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?

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]

--Marshal Zeringue