate the conception.

W ALTER B AGEHOT , of Bolingbroke

The Kennedy Imprisonment: The View from 2017

In 1981, I argued in this book that privilege can be imprisoning. Because of privilege of various sorts, bad behavior does not have consequences, which means that it continues and becomes more pronounced, accumulating bad effects. The Kennedys could coast along on their cushion of money, deference, intimidation, and sycophants.

But now, in 2017, I would like to reflect on a prison break. The liberator of those previously imprisoned was that great leveler of all privilege or pretension: deathbeginning with the breaking of the enchantment around John Kennedy when his cruel, premature death ended his presidency before he could finish his first term. That began the hard, late education of his tough kid brother, who was softened enough to learn by heart Aeschyluss words (from Edith Hamiltons translation of Agamemnon

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