The Sunday New York Times Book section has a favorable review by Dwight garner of Hitchens’s new book. The book, a compilation of published essays, is called And Yet . . ., and was released yesterday. I’ve read all of Hitchens’s essay collections (in fact, I think I’ve read every book he’s written), and they’re great for dipping into at bedtime. I’d put it in the bathroom, but I have no place to put any books there.
As usual, the book is extremely diverse, which makes it even more appealing:
“And Yet …” is a miscellany, a book of essays and book reviews and reported pieces on topics political, social and literary. Mr. Hitchens was that rare public intellectual who was as comfortable pronouncing on V. S. Naipaul and Joan Didion and Edmund Wilson as he was on Bosnia and Iraq and Hezbollah. Few other writers would (or could) compare Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., as Mr. Hitchens does in this book, to Fabrizio in Stendhal’s novel “The Charterhouse of Parma.”
This book revisits Mr. Hitchens’s animus toward the Clintons. It includes“The Case Against Hillary Clinton,” an essay written during the 2008 presidential campaign. Mr. Hitchens asked: “What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama — yet again—a central part of our own politics?”
. . . As a book critic, Mr. Hitchens was sui generis. He tended to pronounce on the topic rather than the book at hand. There is one miraculous performance in “And Yet …” in which he “reviews” for The Atlantic three books loosely about imperialism while mentioning their authors only in fleeting asides and their titles not at all. Somehow he makes this work for him.
He could read very closely indeed, when he felt like it. About critics, he declared: “One test of un homme sérieux is that it is possible to learn from him even when one radically disagrees with him.”
There is a major essay in “And Yet …” about the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, whom he admired, and the fading art of the non-sycophantic interview. Mr. Hitchens pivots to lightly roast Charlie Rose’s telegraphic interview style (“‘Your book. Why now?’”) and mocks the way Larry King lobs softballs in a weirdly aggressive manner. (“‘So — you got the big advance. Movie rights up the wazoo. Married to a babe everybody loves. Top of your game. What’s with that?’”)
And remember this series, accompanied by a picture of Hitchens in a mud mask, cigarette stuck in his earthy gob?
The best reason to read “And Yet …” may be its inclusion of a three-part essay, “On the Limits of Self-Improvement,” that Mr. Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair about trying to get himself in shape. It is as hilarious as it is wise, and I predict it will be published before long as its own pocket-size book.
You can read that series free online (part I, part II, part III).
I’m looking forward to the book already. And, since I have no room for books anywhere, I’ll simply ask the University of Chicago Library to order it (they would anyway) and put me on the list.
Here are the contents; I see I’m familiar with about 25% of the pieces:
I remember reading the Vanity Fair series, in which Hitch claimed to have quit smoking, and then meeting him a few years afterward in Puebla, Mexico, taking a cigarette break outside the Ciudad de las Ideas venue. I was surprised to see him smoking, and didn’t know that within three years it would kill him.
It is certainly okay to say that smoking killed Hitchens, however I knew three people who died of the same thing, and none of them ever smoked a weed. Oesophageal cancer means death much of the time.
Aside from anecdotal evidence, smoking and alkohol are two major risk factors for esophageal cancer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esophageal_cancer#Causes
Yes. The two together killed my little sister. Diagnosed the same week as the Hitch; died a week before he did. I mourn her even more than I do him.
Very sad.
Smoking had killed Leonard Nimoy and he had stopped 35 years previously. A long slow killer. Some people are just born tought physically than others. But he still died from it.
I’m so sorry to hear that, Steve. And what uncanny coincidences.
If you can’t lay off both, at least lay off one. I’ve got a weakness for alcohol, I dare say I can stay nearly as coherent as Hitchens did while drunk (though his articulation while drunk probably surpasses mine while inebriated), but in my own circles I’ve been known to be 9 or 10 drinks in and still holding a conversation. The man had a gift for words and even wrote about alcohol well. With the life that man lived, he earned every scotch and cigarette he ever had.
I suspect genetic inheritance could be another causal factor. Hitch’s father also died of esophageal cancer, as I recall.
The relevant section in the Wikipedia article refers to “Genetic predisposition to gastro-oesophageal cancer” [1].
Other factors mentioned in the article: gender (men) and age (over 60)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esophageal_cancer#cite_note-Lao-2010-16
I very well understand that. But I also know that I would not say each time someone died of this cancer or lung cancer — had to be smoking. Not really the science way to go.
Nobody said that in *every* case it had to be smoking (we don’t want to erect straw men here). But the medical indication is there, and when someone was known as a heavy smoker like Hitchens was [1], I find no flaw in saying it killed him. We may add „very probably“ for the scientific correctness.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens#Smoking_and_drinking
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I keep my copy of The Quotable Hitchens in the guest head; company seems to appreciate it.
This new release sounds like a companion piece to Arguably. As an essayist, Hitch was our era’s successor to Montaigne.
I hope that company washes hands before handling the book … And you don’t read the book at table afterward … : ^ )
I keep it in one of those hermetically sealed glass cases with a mechanical page-turning device, the way the Smithsonian does with the original Constitution and Dec of Independence.
I also keep another, private copy of The Quotable Hitchens in the other bathroom, where the family is under orders to maintain strict sterile technique.
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God, what a picture!
When I came to the “Dwight” at the end of the first line of the OP, part of me expected that the second line would start with the last name “MacDonald.” Then it occurred to me he croaked a couple decades ago.
I am so stuck in a 20th-Century cultural milieu. Think I’ll mosey over to the NYT op-ed page to read Scotty Reston’s and Russell Baker’s columns, check out what Johnny Apple is reporting on, see if Punch Sulzberger is calling for Nixon’s resignation yet.
Somewhat related to this post, since both Harris and Hitchens have been called two of The four horseman of atheism, Sam Harris did an interview for the Salon. In it, Harris talked about several things, from Islam, Christianity, even regressive left people…
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sam-harris-the-salon-interview
Any comments?
Harris was very reluctant to do the interview since he holds Salon in contempt for publishing slander and rubbish. But, he admired the interviewer and had an agreement that he would have final edit. Well, in the interview he criticized Salon decisively but that segment was excised from the final article.
It’s a very interesting read. Sam gets to reprise many of his important positions.
So Hitchens joins Sagan and other fascinating thinkers as being able to release a book after death! Good for him – so to speak.
Even brilliance has its limitations.
Mr. Hitchens had to be given a taste of “water boarding” to know it was torture. Amazing.
Was all for the second attack and occupation of Iraq. Amazing again.
Humans are made up of multitudes.
I don’t think your waterboarding point is accurate. Hitchens always contended it constituted torture. He submitted himself to the technique to report on it. Undergoing the experience himself certainly reconfirmed his initial belief it should be eliminated from as an American interrogation tool.
I’m uncertain what you mean by “second attack,” but suspect it relates to the war in Iraq. I think Hitchens’ support for that war had (at least) two sources: his steadfast internationalism (going back to his days as a Trotskyite/Luxemburgian); and his fierce comradeship with the Kurdish people.
Hitchens was wrong about the Iraq war — but not nearly so simplistically wrong about it as his critics on the issue contend. (Then again, over 60% of his American countrymen were wrong about it, too.) I, for one, never felt it was grounds for excommunicating him from the Left.
As I recall Hitch claimed the waterbording episode was given to him as a journalistic assignment by his boss at Vanity Fair.
His support for the Iraq war, I think, was primarily because of his great hatred of totalitarianism and love of freedom. He was eager to show that Saddam was a mad dictator like Stalin and needed to be crushed.
Sorry, yes the second attack on Iraq and its occupation. A definite war crime under the Geneva Conventions. That disaster has lead us to where things are today along with other countries falling in the region with the generous help of the USA.
Wanting war that is really a war crime should be more than enough grounds to dump any “Leftist” who promotes such.