Hitchens - Arguably

[sandwiches]

Hitchens has a new book of essays out. Can't say I have ever liked him - as much for his personal life as for his views. I am sorry for his present predicament - cancer of the esophagus - but he seems to be an egotistical hedonist who has treated women abominably, snipes at his country of origin (from the privileges of which he so richly benefited - before decamping to the US) and failed to show any deep talent for anything. Two reviews of his book below, disapproving from the left-wing Guardian and approving from the right-wing Telegraph

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/16/arguably-christopher-hitchens-review-essays

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens – reviewA collection of essays shows the polemicist at his best and his absolute worst

Let us consider just two of the fatuities. In a piece from 2007, when one might have expected post-9/11 rage to have been tempered by the experience of the war in Iraq, Hitchens writes of how Anglo-American co-operation defeated three great threats: "German Wilhelmine imperialism in 1918, the Nazi-Fascist Axis in 1945, and international communism in 1989." Then comes a sentence so shocking it is hard to believe that a man of Hitchens's intellect not only wrote it but agreed to republish it between hard covers: "The world now faces a barbarism that is no less menacing than its three predecessors – and may even be more so." This fourth threat is "bin-Ladenism". The claim that al‑Qaida "may even be more" menacing to humanity than the Nazis or Stalin shows what Hitchens elsewhere calls "the way in which mania feeds upon itself and becomes hysterical".

Worse, because it is less obviously bonkers, is a passage in the same essay in which Hitchens makes a shameful concession to Enoch Powell's fulminations against immigration: "If he had stressed religion rather than race, he might have been seen as prescient." In other words, Powell's apocalyptic visions of the consequences of immigration might have been accurate had he identified Islam as the enemy. Hitchens must know that this is the line now taken by the English Defence League and most of the European far right: we don't hate blacks, we're just trying to stop the Muslims taking over. He has chosen to republish it anyway.

In each of these cases, the deterioration of style that Orwell would recognise is all too evident. The combination of creepily evasive syntax ("may even be", "might have been seen") with huge but unargued claims makes for bad writing as well as bad politics.

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8781952/Arguably-by-Christopher-Hitchens-review.html

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens: reviewThe fly-in-the ointment critic is as brilliant as ever

[sandwiches]

Really, he is just a hedonistic bigot? His great hero is Orwell:

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8765444/Arguably-by-Christopher-Hitchens-review.html

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens: review
Christopher Hitchens’s provocative journalism is greater than the sum of its parts, argues Nicholas Shakespeare.

One can only speculate what Orwell would have made of Hitchens, but I suspect he would have doffed his cap at someone who can enlist Chaucer to pour light onto Pakistan’s rancid intelligence services

Personally I think Orwell would have recognized a bloated capitalist when he saw one?

[sandwiches]

Excellent analysis by John Gray:

www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/09/hitchens-trotsky-convictions

The mind of a believer
Arguably
Christopher Hitchens
Atlantic Books, 800pp, £30

Six months before he was murdered in his study in Mexico City, Leon Trotsky wrote: "I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is no less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth."
There is something tragicomic in this confession of faith. Dialectical materialism, though it claimed to be based in science, was never more than superstitious gibberish. When he invoked the supposed science to bolster his failing political hopes, Trotsky was engaging in a type of magical thinking, using words as charms to ward off the terrors of history. At the same time - and this is the irresistibly comical element of Trotsky's career - he never ceased to regard himself as anything other than an uncompromising rationalist.
When Trotsky urged his American supporters to mount a campaign against joining Britain in an imperialist war in 1940, at a time when the Nazis had snuffed out practically all that remained of democracy in Europe, this was more than a strategic miscalculation. It was manifestly delusional. The same must be said of Hitchens's assertion in 2007, reprinted here: "The world now faces a challenge from a barbarism that is no less menacing than its three predecessors - and may be even more so."
There are some who represent Hitchens as a contrarian or provocateur, without convictions. They are wrong. What sort of provocateur would write that "Bin Ladenism" is more dangerous than German Wilhelmine imperialism, the Nazi-Fascist axis and international communism? Such a patently absurd claim could only be made by one who deeply believes it to be true.

[turoldus]

Oct 10, 2011 18:17:46 GMT sandwiches said:

Excellent analysis by John Gray:

www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/09/hitchens-trotsky-convictions

The mind of a believer
Arguably
Christopher Hitchens
Atlantic Books, 800pp, £30

Six months before he was murdered in his study in Mexico City, Leon Trotsky wrote: "I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is no less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth."
There is something tragicomic in this confession of faith. Dialectical materialism, though it claimed to be based in science, was never more than superstitious gibberish. When he invoked the supposed science to bolster his failing political hopes, Trotsky was engaging in a type of magical thinking, using words as charms to ward off the terrors of history. At the same time - and this is the irresistibly comical element of Trotsky's career - he never ceased to regard himself as anything other than an uncompromising rationalist.
When Trotsky urged his American supporters to mount a campaign against joining Britain in an imperialist war in 1940, at a time when the Nazis had snuffed out practically all that remained of democracy in Europe, this was more than a strategic miscalculation. It was manifestly delusional. The same must be said of Hitchens's assertion in 2007, reprinted here: "The world now faces a challenge from a barbarism that is no less menacing than its three predecessors - and may be even more so."
There are some who represent Hitchens as a contrarian or provocateur, without convictions. They are wrong. What sort of provocateur would write that "Bin Ladenism" is more dangerous than German Wilhelmine imperialism, the Nazi-Fascist axis and international communism? Such a patently absurd claim could only be made by one who deeply believes it to be true.

These passages are indeed scathing; but the overall review is clearly positive, Gray even praising him as "one of the greatest living writers of English prose".

[sandwiches]

True he says that but I prefer the scathing bits.Orwell did not kid himself in this fashion. Orwell could be left-wing while being quite scathing about the left-wing. Hitchens is no Orwell.

[sandwiches]

In fact I quite agree with this analysis:

thoughcowardsflinch.com/2011/09/21/christopher-hitchens-is-no-george-orwell-a-review-of-christopher-hitchenss-arguably/

Christopher Hitchens is no George Orwell: A review of Christopher Hitchens’s Arguably

Orwell, in a reply (dated 15 November, 1943) to an invitation from the Duchess of Atholl to speak for the right-wing British League for European Freedom, stated that he didn’t agree with their objectives. Acknowledging that what they said was ‘more truthful than the lying propaganda found in most of the press’, he added that he could ‘not associate himself with an essentially Conservative body’, that claimed to ‘defend democracy in Europe’ but had ‘nothing to say about British imperialism’. His closing paragraph stated: ‘I belong to the left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russian totalitarianism and its poisonous influence in this country.’

Hitchens, like many British journalists of his generation, has spent much of his career in the shadow of Orwell. He has also spent perhaps a small proportion of it waiting for his very own Orwell moment – a moment when he could take on his own side in the way Orwell took on sections of the left over its appeasement of Stalinism. Despite the bluster and fear-mongering (not-to-mention the genuinely repulsive politics of the Jihadi movement), Islamism is not Nazism or Stalinism; and Hitchens, however good his prose may be, is no Orwell. In defending the gains of liberal democracy against its totalitarian enemies, Orwell never dumped his own politics.