I
took Hitchens’
posthumous collection of essays (And Yet
… , Christopher Hitchens, Penguin Random
House, 2015) for my winter 6-week
trip to Mexico. I wrote about his influential
book God is not Great in January 2012,
but knew little else about him.
It turns out Hitchens was a more or less
contemporary of mine from the UK. He made
a career as a writer and speaker. He wrote
political affairs books, reviewed books,
and generally wrote topical articles. There are
examples of all of this work in
And Yet …
The
book is a
highly eclectic mix. There are informative and
serious reviews. Indeed And Yet …
begins with a review of two books
about Che Guevara. The review begins in Cuba and
tells us of Che’s link with
the beginnings of armed conflicts in Central
America and resistance to Mobutu
in Africa. There is a review of Snow by
Turkish
author Orhan Pamuk in a context of Hitchens’
thoughts about a need for
a Muslim voice. There is a review of Salman
Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown with thoughts
of philosophy – Hobbs – and
thoughts on Kashmir and the days of Imperial
Britain and the Himalayas. And
there are more reviews – like the intriguing one
on the biography of Gertrude
Bell, intrepid explorer (and
admirer) of Iraq in the 1920s period of British
Colonial rule. In complete
contrast come dismissive thoughts “Bottoms Up”
about James Bond and his creator
Ian Fleming. There are thoughtful articles like
the one giving an account of
strange voting results and strange voter access
in part of Ohio. There are two
short damning critiques of then Senator Hilary
Clinton on account of her
“lying” about her experiences overseas. There
are three accounts of Hitchens’
attempts at later-life self-improvement with
respect to drinking, smoking and the
like. These manage to be interesting essays
while at the same time giving
Hitchens an opportunity to display his
self-admiring self-image and role as
writer-socialite.
For
the larger
and later part of his life Hitchens lived in the
US where he was on the
editorial board of Vanity Fair and regularly
contributed articles for the
Atlantic Monthly. The book reproduces many of
these articles. Those writing
about him around his death in 2011 at age 62
talk of his intimidating powers of
learning, memory and reasoning. One can indeed
respect these gifts.
At
the same
time his background was different from mine and
that of another of his
more-or-less contemporaries, Tony Judt, whom I
have read and about whose work I
have written. Judt and I were beneficiaries of a
post war UK society seeking to
be more inclusive for those of us who in earlier
times had little chance of
going to Oxbridge. In contrast, Hitchens was
educated in private schools with a
parental view that he should become part of the
upper class. He went on to
Oxford. He became part of the Marxist Trotskyist
scene. His early writings were
on the left, the New Statesman in the UK, and
the wild left, working as a Marxist
pamphleteer. He travelled to explore situations
directly, like a journalist,
and he lived in places like Cyprus and Morocco.
This too comes out in And Yet …
I
feel a kind
of empathy with Judt, whose intent seemed to be
to share some truth he had discovered.
Hitchens seems more of a performer trying to
impress with a show. A position is
taken and defended with flair. Maybe this is why
his writing is engaging. At
the end of an essay, you notice that it was well
engineered. Although Hitchens
shows a concern for honesty and integrity,
telling us about his lawsuits to
protect privacy for journalists in one essay, I
felt he had greater need to
take the stage with a position than he had a
need to search for truths. For
example, I had a hard time accepting his support
for the Bush invasion of Iraq.
At the time his stance was evidently a surprise
to his left-wing friends. And Yet… does
not give any well-reasoned
basis for his position.
True,
there
is some rationale for Hitchins’ support of the
Republican war against Iraq in
his article “Blood for no Oil”, a review of the
book The Good Fight. The Good Fight
argues that only liberals can win
the war against terror. Although Hitchens makes
a good attack on the assumptions
of the book, his favouring of the invasion of
Iraq is based on his view that
Jihadists are the biggest threat, that Saddam
was an obstacle to dealing with
them and that ideas of Saddam Hussein’s being
defeated internally were wishful
thinking. In
contrast, it is important to
me that one builds a meaningful international
forum with an international code
of behavior and approval for action. In this
area, the Iraq war was extremely
destructive. The basis for that war broke
dangerous new ground – an
anticipatory war has now become possible.
Important allies were ignored. France
was actively and openly opposed to the war. (The
US was then upset by all things
French and we were supposed to buy “freedom
fries” rather than “French fries”)
Canada managed to stay away from supporting the
war. The ostensible basis for
the war, Saddam’s possession of “weapons of mass
destruction”, was a lie and
appeared to be a lie at the time – at least to
me. Hitchens does not touch on
any of this.
So
where does
this leave us? And Yet … contains
good reading. It reviews important
books and covers important happenings. It gives
a picture of an important writer.
Yet somehow Hitchens lacks a principled
framework. Declaring his “republican” bias
dating from when he left the UK and its
monarchy, he says he supported invading
Iraq. Then he says (in “No regrets”) that he
voted for Obama, but goes on to
add that voting against Al Gore and Kerry was
right. He says that Bush’s Iraq
invasion was also an attack on an economic
stranglehold by those supporting
Jihadists – presumably the Saudis. This of
course is an incomplete argument. So
there you have him – Christopher Hitchens – And
Yet …