A RETROSPECTIVE ON CHRISTOPHER
ERIC HITCHENS
James R. Fisher, Jr.,
Ph.D.
© July 28, 2014
It is a surprise to me that I am writing this. I have been a devoted subscriber to The London Review for more than twenty
years. In the November 26, 1998 issue,
the lead story was a Christopher Hitchens book review of Isaiah
Berlin: A Life (1998) by Michael Ignatieff, which I had read, as I
have read most works written by or published about Isaiah Berlin.
To say I am a devotee to the philosopher of
ideas is a moot point.
On the other hand, I was only remotely acquainted with
Christopher Hitchens. I had read other book reviews of his in Foreign Affairs and The New
York Review, as well as having seen him on the Charlie Rose Show
on PBS television as well as C-Span "Book Notes.".
I remembered his deep smooth voice, rich vocabulary and that
urbane public school aplomb common to Cambridge, England graduates of Oxford
that he clearly displayed.
Given my disgust with the Hitchens book review, where it questioned
Isaiah Berlin’s sincerity and integrity, I wrote to an author friend, Charles
D. Hayes, who was more familiar with Hitchens, learning from him that this was the
Hitchens style.
Time past, and one day at Barnes & Nobles, I picked up a
copy of Why Orwell Matters (2002) by Christopher Hitchens in the “bargain books” section in 2006, and read it with some
curiosity, as I am a big fan of George Orwell.
Reading the Hitchen book was an experience.
I had read D. J. Taylor’s definitive biography Orwell: The Life (2003), and was surprised to find that in this slender volume Hitchens managed to develop insights into Orwell missing entirely in the other
book.
Then one day, earlier this year, I ordered from Daedalus Books Arguably, Essays by Christopher Hitchens (2011), published the same year as his death.
My intentions were to read a few essays in this nearly 800-page volume, but not the entire book. I thought of cherry picking the essays, and
leave it at that.
But after reading the “Introduction,” I found that I was unable to put the book aside until I had read every single essays, using my highlighter generously in the process..
Never have I read a more engaging essayist, and I have been
addicted to essays most of my life going back to those written by Montaigne up to and through Emerson and Thoreau, and on to Hubbard and Hoffer, among others.
How refreshing to have a person express views that he
cherishes, views that might offend, but still enlighten, views that cut through rhetoric and posturing to state acerbic truths as perceived by the
writer.
Name a hotbed in the world, and Hitchens has been there;
name a controversial subject such as God, religion, or personalities in the
news, and he has had cutting words to get under the skin.
He opens this work with an essay, “Gods of
Our Fathers: The United States of Enlightenment.” Our Founding Fathers are real, vulnerable,
flawed and engaging in his hands.
Some consider me quite a reader, but the breadth and depth
of my reading is nothing compared to his.
And if you like the sound of a good sentence, read this book, or if you
like earthy expletives punctuating a sentence or controversial topic, they are here, too.
Hitchens has interviewed the leaders of the world,
and been to all the hot spots, but he has also lived with and broken bread with
the disenfranchised with equal vigor.
Born in Waterlooville, Hampshire, England on April 13, 1949,
graduate of Balliol College, Oxford in 1970, came to the United States in 1981,
became a United States citizen on his birthday April 13, 2007, when he was
58-years-old.
Hitchens died December 15, 2011 at the age of 62 from
esophagus cancer, largely attributed to his fondness for scotch and cigarettes
and partying.
What sets Hitchens apart from his contemporary scribes, however, was
his passionate belief in the eighteenth century “Age of Enlightenment” and all
that it stood for: individualism in the face of growing repressive
corporate world, freedom, and the roots of a viable culture.
There is a book just
published, The Embrace of Unreason:
France, 1914-1940 (2014) by Frederick Brown, which indicates that the fall into mediocrity has tainted Western culture for some time, largely by default, giving birth to some of the international issues that come and stay, seemingly forever. .
It would be interesting to have the “Hitchens
take” on this book, which covers France’s growing enchantment with the
mystical, the irrational, chance, “automatic writing,”
improvisation, the occult, and concomitantly, giving rise to fascism, communism, consciousness, cultural
rigidity, while making a rapid departure from classical education to pragmatics.
The book signaled a retreat from
science into technology with the rise of media to control consciousness. Sound familiar?
Hitchens was against all of this, against the mania
that followed “9/11” and of the “water boarding” of terrorist suspects.
He agreed as an assignment for Vanity Fair magazine to submit to
controlled water boarding to experience the terror of the torture. He lasted twenty seconds.
Historian Joachim Fest, author of Hitler (1974) and Speer: The
Final Verdict (2001) was the quintessential enlightenment stalwart that came to mind reading this.
Fest and his father were known as German Bildungsburgers, a word that doesn't translate well. During the 1940s, Joachim was a child, but his father was a teacher, but lost his position and stature because he refused to abandon his Bildungsburgerstrum and become a Nazi, having been schooled in
Greek and Latin, classics of European literature, German classical music and
German enlightenment philosophy, which was light years away from the hysteria of Nazism. In a word, the Fests were committed to the culture of reason.
Joachim Fest
isn’t mentioned in Arguably but Nobel
Laureate Gunter Grass is, who become a Nazi.
I am dwelling on this a bit, as Hitchens has much to say
about the dumbing down of culture, vocational education versus classical education, and collectivism versus progressive individualism. He sees culture formulated without a frame, and removed from its traditional moorings.
Arguably is as
entertaining as it is informative, and a delightful page turner. For example:
On Gore Vidal: He loves European cosmopolitanism, even
living there, and shies away from being an American writer like Norman Mailer,
as he is fascinated with English social niceties.
On faith: It requires the surrender of the mind, the
surrender of reason, which is the only thing that matters.
On Joyce Carole Oats: The three most regrettable words in
literature are Joyce Carole Oats.
Most overrated: The four most overrated things are
champagne, lobster, anal sex, and picnics.
How Europeans see Americans: Europeans think Americans are
fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant. They’ve taken as their own, someone (Michael
Moore) who actually embodies all those qualities.
On Jerry Falwell: I think it is a pity there isn’t a hell
for him to go to. The empty life of this
ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the
most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you’ll
just get yourself called “Reverend.”
On dissent: The noble title of “dissent” must be earned
rather than claimed. It connotes sacrifice
and risk rather than mere disagreement.
On learning of his terminal cancer: In whatever kind of “race”
life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
On water boarding or a bikini wax: Very much more frightening
though less painful than the bikini wax.
On believing in God: It would be like living in North Korea.
On politics: Politics is essentially a matter of character.
On defending author Salman Rushdie when he was targeted for
death: It was a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion,
stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor,
the individual, and the defense of expression.
On the rich: I don’t care how rich you are I’m not coming to
your party.
When asked for a critique of author-philosopher Ayn Rand: I’m
invited to be unpleasant at the expense of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism.
Well, they’re novels first, as I keep trying to say: there’s more
morality in a novel by George Elliott than in the four Gospels, or the four of
them put together. I care very much
about literature as a place where real dilemmas, ethical dilemmas are met and
dealt with. So to have novels as transcendentally
awful as ATLAS SHRUGGED and THE FOUNTAINHEAD sort of undermines my project.
On Dickens: Dickens was able to mine this huge resource of
London life, becoming the conductor and chronicler like nobody since
Shakespeare himself.
To Charlton Heston, a conservative, in a television debate:
Keep your hairpiece on.
On human decency: Human decency is not the result of
religion, it precedes it.
On falsehood: False consolation is a false friend.
On the mind: The literal mind cannot understand the ironic
one.
And a final word on his approaching death: I personally want
to “do” death in the active and not the passive. And to be there to look death in the eye and
be doing something when it comes for me.
I share this with you because I am deeply saddened that
Christopher Hitchens didn’t have a chance to tell me that I would be better to
turn dirt over in my garden than writes these many books.
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