Randy Shilts Critical Essay | Interview by Randy Shilts with Garry Wills

SOURCE: An interview in Rolling Stone, Issue 666, September 30, 1993, pp. 46-9, 122-23.

A well-known American novelist, historian, and critic, Wills is author of Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (1970), a study of Richard Nixon's political career. In the following interview, Shilts discusses his writing, personal life, and career.

[Shilts]: I thought, going into it, there were two problems I was going to have with [Conduct Unbecoming]—one, that nobody cared about the issue, that people would view it as a subissue of a subissue, not something important enough to read a whole book about, and my second fear was getting people to talk to me. Actually, though, both of them proved rather groundless. On the latter problem, I guess I was operating on my own stereotypes of military people, that they wouldn't want to rock the boat, that they wouldn't want to be named, they were...
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