topics: |  biography | history | usa

The first part of the book, outlining his childhood and growth upto
Watergate, is the more interesting part.  It is called "will" because it is
an attempt to demonstrate how he builds his own will, to make the claim that
he is what he is because of his efforts, and not because one may be born that
way.
    His very first memories are of fear; indeed, his childhood memories are
dominated by fear.  In one scene he is being thrashed with a belt by a
grandfather, who is shouting: "Bad! Bad!" How to overcome fear is the
challenge for his will.  I remember finding the book quite disturbingly
influential when I read it first in the late 80s.
    In one scene, he is burning his own flesh on an open flame so as to
inure himself to pain.  At another point, he eats a dead rat to conquer his
fear of rats.  - AM

Other Reviews

David Greenberg in Washington Monthly, April, 1997

From soldier to Washington insider; from a prisoner who preferred the walls
of a prison rather than the betrayal of his principles; to a writer and top
radio personality, G. Gordon Liddy is a hero to some, a villain to others,
but always an enigma.

    In 1980, G. Gordon Liddy shocked, surprised, and, ultimately, delighted
the world with his vivid, brutally honest, and controversial autobiography,
Will. A number one national bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, Will
has stood the test of time like few other books. With over 1,000,000 copies
in print, it is nothing less than a quintessential American biography - a
classic story of a life interestingly led.

With chilling sangfroid and mephistophelean delight, Liddy details the Nixon
administration's shockingly criminal plans, both consummated (the burglary of
Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office) and not (the loose but serious talk
of having the columnist Jack Anderson assassinated). And these are just the
episodes we remember. Will reminds us that as general counsel to the
Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), Liddy dreamed up a voluminous and
intricate set of illegal "dirty tricks"--only some of which were actually
implemented. Liddy called the master plan "GEMSTONE," and each little scheme
is truly a gem of ingenious lawbreaking: DIAMOND involved kidnapping and
drugging antiwar leaders and whisking them, unawares, to Mexico. GARNET
entailed staging phony left-wing demonstrations in order to alienate
mainstream voters (one plan--to have hippies publicly urinate on the carpet
of Georger McGovern's hotel suite--was scotched when CREEP boss John Mitchell
learned he'd soon be moving into the very suite himself). And the racistly
named COAL comprised plans to fund black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's bid
for the 1972 DemocratiC nomination, so as to rend the black community. The
recently released Nixon tapes that disclosed a variant of this plan,
involving Jesse Jackson, wouldn't have seemed like such news if we hadn't let
our hardback copies of Will get dusty.

    Besides reconnecting us to the enormity of the Watergate crimes, Will
offers a tantalizing self-portrait of Liddy. My specialty is history and
politics, but this book really ought to be turned over to a
psychiatrist. Even a novice therapist would have a field day. Here is
Liddy's earliest memory: "Lying on the floor as my paternal grandmother
lashed me with a leather harness, shouting, `Bad! Bad!'" Elsewhere, in
recounting his childhood, he writes, "Soon my every waking moment was ruled
by that overriding emotion: fear" And all of this happens, incidentally, by
the just second page.

    It is only fitting that this personality, warped at such an early age,
would converge with the grotesquerie of Watergate. No matter how surreal or
outlandish Watergate became, Liddy always managed to rise to the
occasion. When, after the failed June 17 break-in, Liddy volunteers to John
Dean to have himself killed, we wonder which scenario is crazier: if Liddy is
trying to impress the weak-stomached Dean with his bravado, or if he really
means it.