September 27, 2007
To Form a More Perfect Hitchens
There's an entire micro-economy based on the pursuit of betterment. The author—58, full-figured, and ferocious in his consumption of cigarettes and scotch—agreed to test its limits, starting with the Executive De-Stress Treatment at a high-end spa.
The Hitch in Vanity Fair:
I'd noticed a touch of decline here and there, but one puts these things down to Anno Domini and the acquirement of seniority. A bit of a stomach gives a chap a position in society. A glass of refreshment, in my view, never hurt anybody. This walking business is overrated: I mastered the art of doing it when I was quite small, and in any case, what are taxis for? Smoking is a vice, I will admit, but one has to have a hobby. Nonetheless, when my friends at this magazine formed up and said they would pay good money to stop having to look at me in my current shape, I agreed to a course of rehabilitation. There now exists a whole micro-economy dedicated to the proposition that a makeover is feasible, or in other words to disprove Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that there are no second acts in American lives. Objectives: to drop down from the current 185 pounds, to improve the "tone" of the skin and muscles, to wheeze less, to enhance the hunched and round-shouldered posture, to give some thought to the hair and fur questions (more emphasis perhaps in the right places and less in the wrong ones), to sharpen up the tailoring, to lessen the booze intake, and to make the smile, which currently looks like a handful of mixed nuts, a little less scary to children.
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 11:44 AM | Permalink
Comments
I will wait for Elatia to weigh in on this one!
In some people's case, finding religion may actually be an improvement.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | Sep 27, 2007 1:23:08 PM
The photograph is enough to quash one's belief in a loving God.
Posted by: Anderson | Sep 27, 2007 1:53:54 PM
Ruchira, thanks for deferring to me, since I sort of love the guy, but truly I think we should have ago at him together. Would this were possible in cyberspace. Too, I imagine he's rather easy to exhaust if ganged up on. But then he's doubtless looking for new material for his next book, _Three Is Not Great_, so...well, I await your cue...
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Sep 27, 2007 4:14:49 PM
2 posts in 2 days by and about Hitchens? Why? in passing, I think I needed to add to my comment yesterday on the Hitchens review or Roth novel: The novel badmouths Bush over and over and this in part may have got our critic very upset.
Posted by: fred lapides | Sep 27, 2007 4:37:29 PM
It is hard to take Hitch seriously, after this supposedly jaded intellectual skeptic was duped so easily by a bunch of Neothugs, then rolled for good cause by the Strauss Plato worshipers.
I have been turned off by Hitch from the days of KPFK in LA, when Marc Cooper had his show (before the Pacifica coup) with Hitch as a moderator.
He has changed sides so many times, we may soon be addressing him as Christopher Khomeini.
But like Elatia, in some deep down way, I like the guy, in his twisted logic.
A quote for The Cabbages For Christ on the board:
"religion has created a black
market for irrationality, where people of like minds can trade
transparently bad reasons in support of their religious beliefs,without the threat of criticism. You, too, can enter this economy of false
knowledge and self-deception. The following method has worked for billions, and it will work for you:
How to Believe in God
Six Easy Steps
1. First, you must want to believe in God.
2. Next, understand that believing in God in the absence of evidence is especially noble.
3. Then, realize that the human ability to believe in God in the absence of evidence might itself constitute evidence for the existence of God.
4. Now consider any need for further evidence (both in yourself and in others) to be a form of temptation, spiritually unhealthy, or a corruption of the intellect.
5. Refer to steps 2-4 as acts of “faith.”
6. Return to 2.
As should be clear, this is a kind of perpetual motion machine of wishful thinking—and it leads, of necessity, to reduced self-awareness
and diminished contact with reality. But it is reputed to have many benefits, and once you get it up and running you will be in fine company. In fact, from the looks of it, you will never be lonely again."
--Harris
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Sep 27, 2007 7:04:51 PM
I too like (liked?) Hitchens quite a lot. But now, as Dave Ranning points out, after he sold out to the neo-cons, it is hard to take him seriously. (although I am not quite sure if despite the self deprecation about his own beauty, Hitchens doesn't really entertain the hope of a miraculous face/body lift) The pleasure I now get from reading him feels a bit like the spurious excitement of rubber-necking at the site of a particularly gruesome wreck. The irony is that Hitch's own stand on Saddam Hussein was a principled one to begin with. Long ago and long before the US decided that Hussein was a BAD MAN, C.H. had drawn our attention to brutal human rights violations (targeted specially at journalists, some of them his friends, and free speech) in Iraq. It was his contortions to fit Bush's unprincipled world view to his own that made him into the sad caricature he has now become.
Larry McMurtry in his autobiographical book "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen," made some pithy observations about Hitchens and his legendary facility with words and facts. McMurtry ascribes that to the British public education system and the culture of Oxbridge debating societies. True, to some extent. But with his prodigious memory and the ability to connect long forgotten events with a current one, C.H. is more gifted than most. Oxbridge notwithstanding, as he points out in this piece on Wodehouse (and Oscar Wilde), I doubt that Hitchens himself could have suceeded so splendidly without crossing the pond. (I could almost forgive him for all his transgressions just for his flawless take on Wodehouse.)
No, the herbal wraps, teeth polishing and nicotine avoidance will not do the trick - the comical grotesqueness is not of his middle aged body but of his misguided mind. I am now waiting for the ultimate makeover when with nothing else to be contrarian about, Hitchens becomes a devoted believer - "God is Great: Why I Was Once An A-s H--e."
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | Sep 27, 2007 9:38:32 PM
A minor clarification. My wish to see Hitchens discover god has nothing to do with my own predilections - it's the circus I look forward to. I myself am not one of Dawkins' Deluded.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | Sep 27, 2007 9:58:07 PM
Ruchira, you're on to something as usual. Given only a slight nudge, Hitch would make a superb RC convert, and I half expect it to happen. The nudge, in his case, would occur when being a particularly funny and well-spoken atheist finally becomes old hat, offending absolutely no one, delighting only a few. What, then, could be more droll, or a fitter subject for a splendid though creaky prose style, or more disgusting to a hooked audience of ageing non-religionists, than for Hitch to make his final showing washed in the blood of The Lamb?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Sep 27, 2007 10:06:06 PM
Ruchira,
What's sad to me is to trace back Hitch's pathology to pre-9-11 times, which says as much of my own former willingness to admire his deft takedowns of sacred cows as anything. It seems to me now it was always a game, playacting that "stuck," at some critical moment like the old childhood tale that if you hit someone a certain way his facial expression would freeze forever. (Maybe it was just boys that talked about this).
Now Hitchens is trapped out-Orwelling Orwell, and it's going to be the Spanish Civil War until the scotch and pall malls catch up to him.
Dave R:
Every time I read a Sam Harris quote, I think him an even greater asshole than I did before. But who are these cabbages habituating these cyber-parts, that you speak of?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Sep 27, 2007 10:28:03 PM
May I splatter a red paintball into this lovefest?
Why such an indulgent tone when posting another Hitchens' wankerama? Calling him by one of his nicknames - 'the Hitch' - is not the kind of open palm you normally extend to others. All very boyz own...
Hitchens is certainly brilliant and has the gift of the gab, but how about a little critical distance? After all, the guy essentially only has one subject now - Hitchens. And entertaining - and sometimes even worthy - as that can often be, is it an excuse to give our brains a vacation?
Posted by: oliviab | Sep 27, 2007 10:31:07 PM
oliviab, it's just that he can write so well. And that he is so funny. It makes one want to forgive him his excesses and his cussedness. It doesn't mean anyone takes him seriously -- anymore.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Sep 27, 2007 11:12:26 PM
Let's give the man his due. The "official report" that begins the piece is Swiftian in its hilarious attentions to bodily decrepitude. Very well done - although despite all, he still manages to make a reference to his "massive gential endowment." Oh Hitch.
Posted by: Asad Raza | Sep 28, 2007 9:28:29 AM
Rather sad, really, to find someone who writes as if he's seeking to convey ideas, but who's reduced himself to being taken as entertainment in practice.
Posted by: Anderson | Sep 28, 2007 9:37:11 AM
Chris:
I too am a little embarrassed by how much I used enjoy Hitchens' indiscriminate slaughter of sacred cows. The fact that even post-Iraq war, after he has been thoroughly discredited in my eyes, I still find it interesting to read some of his pieces, attests to his silver tongued glibness. Which is why I gave the accident analogy.
He smokes Pall Malls? Where does he get them?
And yes, Olivia, I must remember not to call him Hitch.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | Sep 28, 2007 10:19:32 AM
No no no no no Ruchia! Don't stop calling him "Hitch" because of me. Do it for the sake of maintaining (or at least seeming to) a little critical distance.
It's not the use of the nickname itself that jars, but the context : it's in total contrast to the LACK of nicknames or other terms of endearment for the long rollcall of other luminaries (and non lumes) who appear in 3QD.
Why not call Richard Dawkins "Dawk", Freeman Dyson "Dys", or - more in keeping with the entertainment element - Stephen Colbert "Colb"? Doesn't happen. Yet we crowd around Hitchens cooing and drooling and coddling like a bunch of doting elderly aunts, nannies, and besotted grandmothers tugging each others' skirts and quivering with delight and pride that one of our tribe should perform so appallingly yet so appealingly in public. Ooooh look, look!! He's such a naughty boy, but isn't he just toooooo cuuuute!
I, too, think the guy is a brilliant writer and a compelling read, whether you agree or disagree with him. But I don't think this is reason enough to abandon the critical mind we apply to others, or to airily dismiss his recent cosy romance with the neocons, who have irreparably damaged so many lives in the u.s. and elswhere, and whose (illegitimate?)power and persistence in government is propped up partly by defenders like, and including, Hitchens.
It's a great piece, and a funny one, but is it really worth the sacrifice of critical distance on the altar of boyish charm?
~ olivia
Posted by: oliviab | Sep 30, 2007 4:44:44 AM
Great comments string - Hitchens (whoever he is) wins hands down because everyone is talking about him, or, as Dave Ranning might say, "his meme is being replicated".
Posted by: aguy109 | Sep 30, 2007 7:55:01 AM
Dear Olivia (may I call you Ollie?):
If you ignore the Hitch and read the comments a bit more carefully, you will notice that some of us (Dave Ranning, Chris Schoen and me) are thoroughly disillusioned with Hitchens. He is more a source of dubious curiosity than an object of admiration for me. I am not among the gaggle of aunts who coo over his boyish(?) charms at all. I have seen through the guy's glibness and opportunism.
As for Hitchens' continued popularity, I sometimes suspect that it may have something to do with his British accent more than the quality of his arguments. Americans fall prey to that charm, everytime. Even the most vacuous thought and aggressive windbaggery can be nicely papered over with a clipped, posh accent evocative of the old world. Having been born in India, I on the other hand, am not seduced by that. I really used to like his abrasive style of writing - when his politics was "right." Now he is a total sell out in my eyes and I am no longer persuaded.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | Sep 30, 2007 11:36:06 AM
Aguy-
You win! The clearest vision of what is actually happening.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Sep 30, 2007 12:56:12 PM
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