I read Christopher Hitchens for years, starting sometime before his bitter and twisted hit piece on Mother Teresa. You have to read it to believe it. He had problems with religion... But what had he ever done to make the world a better place? What political office had he run for? What business venture did he run on socialist principles? He was a writer who didn't fully see the humanity of certain groups because his irrational loathing for them prevented him from really tackling these issues objectively.
And while he loathed organized religion and politics for their hypocrisy and human failings, he gave his own socialist community immunity from his contempt. He certainly recognized his community's failings, especially its unforgivable failure to denounce the evils of Soviet communism. But he struggled to rationalize away their guilt. And he rationalized the actions and words of any artist or socialist in his circle, like Edward Said and Gore Vidal - both of whom held/hold repulsive opinions. He held his community to a lower standard.
How to explain his contradictions? He was loyal to the causes he embraced as a young man, and he had a vendetta against those he early on found vexing to his youthful ideas of personal freedom. And he stood faithful to these two extreme positions his whole life, even after he no longer really believed in the viability of socialist dogma or in his friends' anti-American, anti-Western ideologies. He never renounced socialism or his friends. He just drifted away.
Another thing I noticed over the years, Hitchens made connections primarily with men. He liked women, and married several, but all of his important relationships were with men. Interesting.
And I will miss him. I was so saddened to learn he had cancer, as I would be if a friend was diagnosed. He's one of those writers who wrote his personality into his work. I felt like I knew him. I had debates with him in my head. I carried his arguments around with me for weeks until I had successfully either defeated him or incorporated his ideas. And he wrote beautifully, unpredictably, not always with the greatest of logic, as passions often led his opinions, but with deep conviction. And I will so much miss reading him. Goodbye Hitchens.
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Posted by: Nike Free | 09/13/2012 at 10:49 PM