I’m far more reluctant than you to call Hitchens a great writer. To me he will always fall somewhere between the infinitely more interesting Gore Vidal, and the infinitely more odious Douglas Murray. Closer, perhaps to the latter.
His debating style was to rely on his prodigious inventory of facts, and when they stopped working, to bully his opponents with an equally prodigious inventory of obloquy and belittling personal attacks. Much like William F. Buckley in an earlier era. His debates with both Chris Hedges and Michael Parenti are examples of this.
Reading Hitchens proves how much his reputation owes to the affectations of gilded tongue and hauteur. It’s a trick, and I think, just as with Buckley and Murray, to only read Hitchens shows how much he relied upon stagecraft to create his image. In print, he was a sprinter, and could appear brilliant in brief spurts. But over the course of a book a carefully constructed thousand words turned into logical contraptions and cul-de-sacs unable to sustain his original points.
As for his legacy, some have called him an heir to Gore Vidal. Vidal himself, when asked to explain Hitchens’ conversion to Neocon, said “I suppose they made him a better offer.” Hardly an endorsement of integrity by a supposed mentor.
In my opinion, his legacy was defined by the far greater writer, thinker, and humanist, John Le Carré: “He’s an odious twerp.” To understand just what he meant, read Le Carré (e.g.: memoirs, Chapter 19), on Saddam Hussein, and learn just how superficial and self serving Hitchens’ understanding of real world events truly was.
To be fair, I didn’t know Hitchens. Friends of mine who did saw him differently. His genius seems to have been social, and I admire his ability to make and keep friends, as well as his loyalty to them.
I’m far more reluctant than you to call Hitchens a great writer. To me he will always fall somewhere between the infinitely more interesting Gore Vidal, and the infinitely more odious Douglas Murray. Closer, perhaps to the latter.
His debating style was to rely on his prodigious inventory of facts, and when they stopped working, to bully his opponents with an equally prodigious inventory of obloquy and belittling personal attacks. Much like William F. Buckley in an earlier era. His debates with both Chris Hedges and Michael Parenti are examples of this.
Reading Hitchens proves how much his reputation owes to the affectations of gilded tongue and hauteur. It’s a trick, and I think, just as with Buckley and Murray, to only read Hitchens shows how much he relied upon stagecraft to create his image. In print, he was a sprinter, and could appear brilliant in brief spurts. But over the course of a book a carefully constructed thousand words turned into logical contraptions and cul-de-sacs unable to sustain his original points.
As for his legacy, some have called him an heir to Gore Vidal. Vidal himself, when asked to explain Hitchens’ conversion to Neocon, said “I suppose they made him a better offer.” Hardly an endorsement of integrity by a supposed mentor.
In my opinion, his legacy was defined by the far greater writer, thinker, and humanist, John Le Carré: “He’s an odious twerp.” To understand just what he meant, read Le Carré (e.g.: memoirs, Chapter 19), on Saddam Hussein, and learn just how superficial and self serving Hitchens’ understanding of real world events truly was.
To be fair, I didn’t know Hitchens. Friends of mine who did saw him differently. His genius seems to have been social, and I admire his ability to make and keep friends, as well as his loyalty to them.