The "Christopher Hitchens is not Great" rant

"We must beware of the man who abounds in eloquent nonsense and not think that because the speaker is eloquent what he says must be true." - St. Augustine

After Christopher Hitchens’ death, a friend posted on Facebook that the reason why Hitchens was so successful is sadly attributable to the decline in education and literacy in the Western World.  Other generations who could focus on longer works and had an appreciation of painstaking research would perhaps not have found “Hitch” (the chummy nickname bestowed upon Mr. Hitchen by his mostly male, over 50-year fan base) as impressive.

I have read four of Hitchens’ many books: The Trial of Henry Kissinger, No One Left to Lie Too, God is Not Great, and most recently, Why Orwell Matters.  I have observed the following:

-Hitchens was a master synthesizer of other people’s ideas
-Hitchens never really offered up a new and/or interesting approach or observation
-These four books would have probably worked better as short 50 pp essays but publishers knew that people would buy his books so they encouraged him to draw out his 1 or 2 ideas into hundreds of (boring and repetitive) pages
-Had George Orwell (of whom “Hitch” wrote much about) read Hitchens’ work, he would have accused Hitchens of committing the sins of using pretentious diction and meaningless words. Ironically, I found this most prevalent in “Hitch’s” deathly boring literary analysis of Orwell. For example, the use of the word “freshet” instead of “many”.  “Freshet”, incidentally, means: a flood from a heavy rain or a thaw or a river that empties into an ocean.

I want to focus on two of his books because they exemplify the observations made above. The Trial of Henry Kissinger was Hitchens’ argument that former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, should be tried for violations of international law and of crimes against humanity.  He provided several case studies including Indochina, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor to prove his point.

My undergraduate thesis was on how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s policies led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and I spent a good year reading primary sources as well as secondary sources on Henry Kissinger notably Seymour Hersh’s  700 page indictment of Kissinger called The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. I also read a 467 page cry of moral outrage by British journalist, William Shawcross (son of Hartley Shawcross who was the Chief British prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials) entitled Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the destruction of Cambodia. Should you read both of these books, you will very quickly realize that in The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Hitchens is simply serving as a synthesizer of already existing ideas.  You see, both Hersh and Shawcross and  others did all the serious legwork for Hitchens. He just rewrote their ideas into 150 pages with a provocative title and his long-winded prose. Yet, it is this cheesy little book that everyone remembers.

As my friend alluded to on Facebook, we have become lazy in our reading. We are unwilling to read 450 plus pages of complicated material. It is so much easier, is it not, to swallow Hitchen’s pretentious prose and his copying of other’s ideas rather than commit to longer and more detailed works? I think we need to resist this temptation. I think we need to appreciate the kind of research and time and focus and risk that Hersh and Shawcross put into their work because it was they who dug out the story for us to read, not Christopher Hitchens.

Moving onto Why Orwell Matters. On p. 3, we are confronted with the following sentence that would have scored about a 10 on the Orwell pretentious meter.

 “This is not a biography, but I sometimes feel as if George Orwell requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies; an object of sickly veneration and sentimental overpraise, employed to stultify schoolchildren with his insufferable rightness.”

I actually don’t think children are stultified by Orwell’s “insufferable rightness.” I think that many children (when they have a good teacher in front of them)  read Animal Farm and 1984 and are scared shitless. 

And then there is the characteristic Hitchens narcissism. In his dull, wordy examination of how Orwell is perceived by the Right and the Left, feminists, Americans and Brits, Hitchens feels compelled to inject himself into the analysis.

“I might as well add that I have spoken on radical platforms with each of the above mentioned (members of the Left)…

Why does he feel that he “might as well add” anything that he has done? Why use the pronoun “I” at all? There is a part of me—a cynical part of me—that feels that Hitchens considers himself on equal footing with Orwell. Well, maybe not equal footing, but at least in the same ballpark. I hope others don’t feel the same way.  I hope that secondary school and higher education curricula continue to have students read 1984 rather than Hitchens.

But my main criticism of Why Orwell Matters is that Hitchens doesn’t actually answer the question of why Orwell matters. He certainly talks about how Orwell matters to various groups of thinkers or populations, but he doesn’t explore why- in 2002 as he is writing this book,-Orwell matters.  Again, he is the master synthesizer of other’s ideas but offers very little that is new or exciting. And, of course, this literary critique could have easily have been edited down into a much clearer, less wordy 50 pp article. The only saving grace of this book was that it inspired me to read Orwell’s entertaining and somewhat horrifying Down and Out in Paris and London. You may not be able to eat in a nice restaurant again after reading about Orwell’s time as a dishwasher in several Parisian establishments but you will certainly have a better understanding of swearing.

So instead of reading more of “Hitch’s” eloquent nonsense, do yourself a favour and pick up any one of the following:

William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia

Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House

George Orwell, 1984 with Animal Farm and Other Works (available on Kindle)

 

 

 

 

The Christopher Hitchens is not Great Rant

 

"We must beware of the man who abounds in eloquent nonsense and not think that because the speaker is eloquent what he says must be true." - St. Augustine

 

After Christopher Hitchens’ death, a friend posted on Facebook that the reason why Hitchens was so successful is sadly attributable to the decline in education and literacy in the Western World.  Other generations who could focus on longer works and had an appreciation of painstaking research would perhaps not have found “Hitch” (the chummy nickname bestowed upon Mr. Hitchen by his mostly male, over 50-year fan base) as impressive.

I have read four of Hitchens’ many books: The Trial of Henry Kissinger, No One Left to Lie Too, God is Not Great, and most recently, Why Orwell Matters.  I have observed the following:

-Hitchens was a master synthesizer of other people’s ideas
-Hitchens never really offered up a new and/or interesting approach or observation
-These four books would have probably worked better as short 50pg essays but publishers knew that people would buy his books so they encouraged him to draw out his 1 or 2 ideas into hundreds of (boring and repetitive) pages
-Had George Orwell (of whom “Hitch” wrote much about) read Hitchens’ work, he would have accused Hitchens of committing the sins of using pretentious diction and meaningless words. Ironically, I found this most prevalent in “Hitch’s” deathly boring critique of Orwell. For example, the use of the word “freshet” instead of “many”.  “Freshet”, incidentally, means: a flood from a heavy rain or a thaw or a river that empties into an ocean.

I want to focus on two of his books because they exemplify the observations made above. The Trial of Henry Kissinger was Hitchens’ argument that former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, should be tried for violations of international law and of crimes against humanity.  He provided several case studies including Indochina, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor to prove his point.

My undergraduate thesis was on how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s policies led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and I spent a good year reading primary sources as well as secondary sources on Henry Kissinger notably Seymour Hersh’s  700 page indictment of Kissinger called The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. I also read a 467 page cry of moral outrage by British journalist, William Shawcross (son of Hartley Shawcross who was the Chief British prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials) entitled Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the destruction of Cambodia. Should you read both of these books, you will very quickly realize that in The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Hitchens is simply serving as a synthesizer of already existing ideas.  You see, both Hersh and Shawcross and  others did all the serious legwork for Hitchens. He just rewrote their ideas into 150 pages with a provocative title and his long-winded prose. Yet, it is this cheesy little book that everyone remembers.

 

As my friend alluded to on Facebook, we have become lazy in our reading. We are unwilling to read 450 plus pages of complicated material. It is so much easier, is it not, to swallow Hitchen’s pretentious prose and his copying of other’s ideas rather than commit to longer and more detailed works? I think we need to resist this temptation. I think we need to value and appreciate the kind of research and time and focus and risk that Hersh and Shawcross put into their work because it was they who dug out the story for us to read, not Christopher Hitchens.

Moving onto Why Orwell Matters. On p. 3, we are confronted with the following sentence that would have scored about a 10 on the Orwell pretentious meter.

 “This is not a biography, but I sometimes feel as if George Orwell requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies; an object of sickly veneration and sentimental overpraise, employed to stultify schoolchildren with his insufferable rightness.”

I actually don’t think children are “stultifed” by Orwell’s “insufferable rightness.” I think that many children (when they have a good teacher in front of them)  read Animal Farm and 1984 and are scared shitless. 

And then there is the characteristic Hitchens narcissism. In his dull, wordy examination of how Orwell is perceived by the Right and the Left, feminists, Americans and Brits, Hitchens feels compelled to inject himself into the analysis.

“I might as well add that I have spoken on radical platforms with each of the above mentioned (members of the Left)…

Why does he feel that he “might as well add” anything that he has done? Why use the pronoun “I” at all? There is a part of me—a cynical part of me—that feels that Hitchens considers himself on equal footing with Orwell. Well, maybe not equal footing, but at least in the same ballpark. I hope others don’t feel the same way.  I hope that secondary school and higher education curricula continue to have students read 1984 rather than Hitchens.

But my main criticism of Why Orwell Matters is that Hitchens doesn’t actually answer the question of why Orwell matters. He certainly talks about how Orwell matters to various groups of thinkers or populations, but he doesn’t explore why- in 2002 as he is writing this book,-Orwell matters.  Again, he is the master synthesizer of other’s ideas but offers very little that is new or exciting. And, of course, this literary critique could have easily have been edited down into a much clearer, less wordy 50pg article. The only saving grace of this book was that it inspired me to read Orwell’s entertaining and somewhat horrifying Down and Out in Paris and London. You may not be able to eat in a nice restaurant again after reading about Orwell’s time as a dishwasher in several Parisian establishments but you will certainly have a better understanding of swearing.

So instead of reading more of “Hitch’s” eloquent nonsense, do yourself a favour and pick up any one of the following:

William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia

Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House

George Orwell, 1984 with Animal Farm and Other Works (available on Kindle)