One Man’s America - Digest - The Morning News

Reading • One Man’s America

As a talking head, George F. Will does present himself as an arid and smug and, dare I say, tight-sphinctered Caucasian. His writing, though (except for his humorless desiccations of baseball), suggests a thoughtful, erudite thinker who is the class of the comedians, flying monkeys, and holy rollers known as conservatives in the United States. This anthology collects Will’s encomiums on Ronald Reagan, Buck Owens, Hugh Hefner, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, his son Jon (who has Down syndrome), and his mother (who died at the age of 98). Reading Will does make the case for the indispensability of humor. —Robert Birnbaum, Jul. 21, 2008