I never met Christopher Hitchens, but I once knew a doppelganger of his, a world away from England.
So similar were they — their body shape, their oratory styles, the deadpan facial expressions, their inability to produce anything of grace (dance, music, sport, nothing) apart from the astonishing fluidity of their speech — so similar were these two people that I’m inclined to consider “Hitchenism” as a kind of condition, a one-in-a-million genetic mutation, with a Hitchens holding fort in every metropolis.
A difference, though, is that this Hitchens (the famous one) had the work ethic of an ox, the doggedness of a Tasmanian devil, and most of all, the good fortune to mingle with masters in London. I’m thinking of his New Statemen chums — Amis, Barnes, Fenton, and later McEwan, Rushdie, and many others. Coming from such a pedigree, the bar of political discourse in America can’t appear any lower; or more appropriately — pugilism instead of high-jump — the Americans wear kid-gloves compared to the bare-knuckled brawls in which Hitchens was trained. His method was simple. He would out-read, out-write, out-punch you.
A mediocre stylist, said Amis of Hitchens’s early days, and when it comes to literary output, I’d agree with that. Hitchens knew art better than anyone, but like an old eunuch gazing quizzically — and often admiringly — at another man’s genitals, he could never quite produce it himself. Besides, Hitchens showed that style is one thing, sitting in the chair and writing is another. It’s not enough to think original thoughts; you must be out there fighting for territory.
At The Nation, he ground out article after article, exciting, soldierly stuff. But he was speaking to readers. His real calling, it turned out, was speaking to listeners. Jumping into the noisy American political fray, he was right at home. A “news groupie” my narrator calls him in Kamal, Book One.
Now let us not disgrace a poem
with world affairs and those who choose
– like Rush, or Chris, or even Noam –
to be the groupies of the news.
Not sure I like seeing Rush Limbaugh and Chris Hitchens in the same disparaging tetrameter, but then again, that’s where we wanted Chris to be — right in Rush’s face.
I’m a hopeless talker. When it comes to articulation, I think of myself as one those people you occasionally see trying to walk multiple dogs. A tangle of leads. Hitchens’s verbal rhetoric was a single attack dog on a vastly extendable leash, relentless, ferocious, sometimes let loose completely; and people like me admired those fangs, the carnassial tearing apart of dopey belief. We appreciated the vigilance, the bite he gave to our occasional barking thoughts.
Once the jaws clamped down, that was it. He never let go.
When it comes to death, however, one has to let go. Although if anyone could win that argument, it was Hitch (which is another reason his death is so disappointing). Then again, if “Hitchenism” is really more of a genetic condition than a character — and I think it may well be — our species is evolving his direction anyway. Toward a braver kind of thinking. We’re right behind the charge he’s led.
Well, not quite behind it, not even bloody close. That pug-faced, chimp-in-chief whose bellicosity he tirelessly championed was responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis. That’s a hefty price to pay for misguided loyalty to flawed and bad ideas, and Hitch had more than his share of bad ideas. Was all this about-facism, or ‘Hitchenism’, due to the Rushdie fatwah? Who knows? He did afterall fall out with Edward Said and that was a mark against him. He fell out with Sidney Blumenthal as well over some very spurious shit having to do with semen stains.
Nice post!
The guy could write, he could blather too, and he loved the spotlight, but ultimately he missed his calling: he wasted his gifts on bullshit. He’s dead now, the bullshit goes on, but what will live I feel are his critical works on Orwell, Paine and his fine essays.
Thanks for the comment, John. Of the great literary figures who put on the stripes of geopolitical generals — such as Kipling and Wells (or Twain and Orwell to some degree) — Hitchens doesn’t even gain entry into their war room. Go get us some coffee, son. Close the door behind you.
His ideas are of little interest. He had a knack for making Klansmen out of clowns. Religion is tyranny? Yawn. His monkey-feeding position on Iraq which you describe, for example, was much less disappointing to me than how, as a literary foot soldier, he so quickly embraced the term “9/11″ as synecdoche (thus granting the terrorists their biggest prize — 1/365th of the calendar year).
His mentor, Orwell, would have caned him for that.
But “Hitchenism” as a condition is so much more desirable than the prevailing syndrome suffered by jokesters like this guy — Umair Haque (who claims to be from Harvard no less). Or the Google-groveling Gombeen Men in Silicon Valley who, in the guise of do-gooders, are trying to make computers think like humans, when places such as the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya are overflowing with the most powerful processors ever designed, desperate for food and work.
Hitchens was loud, rancorous, attention-seeking. But “Hitchenism” is eloquence, passion, and a love of language before country or anything else.
I agree that Hitchens will never rise to the status of Kipling, Wells, Twain or Orwell, and that his morphing of clowns into klansmen was particularly inane. I always felt [after reading the umpteenth Slate or Nation article] that he set before his mind’s eye some prototypical and archetypal bully and then proceeded to verbally thrash him silly. Each week another new devil elicited his opprobrium.
I agree with Alexander Coburn that the Iraq War is basically an Imperialist War to wrest a key natural resource away from those who own it and that Hitchens was always a burgeoning apologist for empire.
Yes to your final point.