| I picked up a collection of essays titled “and yet” to see if the compiled writings of Christopher Hitchens went deeper than my previous experiences with his work. As of this moment, 4:45 pm on Saturday, March 11th, I am completely comfortable with coming to the following conclusion: I don’t care for Christopher Hitchens, may he Rest In Peace. “And Yet…” Having no experience with Hitchens outside of his essay eviscerating Mother Teresa and near ubiquitous YouTube presence, I felt it was time to actually sit down and read a body of his work. My experience with Hitchens seemed to be more in an attempt to like him when the truth was I felt his world renown, biting wit was lacking. Hitchens always had a good grasp of his debate opponent’s argument, he could quote hypocritical verses from various religious texts from memory and could cite all of the major events and characters in historic/current events. All of which is remarkably impressive but not necessarily grounds for fandom. After all, a full grasp and understanding of a subject will certainly help you make a well-rounded argument, but should not be taken for one. I’ve always felt the Hitchens' snark and depth of knowledge was aimed more at domination than a fostering of understanding. It was almost Socratic. Crushing his opponents in debates or making a fool of network news hosts, Hitchens often won an audience to his side by proving the fallibility of the person opposite him. Even in the few pieces, I’ve read, the topic he chooses is given a thorough lashing but by the end of it, I don’t feel like I’ve been brought anywhere. It isn’t that Mother Teresa is somehow undeserving of getting the Hitch treatment (no one calls it that FYI) and it is an important alternative analysis of popular history, but from my understanding that isn’t really why people read it. At the end of the day, Hitchens assumes the reader will concede to his muddied point on the grounds that he’s made someone look thoroughly stupid. So I picked up a book of his at Barnes&Noble. Just grabbed it off the shelf and bought it. This was a mistake. “And Yet…” is a series of essays published posthumously and chosen by virtue of not being selected for Hitchens' first (massive) compilation of Essays titled “Arguably”. This makes them second-rate essays by default. It’s obvious why. A good selection of these essays is book reviews. A.N. Wilson, Salman Rushdie, Mikhail Lermontov, Ian Fleming to name a few of the authors visited. Maybe Hitchens writes in-depth deep dives into books, but it seems that these are plot summaries followed by a hasty endorsement (and yes, I realize I’m no expert, but I always don’t have fans...or readers). The rest of the essays in “And Yet..” can be safely categorized as frivolous musings. Some of these observations are interesting, Ohio’s election numbers looking spotty in “Ohio’s Odd Numbers” or Hillary Clinton’s long history of PR follies in “The Case Against Hillary Clinton”. Others seem downright useless, like Obama’s likeness to a feline in (ready for it?) “Barack Obama, One Cool Cat” or how middle America has a diverse level of difficult to understand idiosyncrasies in “My Red-State Odyssey”. Ultimately though, most of the pieces in “And Yet…” are well-written thoughts that the reader is expected to enjoy because Christopher Hitchens wrote them in his Christopher Hitchens voice. It’s important to remember that Hitchens made his living as a writer, by definition there have to be pieces he wrote because he needed to collect a paycheck. It seems, with a few notable exceptions, that “And Yet…” is entirely composed of these types of tidbit essays. So it seems I need to give Hitchens another chance, but having only experienced his body of work in what is essentially a last ditch effort to profit off his peripheral thoughts, I can say I’m not yet sold on the “greatest polemic of our time” |
