Garry Wills Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Garry Wills

For Garry Wills, reading is a political act, a complicated, historically embedded performance that re-imagines--simultaneously reinforcing and revising--the political and ethical structures that shape community. Trained as a classical scholar and self-educated in American history, Wills first published political commentary and historical scholarship. However, since the latter half of the 1960s he has combined these divergent forms in a distinctive cultural criticism. His journalism and studies of American ideology integrate a densely contextualized rhetorical analysis and contemporary social critique in a mutually resonant dialectic, producing a series of energizing "images" rather than a linear narrative of American culture. History is an immanent force for Wills: his intellectual task has been to rediscover the American past and present it in a manner that will help readers renew their commitment to the shared community. His analytical methodology echoes and precedes parallel academic developments; yet, he has developed his approach almost entirely for a wider audience, writing newspaper columns, magazine articles, and a series of genre-defying, mainstream books studying the American mythos.

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