Garry Wills
From Deborah Solomon's Q & A with Garry Wills, author of Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer:
You’re an observant Catholic. What are your thoughts these days about Pope Benedict XVI?--Marshal Zeringue
I think he’s irrelevant.
Irrelevant to what?
To religion; to the Gospel.
In your new essay collection, “Outside Looking In,” you present yourself as a perpetual “outsider.” But isn’t every serious writer an outsider, at least intermittently?
No. I know a lot of writers who, during campaigns, write speeches, go on the staffs of magazines and things like that.
So what? You can be an alienated staff writer.
I don’t know.
Can you elaborate on that?
It’s a silly question. It’s just quibbling.
Do you not like being interviewed?
I don’t like silly questions.
I think it’s a form of self-flattery to call yourself an outsider, as if you’re the only independent voice in journalism, a lone, pioneering John Wayne type.
I’m hardly...[read on]
