THE COUCH RIDER:

Inside Outsider: Questions for Garry Wills (Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON, 10/29/10, NY Times Magazine)

You’ve accused him of excessive ingratiation, or “omnidirectional placation,” as you wrote in a blog post for The New York Review of Books.

As a black man with an odd name, he often had to ingratiate himself in the companies that he kept, and he does.

Except that he was a non-black named Barry for long enough that it seems fair to say that his ingratiating nature is more likely a function of his parentlessness. Conformity produces acceptance which is his (sorry) substitute for love.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 29, 2010 12:13 PM