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For most of his 40-year career, Christopher Hitchens’s notoriety has been confined to highbrow journalistic, literary and political circles. In the last 15 years, he has been familiar to readers of Vanity Fair and the Atlantic, and to viewers of the American current affairs shows that invite him on to say outrageous things in stylish phrases. His aptitude for the iconoclastic flourish—describing Princess Diana and Mother Teresa at their deaths, for example, as, respectively, “a simpering Bambi narcissist and a thieving fanatical Albanian dwarf”—sustained his currency as an intellectual shock troop of the left. Then, with his support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and for George W Bush’s re-election in 2004, the left itself became a target of his polemics. But whichever side he took, he continued to file what were essentially minority reports to a specialist audience. Only God was able to promote him beyond such factional interests by providing the subject of a bestseller. While Hitchens has authored 16 books, including works on Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, the Elgin marbles, George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, his assault on religion in God is not Great was the first occasion for which a publisher had arranged a serious US book tour.
Now his proselytising atheism has granted him something like the status of a household name. But why does this insolently charismatic, upper middle-class Englishman seem to attract, and repel, so many people? It may be something about the way in which he combines a raffish, old-fashioned intellectual showmanship with an eye for the big story. His current battle against faith is the biggest of his career—it is the earliest argument he remembers having as a child, and the one that will be with him to the end.
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I was interested in finding out about Mr Hitchens as I was just watching a programme about the Bible – the third in the series – led by Anne Widdecombe – and as she discussed briefly the relevance of the 10 commandments with Mr. Hitchens, and in contrast to my having some idea of who Miss Widdecombe was and is – I wanted to learn a LITTLE more about Mr Hitchens.
I stress little because although very interesting – I found this article very long – perhaps it is my old age – I am 70 – but I think it is too long a time to spend on someone who seems to be very condemnatory of his fellow men and women and seeing only the failures of their lifes and the mistakes they have made and totally neglecting all the good they have done. That is not fair and one of the greatest simple sayings in Wales – where I derive and was created on some romantic night of deep love in my father and mother – is ‘fair play’.
So ‘thank you for providing such a lot of information but it would have been more helpful to have had a short summary of the content of this article with perhaps, as Wikipedia does – sub headings in blue – where one can click on a heading and get more details of sny particular topic in which one is particularly interested.
As Douglas MacArthur was reputed as saying when leaving the Philippines in World War II – I will return – but I will add what he did not add – but it may takes some time
best wishes
Penvronius Miles Cambrensis, sfo
Wonderful stuff, this really does summarize most of what I knew Hitchens to be. I’d consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had the priceless pleasure of a day with Hitchens but you had three, my hat’s doff to you.
Like Hemingway, Hitchens is a man of action who happens to write; for him, writing and thinking is a form of praxis