by Garry Wills
I rescued her less often than she did me. When I was in a car accident in Texas, she told the doctors on the telephone to have a cosmetic surgeon present to stitch up my face. Then she called on our daughter in New York, who knows about medical facilities, and the two of them flew down to have me transferred from the first hospital at hand (which had been ineffectual) to a famous one in Houston. The two made a great defensive team. Natalie had done the same kind of thing when our daughter almost lost an eye to a dog bite. Natalie told the doctors, who cared only about saving the eye, that she wanted that as much as they did, but she also wanted a cosmetic surgeon to be there, considering the long-term appearance of Lydia’s face. After hours of surgery on our daughter, when the doctors came out and said they had indeed saved the eye, I was the one who flopped over to a chair to avoid fainting, while my strong wife upheld the family honor.
I could go on forever—about Natalie’s Italian cooking (her soups and pastas), her garden, her remodelings of our home and the art she acquired for it. But she orders me not to do this, and she is she who must be obeyed. Think, nonetheless, of my quandary. I can scare myself silly by considering the close calls in my life. What if Bill had not sent me to the Hoffa hearing in Washington? What if I had not caught that particular Eastern flight back? What if she had not been assigned to the plane that day? What if the seat next to me had not been empty? What if we had not been delayed above LaGuardia for so long? What if I had not been reading Bergson? What if either of us had not read Walter Kaufmann? What if Bill’s party had been in his Manhattan house instead of Stamford? What if the airline had not called her with my phony book story? What if she had believed it when I said she should call only if she found the nonexistent book?
The odds were against me all along the way. Despite this, I won, and we celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary last year. I’m dazed each time I remember that she tried to take my jacket, sat down beside me, warned me against Bill, stamped on the sidewalk, went with me to England, shared my love of opera, corrected my books, bore me three beautiful children, and made my life endlessly rich with meaning. Inside our wedding rings are inscriptions from the marriage poems of Catullus. Hers says Vesper adest (“Nigh is the Night Star”). Mine reads Palam quod cupis capis (“Outward you win what inwardly you want”).
Index
Abernathy, Ralph
Abzug, Bella
Adler, Renata
Agnew, Spiro T.
“Ain’t Misbehavin’,”
Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.
Albanese, Licia
Alcaeus
Alexander, Bill
Alexander the Great
Algren, Nelson
Allen, Ivan
Allen, Joan
Ambrose, Saint
Ameche, Alan “the Horse,”
American Film Institute
American Gigolo (film)
Amram, David
Anacreon
Anderson, Judith
Arendt, Hannah
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Armstrong, Louis
As Good As It Gets (film)
Augustine, Saint
Avedon, Richard
Baer, Neal
Bailey, John
Baltimore:
riots in
Tidewater diphthongs in
Baltimore Colts
Baltimore Film Festival
Baltimore Sun
Barnet, Dick
Barry, Marion
Barrymore, John
Bauer, Gary
Beckett, Samuel
Belli, Melvin
Belloc, Hilaire
Berg, Alban
Berger, Raoul
Bergson, Henri
Berkeley, California
Bernstein, Felicia
Bernstein, Leonard
Berrigan, Daniel
Berrigan, Philip
Berry, Raymond
Berry, Sally
Bevel, Rev. James
Beveridge, Albert
Bing, Rudolf
Black Panthers
Blackstone Rangers
Blanchard, Doc
Blass, Bill
Blitzstein, Marc
Blumenthal, Sidney
Boudin, Leonard
Bowers, Claude
Boyle, Peter
Bozell, Brent
Branch, Taylor
Bremer, Arthur
Bringing Out the Dead (film)
Brocks, Jack
Brookhiser, Rick
Brown, Jerry
Brown, Pamela
Brynner, Yul
Buchanan, Patrick
Buckley, Christopher
Buckley, Pat
Buckley, William F.
and Catholicism
and civil rights
final illness of
generosity of
God and Man at Yale
and National Review
as not an ideological snob
as not an intellectual snob
as not a social snob
as risk taker
and sailing
and Yale
Buckley family
Burnham, James
Burnham, Philip
Burton, Richard
Bush, Barbara
Bush, George H. W.
Bush, George W.
Caddell, Patrick
Cage, John
Cage, Nicolas
Cagney, James
Callas, Maria
Canada, draft evaders in
Capote, Truman
Carmichael, Hoagy
Carmichael, Stokely
Carousel strip joint
Carter, Amy
Carter, Jimmy
campaign of
human rights policies of
post-presidency of
presidential library of
Caruso, Enrico
Carville, James
“Catonsville Nine,”
Cat People (film)
Catullus
Cavallo, John
Chaliapin, Fyodor
Chambers, Whittaker
and Ayn Rand
and pumpkin papers
and Quakerism
Witness
Chesterton, G. K.
Chicago School of Television
Chomsky, Noam
Church Committee
Citizen Kane (film)
Civil Rights Act (1964)
Clancy, William
Clark, Septima
Clinton, Bill
Clinton, Hillary
Cobbett, William
Coffin, Eva
Coffin, William Sloan
Colby, William
Collins, Dorothy
Collins, Judy
Collins, Rose
Commager, Henry Steele, The American Mind
communes
Community Concerts
Congress, U.S.
conspiracy theories
Conyers, John
Copland, Aaron:
“I Bought Me a Cat,”
Old American Songs
Cousy, Bob
Croce, Arlene
Cronin, Father John
Cronkite, Walter
Cuomo, Mario
Curtin, Phyllis
Cusack, Dick, and family
D’Alesandro, Thomas, Jr.
D’Alesandro, Thomas, III, “Tommy Three,”
Daley, Richard
Darrow, Clarence
da Silva, Howard
Davis, Glenn
Deford, Frank
Demaris, Ovid
Democratic National Convention (1968); (1984)
Demosthenes
Despres, Leon
Detroit riot
Dickens, Charles
David Copperfield
Dickenson, Jim
Didion, Joan
di Stefano, Giuseppe
Distributism
Dominican sisters
Donahue, Francis<
br />
Donaldson, Ivanhoe
Donaldson, Sam
Don Juan (film)
Donovan, Artie
Doors, The (film)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Doubleday
Drinan, Robert
Duberman, Martin
Dukakis, Kitty
Dukakis, Michael
Duke, Patty
Duncan, Todd
Dupre, L. G.
Eat Your Makeup (film)
Ebert, Roger
Economic Bill of Rights
Edwards, Willard
Eight Men Out (film)
Ellingham, Lew
Ernst (crocodile)
Esquire
Euripides
Evans, Maurice
Faisal, king of Saudi Arabia
Fallows, James
Farmer, James
Farrar, Geraldine
Farrell, Colin
Farrell, James T.
FBI:
and Berrigan brothers
and civil rights movement
COINTELPRO
and Communists
files of
and Hiss
and King
Prevention and Control of Mobs and Riots
and radical black organizations
and SCLC
thought control by
Feiffer, Jules
Feinstein, Dianne
Felker, Clay
Ferrer, Jose
Fiennes, Joseph
First Amendment petition, as antiwar action
Fonda, Jane
Ford, Gerald R.
Ford, John
Forever Mine (film)
Fort, Jeff
Forza del Destino, La (opera)
Franco, Francisco
Frank, Barney
Franklin, Benjamin
Freedom of Information Act
Freedom Summer
Freud, Sigmund
Gagnon, Roland
Galbraith, John Kenneth
Galbraith, Val
Garrison, “Big Jim,”
Gelb, Peter
Genovese, Vito
Germond, Jack
Gershwin, George
Gielgud, Sir John
Gifford, Frank
Gifford, Marjorie
Gigli, Beniamino
Girardin, Ray
Glenville, Peter
Gobbi, Tito
Golden Arm, The (restaurant)
Goldwater, Barry M.
Gore, Al
Graham, Rev. Billy
Gray, Francine du Plessix
Greek studies:
author′s classes in
author′s doctorate in
Chambers and
Colby and
constant references in daily life to
Hess and
New Testament
Stone and
Greenough, Peter
Gregory, Dick
Guinzberg, Tom
Hairspray (film)
Hampton, Fred
Handel, Georg Friedrich, Giulio Cesare
Harburg, E. Y. “Yip,”
Hardcore (film)
Harper’s Bazaar
Harrelson, Woody
“Harrisburg Seven,”
Hart, Gary
Hart, Jeffrey
Hawkins, Alex
Hayes, Harold
Hellman, Lillian
Herburg, Will
Herod
Herodotus
Hess, Karl:
in antiwar protests
death of
and Ford
and Goldwater
Greek studies of
Hewett, Christopher
Hiss, Alger
and Nixon
and pumpkin papers
Hoffa, Jimmy
Holy Cross College
Holy Innocents, feast of
Homer
Hoover, Herbert
Hoover, J. Edgar
Hope, Bob
Hopkins, Anthony
Houghton Mifflin Company
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
Houston Symphony Orchestra
Huff, Sam
Hummer, Ed
Humphrey, Hubert H.
Hunt, Howard
Hunter, Leonard “Duke,”
Hurt, Mary Beth
Hutchinson, James
I. F. Stone’s Weekly
Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA)
Institute for Policy Studies
International Communist Conspiracy
Iran, hostage crisis in
Isaacson, Walter
Isocrates
Jack Bull (film)
Jackson, Glenda
Jackson, Jesse:
and civil rights movement
and King’s death
presidential campaigns of
talks with youth
Jackson, Jesse, Jr.
Jackson, Mahalia
Jeffers, Robinson, Medea
Jefferson, Thomas
Jesus of Nazareth
JFK (film)
John Birch Society
John Paul II, Pope
Johns Hopkins University, author′s teaching at
Johnson, Lyndon B.
Johnson, Samuel
Jolie, Angelina
Jonah House
Jones, T. O.
Jones, Sam
Jordan, Hamilton
Joyce, James
Kasdan, Laurence
Kaufmann, Walter
Kaye, Danny
Kazantzakis, Nikos
Keillor, Garrison
Keith Vaudeville Circuit
Kempton, Murray
Kendall, Willmoore
Kennedy, John F.
Kennedy, Joseph
Kennedy, Robert F.
Kennedy family
Kenner, Hugh
Kent State University
Kersten, Charles
Kilgallen, Dorothy
King, Coretta Scott
King, Martin Luther, Jr.:
biographers of
and civil rights movement
death of
and FBI
funeral of
memorials to
and Poor People’s Campaign
and sanitation workers’ strike
and scandals
King and I, The (Broadway musical)
Kirk, Russell
Kissinger, Henry A.
Kitchel, Denison
Knox, Bernard
Knoxville, Tennessee, unrest in
Kristol, William
Kupcinet, Irv
Ladd, Alan
Lady’s Not for Burning, The (Fry)
La Follette, Suzanne
Lane, Mark
LaRouche, Lyndon
Last Temptation of Christ, The (film)
Laughton, Charles
Lazarus, raising of
Leonard, John
Lewis, Clarence
Lewis, Sydney
Liberty Lobby
Library of Congress
Liebman, Marvin
Lincoln Center, New York
Lindsay, John V.
Liotta, Ray
Lipscomb, Eugene “Big Daddy,”
Litman, Alan
Longus
Lorraine Motel, Memphis
Louis, Joe
Low, David
Luckett, Edith
Lyles, Lenny
McAlister, Elizabeth
McCaffrey, Neil
McCourt, James
Mace, inventor of
McGovern, George
Mackey, John
McLaglen, Andrew
McMeel, John
Madison, James
Making a Nation (MAN)
Malcolm X
Mandel, Marvin
Manilow, Susan
Manson, Charles
Marchetti, Gino
Marcus, Stanley
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Marshall, John
/>
Marty, Martin
Marx, Karl
Mary Magdalene
Matz, Madeline
Mayhew, Alice
Mean Streets (film)
Menander
Mencken, H. L.
Metropolitan Opera, New York
Meyer, Frank
Miller, Zell
Milton, John
Mishima (film)
Mitchell, John N.
Moffo, Anna
Mol, Gretchen
Moore, Lenny
Morrison, Philip
Mos Def
Moses
Mostel, Zero
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, The Magic Flute
Mueller, Cookie
Muggeridge, Malcolm
Murder in the Cathedral (Eliot)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Mutscheller, Jim
Myers, Dee Dee
Nader, Ralph
Nash, Diane
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
National Review
Natural Born Killers (film)
Neuhaus, Richard John
New American Library
Newark riot
New England Patriots
Newman, Paul
New York
New York City Opera
New Yorker
New York Giants
New York Review of Books
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Nixon, Pat
Nixon, Richard M.
author′s book about
Checkers speech of
enemies list of
film about
and Hiss
political campaigns of
and public protests
and Quakerism
Nixon (film)
Nobel Peace Prize
Nock, Albert Jay
Northwestern University, author′s teaching at
Nostradamus
Novak, Robert
Nyhan, David
Obama, Barack
O′Connor, Flannery, “The River,”
Oliver, Revilo
Olivier, Sir Laurence
Orr, Jimmy
Ortega y Gasset, José
Oswald, Lee Harvey
Pahlavi, Reza Shah
Papp, Joseph
Parker, Dorothy
Patton, George S.
