Christopher Hitchens. Arguably:

Essays. New York. Twelve / Hachette.

2011. isbn 9781455502776

Ordinary book reviewers have three

tasks: to determine what the author

set out to do; how well that task was

accomplished; and whether it was

worth undertaking. Here the reviewer

is in a way subordinate to the book. Not

so reviewers given the space to show

their credentials as public intellectuals.

In their work, readers often find it

difficult to discover just what book is

being discussed because the reviewer

subsumes the discussion in a wider

consideration of the topic.

Christopher Hitchens is preeminently

in the second group. He seems

to be as widely read and traveled as he

is prolific—the publicity sheet for the

book notes that Arguably: Essays is his

first collection since 2004, not counting

the six other books he wrote or coedited

in the meantime. This output is

fueled (a word he detests) by consistent

and unvarying opinions. Though

he has a soft spot for the English Reformation

because it destroyed Catholic

power, he dislikes all religions in an

ascending intensity from Protestantism

to Catholicism to Islam.

He is particularly severe on religious

elements in the novels of Evelyn

Waugh and even more in those of

Graham Greene (he refers to the girl

in The Heart of the Matter as Scobie’s

“scrawny and tedious mistress”), giving

unqualified praise to the unreligious

vision of Anthony Powell, whose

clotted and stuffy prose he praises

for inexplicable and unexplained reasons.

But irreligion is not enough

to gain his approval: John Updike’s

“grueling homework” and Somerset

Maugham’s utter stylessness are

severely criticized, with some justice.

George Orwell sits understandably

high in his pantheon for his idiosyncratic

socialism and for the parallels

between Nineteen Eighty-Four and the

English Reformation, and he thinks

more highly of Upton Sinclair as a

social novelist than he does of Dickens

or Zola—a decision hardly based

on aesthetic grounds.

His political views are antiimperialist

and anti-totalitarian, and,

forced to choose, he would go with

the latter. He excoriates practitioners

of any form of jihad, and all regimes

or individuals from the wet Left who

support or excuse it, and almost gushes

about the Kurds.

In reviews and essays on political

subjects, he can be quite caustic,

but he also says that “the people

who must never have power are the

humorless. To impossible certainties

of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity.”

To lack of humor one might

add the sin of sentimentality. Thus in

dealing with quite serious subjects,

like the near-collapse of the American

economy in 2008, Hitchens compares

Hank Paulson’s attitude of “prayer

and beseechment” to the end of Peter

Pan, “where the children are told that,

if they don’t shout out aloud that they

all believe in fairies, then Tinker Bell’s

gonna fucking die.” And the economy

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very nearly does. He also excoriates

“the moist, vapid effusion that greeted

the death of Diana Spencer” and

the unearned appropriation of grief at

the killings at Virginia Tech as “proof

of how utterly painless all this vicarious

‘pain’ really is.” And his view of the

British royal family can be summed

up in “This is what you get when you

found a political system on the family

values of Henry VIII.” But he is equally

sharp on the failings of JFK.

Although Hitchens can be snarky,

he makes interesting and often valid

points, mostly negative, about the

weakness of Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn

Mauberley,” and his analysis of

Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey

Falcon is both pointed and balanced.

Even when he condemns, as in his discussion

of Waugh, he can see virtues

to mitigate faults.

On the (very great) whole, the

chief impression one might take from

this massive collection is that, given

the willingness of outlets like Vanity

Fair, the Atlantic, and Slate to publish

extended and thoughtful material

like this, the condition of American

journalism and thought might not be

quite as bad as some have feared.

Robert Murray Davis

University of Oklahoma