Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

David Herman on Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays by Christopher Hitchens: “There are many references in Love, Poverty and War to solidarities, to roots and belonging: his father and grandfather, his English literary canon, a 200-year tradition of fellow contrarians, and friends and comrades today from Sarajevo to Central America. Yet there is something solitary in Hitchens, with his quirky English heroes—too white, too male and too posh for these times. When academics praise modernism, postmodernism and postcolonialism, Hitchens praises Kipling, Bellow and Lucky Jim.”

See also the transcript of Christopher Hitchens talking with his brother Peter at the Hay Festival, in which a woman storms out protesting Christopher Hitchens' smoking while she, an audience member, is forbidden from doing so, and my page aggregating mentions of Christopher Hitchens in weblogs and other sources.

Mark E. Madsen [PDF]: “long-time readers deserve an explanation from [Christopher] Hitchens as to why his analysis of the administration seems muted at best. Other than the Iraq poilcy he clearly favors, is he really willing to overlook the many ways in which their ideology and policies stand opposed to so many of his cherished principles.”

Madsen has written an excellent essay on the recent writings of Christopher Hitchens, and while the former understands that the latter's conviction of the necessity to remove Saddam Hussein is genuine and fits with Hitchens' principles, Madsen says that Hitchens is overlooking exactly the type of thing (clerical barbarism and attacks on civil rights) at home that he vilifies abroad.

Matt Taibbi on a favourite writer of mine: “No one among us is going to throw that first stone, though. Not even Chris Hitchens, a man who makes a neat living completing advanced Highlights for Children exercises like the following: "Denounce a like-minded colleague, using the words 'Lugubrious' and 'Semienvious.'" Such is the pretense of modern journalism, that we are to be lectured on courage by a man who has had his intellectual face lifted so many times, he can't close his eyes without opening his mouth. By a man who, if the Soviets had won the Cold War, would be writing breathless features on Eduard Shevardnadze for three bucks a word in Komsomolskaya Vanity Fair ("Georgia on His Mind: Edik Speaks Out." Photos by Annie Liebowitz...).”

Lisa takes on Christopher Hitchens' review of Fahrenheit 9/11: “a more proper assessment of Michael Moore's documentary would be a mildly irritating and wholly juvenile attempt at satire with vast stretches of nauseatingly boring rubbish and moments of purely excruciating irrelevant, invented and/or regurgitated bullshit.”

Christopher Hitchens, in what is really a distilled version of his book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (which I've read and can recommend), writes: “ it's really none of my business who is beatified or canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. I am not a Catholic. Its rituals and observances are less than nothing to me. I object only when the mass media report a propaganda event as if it were to be taken at its own face value. Reading the papers or glancing at the television, one could have got the impression that His Holiness the Pope was the accepted moral tutor for the entire world, instead of the leader of a traditionalist sect that calls its ostensibly celibate and virginal officials by parental names like "Father" and "Mother" and opposes almost every kind of sexual expression while making allowances and excuses for adult-infant penetration.”

Chris, on A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq by Christopher Hitchens, a book I have not read (I am confident that I've read most of the essays contained in it, however): “there is real evidence in the book that Hitchens genuinely cares about the well-being of Iraqis, which is more than I can say for a great many pro-war folks. Still, not a single piece in the book is free of idiotic remarks, fallacious inferences and all the rest. There's precious little honest argument, and almost no attempt to actually engage with positions other than his own. There is, in fact, almost no evidence that he even understands the more plausible anti-war arguments, since his attention is riveted nearly continually by the weakest and silliest anti-war arguments.”

japh on Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens: “with chapter headings like 'orwell and the left', 'orwell and the right', 'orwell and america', and 'orwell and the feminists' (to name a few), you know that hitchens is trying to cover all the ground. he succeeds in my mind, and with enough detail to leave you pleased with his arguments.”

japh on Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens: “hitchens has led a life of curious adventure and incident, all the while developing a world view based on being a contrarian. regardless of your take on hitchens and his views, letters is a worthwhile read. it reminds us of the fire and strong-mindedness of youth, and makes us feel painfully complacent in our everyday lives.”