If someone asks me who's my favorite author, I would look at them dumb-founded, like they'd asked me who's my favorite daughter--and I've only two of them! But if you gave me some leeway, say living authors and asked for an all-star team about the size of a football all-star team (offense and defense), I could probably comply. But even if the number of picks was kept lower, Garry Wills would make the team. Descriptive, elegant prose combined with erudition and wit mark Wills's writing. And because he's no youngster (now 85), he's all the more valuable. So sometimes I just want to check-in on him, and here's what I've found of late.
This is a sample of what Wills recently wrote about the American obsession with "gun rights" [sic]:
"If a person were found to have shown up regularly in so many places where so many crimes had been committed by so many people, how could that person not be called to account for such suspicious behavior? He would clearly be investigated for being present with such persistence at crime scenes. Did he facilitate them, making them easier by his mere presence? What could induce any innocent person to be so energetically omnipresent at so many varied crime scenes? What excuse could relieve him from the charge of being an accessory? A person with such skill and dogged effort would be considered a national menace, no matter how many excuses he could concoct for such weird conduct.
But guns can do all of those things and profess an entire non-involvement. “Who, me?” says Gun, going on:
I never asked to be part of anyone’s wrongdoing. Why pick on me? You must have a gun-persecution disorder. You accusers are the ones who show up at every crime scene, trying to drag me into actions as if I’m an agent. I am totally passive. I never asked to be bought by a homicidal maniac. Go after the nutty people and leave me alone."
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