A great analysis on Hitchens here in Prospect
It’s a review of his new book Love, Poverty, and War : Journeys and Essays
In Love, Poverty and War, an essay on Trotsky comes between essays on Kipling and Huxley. That duality, the leftist immersed in mid-20th century Englishness, brings us closer to the centre of Hitchens’s work. In Brideshead, where others see only snobbery and an elegiacal hymn to lost privilege, Hitchens sees mourning for the dead of the first world war. In every essay on Kipling, including the new one here, he tries to unravel the poet of empire and jingoism, “the beery sentimentality,” from the dark sense of personal and national loss. In all these writers, Hitchens sees complexity, contradiction and “the idea of a double life.” Orwell/Blair, of course, is a classic case of this English doubleness, but the richest account is found in his essay of the early 1990s on Larkin. When Tom Paulin, Terry Eagleton and others rushed to bury Larkin under accusations of racism, sexism and worse, Hitchens dug deeper and found, both in the life and the poetry, more complexity and interest.
Yeah, his political writing is blistering, and independent – and fun to read. I love his suspicion of alliances in general. I love how he will not submit to the generalizations of “we” or “us”. I feel the same way.
This is from Letters to a young contrarian:
Distrust any speaker who talks confidently about “we”, or speaks in the name of “us”. Distrust yourself if you hear those tones creeping into your own style. The search for security and majority is not always the same as solidarity; it can be another name for consensus and tyranny and tribalism. Never forget that, even if there are “masses” to be invoked, or “the people” to be praised, they and it must by definitioni be composed of individuals. Stay on good terms with your inner Yossarian.
Is there better advice than “stay on good terms with your inner Yossarian”?? Damn, dude! I always wondered why blanket generalizations went so up my ass … People who use the terms “we” or “us” in too facile a way have always struck me as intensely dishonest, and whether or not I agree with them – in the face of it, I feel I MUST assert my independence. This is why politics drives me crazy. This is why fundamentalists of any stripe drive me crazy. This is why blogging sometimes drive me crazy. Not that I don’t have opinions. I most certainly do. But they are MINE, and I come to them on my own … not because I feel I must include myself in some “we” or “us”. It’s an experiment: go to a blog where there’s an orthodoxy of belief, a big ol “us against them” vibe, and try to make a comment that is somewhat independent. I’m not talking about disagreement. You can agree with someone – yet do it in an independent way. Or add your own thoughts to the mix, maybe say something that makes it clear that you resist (slightly) the orthodoxy. Do it in a polite tone – always be respectful – but then watch how you will be OVER-attacked. You may even be AGREEING with the core thoughts behind the post – but you will be OVER-attacked. It’s like there’s even an orthodoxy of TONE going on. People smell a different tone on you, and they will attack – regardless of what you say. You come at them with a fly-swatter, they come back with Uzis. I’ve experienced it on blogs I actually like – the attacks come with a ferocity unwarranted by my own comment, and the attacks immediately get personal. Count me out of that bullshit. This is how they treat people who are, essentially, on “their side”? Mmmm, no thanks. I’ll leave the “masses” to themselves.
It’s the problem I also have with most women’s magazine writing.
“Women today feel that …”
“We women are all so wrapped up in everyday concerns …”
“We need to know that such-and-such is universal…”
STOP including me in that ‘we” without my consent. I always thought my problem with all of this had to do with bad writing. Bad writers are general, and they make a lot of assumptions. A lazy writer is one who uses “we” all the time. (This is Writing 101, people. Make it personal. Speak from your own truth. Don’t just parrot the party-line. Or fine – parrot the party-line, but don’t think that’s good writing.)
So that’s part of it – but Hitchens nails my true issue with it in that one paragraph.
I’ve always really preferred his book reviews (that mostly appear in Atlantic). They’re phenomenal. Scholarly, so well-written, unlike book reviews you read anywhere else. Because of the TONE, and what he brings to it.
He also wrote an incredible piece a while back for Vanity Fair on Route 66. Gorgeous. I like his more off-beat things – but still. I’d read his DOODLES on the damn MARGINS. Fascinating.
He’s been around forever, but – is it me – or is he finally getting (to quote Eminem) “the props he deserves” right now? It seems so to me.
“The search for security and majority is not always the same as solidarity; it can be another name for consensus and tyranny and tribalism.”
..and that’s what “we”, “us”, and a lot of other other generalisations are increasingly used for in the politics I see..
I think Hitchens is starting to get his ‘props’.. his very public dissent from, what some saw as, his political grouping has likely played a role in that.. bringing about a re-assessment of his position.
And it can only be a matter of time before there’s a “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Yossarian” self-help book… *shudder*
“Getting In Touch With Your Inner Yossarian”.
(page 1): “Turn to Page 2.”
(page 2): “Turn to Page 1.”
The remaining 163 pages are blank.
(BTW, comes with a bumper sticker: “What Would Irving Washington Do?”
tonecluster:
HAHAHAHA I want that bumper sticker!!