Review by New York Times Review
ANYONE who occasionally opens one of our more serious periodicals has learned that the byline of Christopher Hitchens is an opportunity to be delighted or maddened - possibly both - but in any case not to be missed. He is our intellectual omnivore, exhilarating and infuriating, if not in equal parts at least with equal wit. He has been rather famously an aggressive critic of God and his followers, after cutting his sacrilegious teeth on Mother Teresa. He wrote a deadpan argument for trying Henry Kissinger as a war criminal, then was branded an apostate by former friends on the left for vigorously supporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (He memorably - a lot of what Hitchens has written merits the adverb - shot back that his antiwar critics were "the sort who, discovering a viper in the bed of their child, would place the first call to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.") And he is dying of esophageal cancer, a fact he has faced with exceptional aplomb. This fifth and, one fears, possibly last collection of his essays is a reminder of all that will be missed when the cancer is finished with him. Let's begin with the obvious. He is unfathomably prolific. "Arguably" is a great ingot of a book, more than 780 pages containing 107 essays. Some of them entailed extensive travel in inconvenient places like Afghanistan and Uganda and Iran; those that are more in the way of armchair punditry come from an armchair within reach of a very well-used library. They appeared in various publications during a period in which he also published his best-selling exegesis against religion, "God Is Not Great"; a short and well-reviewed biography of Thomas Jefferson; a memoir, "Hitch-22"; as well as various debates, reading guides, letters and rebuttals - all done while consuming daily quantities of alcoholic drink that would cripple most people. As Ian Parker noted in his definitive 2006 New Yorker profile of Hitchens, the man writes as fast as some people read. The second notable thing about Hitchens is his erudition. He doesn't always wear it lightly - more than once he remarks, upon pulling out a classic for reconsideration, that he first read the work in question when he was 12 - but it is not just a parlor trick. In the book reviews that make up much of this collection, the most ambitious of them written for The Atlantic, he takes the assigned volume - a new literary biography of Stephen Spender or Graham Greene or Somerset Maugham, or a new collection of letters by Philip Larkin or Jessica Mitford - and uses it as pretext to review, with opinionated insights, the entire life and work of the writer in question, often supplementing his prodigious memory by rereading several books. He is a master of the essay that not only spares you the trouble of reading the book under review, but leaves you feeling you have just completed an invigorating graduate seminar. Although the necessity of imposing some order on a collection of this type means that his literary reviews are more or less sequestered from his political polemics and foreign reporting, his mind does not observe these boundaries. One of his charms is his habit of pulling in a novel or poem to shore up an argument about war or politics. A piece that is nominally a riff on the Bush family invokes Brecht, Wilde, Orwell, Dickens, Beckett, one Amis (Kingsley), two Waughs (Auberon and Evelyn) and Joyce Cary, leaving scarcely any room for Bushes. A magisterial essay on the subject of partition draws more heavily on Auden than on historians. (That piece, by the way, is a humbling account of all the ways Britain has blundered while mapmaking at gunpoint. I wondered whether the essay, published in the same month as the invasion of Iraq, gave him any pause about our competence to set that country right.) His range is extraordinary, both in breadth and in altitude. He is as self-confident on the politics of Lebanon as on the ontology of the Harry Potter books. He can pivot from the court of Henry VIII to the Baader-Meinhof gang, then stoop to the question of whether fellatio is the quintessentially American sex act. He reviews the Ten Commandments, offering some thoughtful revisions. He wages war against euphemism - most vividly by having himself subjected to waterboarding, so that he can report with authority that it is not an "enhanced interrogation" technique but unquestionably "torture." It would be antithetical to the Hitchens spirit to cut him slack just because I like him (he's been a friend of my wife's for many years, and his alcohol-propelled conversation is a captivating form of performance art) or because he is dying of cancer. So let's acknowledge that some of the essays in this collection are exceedingly smug. He has no qualms about adding insult to injury: Karen Hughes is a "braying Bush-crony ignoramus"; President Kennedy was not only "a moral defective and a political disaster," but "a poxed and suppurating Philoctetes." He repeats himself. Some of his work feels dashed off. A few pieces fall flat from an excess of trying. In a Vanity Fair bit called "Why Women Aren't Funny," he posits that men are funnier for Darwinian reasons: hapless males need the gift of humor to persuade women to mate with them. In the introduction to the book, he describes this as "the most instantly misinterpreted of all my articles," but I think it is possible to interpret it correctly and still find it patronizing and, worse, criminally unfunny. So, having paid my dues to critical candor, I still find Hitchens one of the most stimulating thinkers and entertaining writers we have, even when - perhaps especially when - he provokes. And while he clearly wants to win you over, you always sense that he is playing in part to the jury of history, which is why so much of what he might, in a rare self-deprecating moment, refer to as hackwork stands up so well to anthologizing. Although he is possessed of a free-range mind, I think it is grossly unfair to charge, as some of his former friends on the socialist left have done, that he is an intellectual opportunist or a dilettante or a mere provocateur. He is a man of beliefs, and while they are often arguable (note the title of the book), they seem to me genuine and coherent. One of his beliefs, of course, is unbelief. He regards God as a superstition employed by religions for the purpose of control and repression. His hostility to religion has been fortified by the rise of Islamic extremism, which he tends to take personally, in part because of the fatwa against his good friend Salman Rushdie. His aversion to religion has offended many, and even those who are not devout may complain that he tends to overlook benign aspects of religious faith and practice, but his critique is generally more thoughtful than scornful. As Michael Kinsley has written in these pages, "God should be flattered: unlike most of those clamoring for his attention, Hitchens treats him like an adult." More important, Hitchens's wariness of religion is not just an iconoclastic taunt (his denunciation of Mother Teresa falls more into that category), but a component part of an ideology with a fine pedigree. He treasures secular governance, reasoned argument, pluralism, tolerance (except of the humorless or the boring) and freedom, and loathes the wicked isms of oppression - communism, imperialism, racism and above all totalitarianism. His obvious role model is George Orwell, who recurs often in this volume as subject, moral touchstone, literary kibitzer, footnote and foil. One senses that in his enthusiasm for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - which arise in this volume more incidentally than frontally, in a piece on the emancipation of Afghan women or a report on a holiday in Iraqi Kurdistan - Hitchens is emulating Orwell's embrace of the Republican cause against Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Another ism he rejects is pacifism. Hitchens is often grouped with a generation of dazzlingly clever British writers who happen to be his friends - Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, James Fenton - but what sets him apart in important ways, and what struck me forcefully reading this collection, is that he is an American. Not American born or educated (probably just as well), but American by choice. He took citizenship in 2007 after a quarter-century as a resident. Much of this book, including the opening chapter of essays under the heading "All American," reflects his idiosyncratic take on what his adopted country means to him. His can seem a narrowly coastal America. The flyover states don't much exist. A journalist who is such an empathetic observer in Kabul or Ho Chi Minh City seems to have little reportorial curiosity about the space between Washington, where he lives, and California, where he has spent his summers. On the rare occasions when he ventures out of his American comfort zone, as in a visit to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, he is bemused to learn that real people - "good-humored, outspoken and tough-minded" - reside there. It is interesting that he mocks John Updike for displaying "an intellectual and aesthetic disgust . . . with the grossness and banality of much of American life." Updike's view of ordinary Americans may be reductionist or genteel, but at least he has one. Hitchens finds much to love about America, but on the evidence of this collection, he seems to find it mostly in books. But what he finds is no less genuine and essential for being rather cerebral. Hitchens holds to an America founded on secularism and the separation of powers, a nation with an admirable affection for revolutionaries and misfits, a defining embrace of variety. At a time when America is experiencing a resurgent campaign to proclaim us a "Judeo-Christian nation," Hitchens delights in the plentiful evidence that the founders were not all that religious and certainly not interested in creating a sectarian country. "The ancestor of the American Revolution was the English Revolution of the 1640s, whose leaders and spokesmen were certainly Protestant fundamentalists, but that did not bind the framers and cannot be said to bind us, either," he writes, in a Weekly Standard review of Brooke Allen's book "Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers," which is, not coincidentally, the first essay in this book. "Indeed, the established Protestant church in Britain was one of the models which we can be quite sure the signatories of 1776 were determined to avoid emulating." HITCHENS erects his own pantheon of American heroes, and the country offers no end of inventive, radical, idealistic and activist figures for him to admire. Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine and Lincoln all get loving and refreshing treatment here. Not surprisingly, he takes the side of those who regard the antislavery insurrectionist John Brown as a visionary hero against those who deem him a terrorist. (Morally, Hitchens is more about ends than means; his book is dedicated to three Arab suicides who martyred themselves in the Arab Spring, one by car-bombing a Libyan Army post.) He embraces the literature of Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Saul Bellow and others, finding in American writing since the founding "a certain allegiance to the revolutionary and emancipating idea." In Jefferson's decision to send the young American Navy against the extortionist Barbary pirates, Hitchens discovers a precedent for the current American engagements with Islamic fanatics, and an argument for a selective but bold use of American power in the world. Elsewhere, he takes on Graham Greene's moral cynicism about America's part in the cold war. At times the book feels like an ongoing argument with the leftist intellectuals on the other side of the Atlantic, who tend to view America as lacking in history, culture or moral standing. In an essay on the journalism of Karl Marx, written for the left-leaning Guardian, he puts an elbow in the ribs of his old socialist friends: "If you are looking for an irony of history, you will find it . . . in the fact that he and Engels considered Russia the great bastion of reaction and America the great potential nurse of liberty and equality. This is not the sort of thing they teach you in school (in either country)." "There is currently much easy talk about the 'decline' of my adopted country, both in confidence and in resources," he writes in his introduction. "I don't choose to join this denigration." Christopher Hitchens: American patriot. We've done a lot worse. If there is a God, and he lacks a sense of irony, he will send Hitchens to the hottest precinct of hell. If God does have a sense of irony, Hitchens will spend eternity in a town that serves no liquor and has no library. Either way, heaven will be a less interesting place. Much of this book reflects Hitchens's idiosyncratic take on what his adopted country - America - means to him. Bill Keller, formerly The Times's executive editor, is now a columnist for the newspaper and a writer for The Times Magazine.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 11, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
The irrepressible Hitchens' substantial new essay collection (his fifth) gathers 107 pithy, astute, and forceful pieces on everything from America's Founding Fathers to an array of writers, including Dickens, Nabokov, Updike, and Rebecca West, to war, fanaticism, prejudice, and the f-word. Most of these essays appeared in the Atlantic, the Guardian, Newsweek, Slate, and Vanity Fair from 2004 forward a time frame during which Hitchens hit the best-seller lists with both God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) and Hitch-22 (2010) while battling cancer. A valiant public intellectual with an omnivorous literary sensibility and mettlesome wit, Hitchens argues dynamically and provocatively against every form of totalitarianism in this veritable mountain range of thought, knowledge, story, humor, and passion. Meshing art, history, ethics, and politics, he venomously critiques Washington while rejecting the idea of America being in decline and delivers stunning insights into such diverse subjects as ecocide, Benazir Bhutto, Iraqi Kurdistan, and why the elucidation of feelings matters. Goading, brilliant, funny, and caring, Hitchens is a voice of enlightenment in a wilderness of cant.--Seaman, Donn. Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
How does one possibly narrate the essays of Christopher Hitchens while capturing the author's furious-and perhaps occasionally misguided-intensity and vigor? For this capacious collection of Hitchens's essays, narrator Simon Prebble wisely avoids that dilemma. Instead, he offers a dry, slightly formal delivery. Covering everything from Charles Dickens and J.G. Ballard to the recent financial crisis and global jihad, Hitchens mingles the literary with the political, using his erudition to hone arguments to a carefully wielded point. Prebble's controlled narration works to tone down some of Hitchens's force-the narrator simply poses arguments without bludgeoning the author's opponents-much to the benefit of this audio production. The sound is turned down, leaving Hitchens's ideas to come to the fore. A Hachette/Twelve hardcover. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The more than 100 previously published commentaries and book reviews-1999 to the present-by this notable columnist, critic, and best-selling author (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) are serious, humorous, and, above all, thought-provoking. Topics range from the political situation in Afghanistan, Iran, and Tunisia to literary criticism of the works of John Updike, J.K. Rowling, and Stieg Larsson. The essay "Why Women Aren't Funny" contemplates why some women, who have the whole world of men at their feet, put childbirth higher and wit and intelligence lower on their scale of womanhood's enduring qualities. This leads to an essay on diaper-changing stations in men's restrooms. Recommended for shrewd readers and writers who enjoy keeping up with today's lively intellectual arguments, to which Hitchens has contributed so much. [See Prepub Alert, 3/14/11.]-Joyce Sparrow, Kenneth City, FL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A new collection of essays from Hitchens (Hitch-22: A Memoir, 2010, etc.), his first since 2004.Whether on the invasion of Iraq or the merits of Vladimir Nabokov's fiction, master controversialist Hitchens has an informed opinion. Here he gathers a hefty helping of work over the last few years, published in venues such as the AtlanticandVanity Fair. Sometimes his pieces concern passing matters, though they are seldom ephemeral themselves; more often he writes about what he wishes to write about, topics that require weighty but not dense (and usually not heavy-handed) consideration. On Gore Vidal, for instance, Hitchens gets in a lovely zinger worthy of Vidal himself: "The price of knowing him was exposure to some of his less adorable traits, which included his pachydermatous memory for the least slight or grudge and a very, very minor tendency to bring up the Jewish question in contexts where it didn't quite belong." Hitchens balances old interests with new discoveries; he was one of the first to write at length about Stieg Larsson, for instance, whose death by "causes that are symptoms of modern life" he endorses. He also turns to his long-standing fascination for the totalitarian mind. He characterizes Adolf Hitler as holding opinions that are "trite and bigoted and deferential," while "the prose inMein Kampfis simply laughable in its pomposity." Hitchens revels in theoretical questions and in stirring up trouble: His pieces on religion seem calculated to offend as many believers as possible, which is of course the point. Still, he is also practical, offering up some fine advice on how to argue points over a Georgetown dinner table or down at the local watering holejust say, "Yes, but not in the South?" and, he avers, "You will seldom if ever be wrong, and you will make the expert perspire."Vintage Hitchens. Argumentative and sometimes just barely civilanother worthy collection from this most inquiring of inquirers.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
