The Public Intellectual: Continuity as a Pre-Requisite for
Credibility? A Biography of Christopher Hitchens as a
Public Intellectual.
MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Author: Glenn Walters Student number: 11108304 Main Supervisor: Dr. Guido Snel
Second Supervisor: Dr. Alex Drace-Francis June, 2016
Table of Contents
x. Introduction ... 3 xi Theoretical Framework ... 3 xii Methodology ... 6 1. Chapter One: Christopher Hitchens’ Life and Writing Career ... 9 1.1 Autobiography and Hitch-22 ... 9 1.2 Early life, Oxford University, and the International Socialists ... 10 1.3 Bohemian Bloomsbury and The New Statesman ... 13 1.4 America and The Nation ... 17 1.5 Vanity Fair and the 1990’s ... 20 1.6 Later Career and American Citizenship ... 22 2. Chapter Two: Criticisms of Hitchens and Attacks on Credibility ... 25 2.1 Attacks on Personal Integrity ... 25 2.1.1 Friendship with Edward Said ... 27 2.2 The Political Flip-Flopper ... 29 2.3 Accusations of Imperialism ... 31 2.4 The Left Wing Apostate ... 33 2.5 A Note on Aesthetic Rupture ... 38 3. Chapter Three: Re-establishing Hitchens’ Credibility as a Public Intellectual ... 41 3.1 Reconsidering Hitchens’ Personal Integrity: Did Hitchens Have a Case Against Clinton? ... 41 3.1.1 Sidney Blumenthal ... 42 3.1.2 Friendship with Edward Said ... 43 3.2 A Political Flip Flopper or Contrarian? ... 45 3.2.1 Hitchens’ Marxism and Attraction to Revolutionary Dynamism ... 47 3.2.2 Opposition to Totalitarianism and Conflation with Religion ... 49 3.3 Imperialist or Internationalist? ... 52 3.4 The Left Wing Apostate? ... 56 3.5 A Note on Perceived Aesthetic Rupture ... 60 4. Conclusion ... 63 4.1 Deconstructing Contrarianism ... 63 4.2 Assessing Public Intellectuals ... 67 5. Bibliography ... 70x. Introduction
This thesis is ostensibly a consideration of the life and works of the late Anglo-American polemic, journalist, author, and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011). Hitchens’ life and politics were seemingly characterised by discontinuities: From gadfly to imperialist, or internationalist to left wing apostate; critical and chronicling discourse is littered with allusion to rupture and contradiction. A polarising figure, detractors frame the dialectical Christopher Hitchens as incoherent and thus lacking credibility as a public intellectual. It is consideration of this concept which forms the corpus of this thesis. The following investigation of Hitchens’ life and intellectual output and will inform a second layer of enquiry. By using Christopher Hitchens as a case study, broader questions will be asked and answered about the role and nature of public intellectuals: what characterises public intellectuals?; how do they engage the public sphere?; should they perform a specific role?; can public intellectuals traverse British and American public spheres?; and, crucially, what is the relationship between consistency of political ideology and credibility?
xi Theoretical Framework
Scholarly theory of public intellectuals and the contexts in which they operate provides the framework for this investigation into Christopher Hitchens. Born in Portsmouth, England in the years following the allied defeat of Nazi Germany, Hitchens grew into a tradition of western European public intellectuals that had arisen as an oppositional class, fighting ‘retrograde and repressive ideologies,’ which had come into focus during the anti-Semitic Dreyfus affair that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century.1 Unlike the philosophes of
the eighteenth century (the intellectual forefathers of Julian Benda and Emile Zola) who ‘frequently acted as individuals,’ the public intellectuals of post-Dreyfus Europe formed a self-conscious societal group.2 These twentieth century public intellectuals were
distinguished by non-academic specialisation: They had the ability to speak authoritatively
1 Jules Chametzky, “Public Intellectuals: Now and Then,” Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (2004), Vol. 29, Accessed 30 May, 2016: 212, http://jstor.org/stable/4141851
on a broad range of societal issues; people such as Bertrand Russell and Jean Paul Sartre in Europe, or Norman Mailer and Noam Chomsky in America. Christopher Hitchens began his career in England before moving to America in 1981 on the cusp of what many scholars view as an epoch change in public intellectualism. Michael Ignatieff writes in his article Decline and Fall of the Public Intellectual that on Sartre’s death ‘a chapter which had begun in Paris in 1733, when Voltaire published his letters concerning the English Nation, came to an end,’3
prompting Ignatieff to ask in 1997 ‘who is left to speak for the public.’4 The end of the Cold
War blurred oppositional ideological lines and for many marked the death of the public intellectual. This pessimistic outlook for the prospects of the public intellectual was captured in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man. If human social evolution was to end with the apparent hegemony enjoyed by western liberal democracy, the public
intellectual would surely be doomed to become an anachronism. Other scholars accept that the time of the authoritative generalist is over, but that public intellectualism continues to exist, only in different forms and with an uncertain future. Patrick Baert and Josh Booth emphasise the role of the ‘digital age’ in the ‘motives and means by which intellectuals engage their publics.’5 The post-modern technological revolution facilitates a
‘democratisation’ of the public sphere,6 although intuitively this could also engulf public intellectualism in the perceived dumbing down occurring in wider society. Barbara Misztal also sounds a warning in her analysis of increasing academic specialisation and the rise of think tanks in the intellectual space. These experts and knowledge brokers may have a
limiting effect on the role of other public intellectuals, ‘and their monopolisation of the public forum could represent a threat to the quality of public debates.’7 It is in this intellectual
landscape that theorised a changing role for the public intellectual that Hitchens career unfolded, and it is this landscape that thus provides the theoretical framework for this thesis.
But what are public intellectuals and what do they do? There is much scholarly opinion on the matter. Jules Chametzky offers a compact definition that public intellectuals are ‘those who attempt to influence social and political events and reality directly with their ideas.’8
3 Michael Ignatieff, "Decline and fall of the public intellectual," Queen's Quarterly (1997), Vol. 104, accessed 30 May, 2016: 394-403,
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA30102430&v=2.1&u=amst&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w 4 Ignatieff, "Decline and fall of the public intellectual," 394-403.
5 Patrick Baert and Barbara Misztal, “A Special Issue on Public Intellectuals,” International Journal of Politics,
Culture, and Society (2012), Vol. 25, accessed 30 May 2016: 91, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23279949
6 Baert and Misztal, “A Special Issue on Public Intellectuals,” 91. 7 ibid., 92.
Maria Todorova adds nuance to Chametzky’s useful but limited characterisation by
addressing preferred methodologies of public intellectuals. Todorova states that the ‘normal way’ for the public intellectual to actually reach his or her public is by ‘unwrapping’ complex arguments and translating them into decipherable language whilst ‘providing a moral
compass.’9 Additionally, says Todorova, the public intellectual must engage in sufficiently
rigorous scholarship less they sink into ‘misidentifications, misconceptions, and errors.’10
Irresponsible scholarship represents a ‘breach of historical conventions’ and precludes engagement with other scholars and ultimately the ‘advancement of scholarship.’11 Todorova does however note that a certain flexibility in this regard can create an innovative space which can produce ‘new theoretical or conceptual moves.’12 For Cynthia Ozik public
intellectuals are dynamic, self-assured, and courageous: They must have enough self-respect to tell the truth and recognise crisis. The public intellectual must be, in times of growing moral equivalence, prepared to identify and label ‘barbarians,’ by whom Ozik means those ‘who relish evil,’ denigrate reason, and cancel out the humanity of the other.13 This is the responsibility of the public intellectual. As well as moral fibre, public intellectuals require a disposition to activism as this is what separates them from private intellectuals. Additionally, the public intellectual must be philosophically capable: Aware of the currents of history, it is the job of the public intellectual to record and interpret the Zeitgeist. They strive to
comprehend and formulate ‘the cognitive and historic patterns that give rise to public issues.’14 Finally, whilst the above criterion implicitly demand a continuity in the
behaviourisms, methodologies, and mentalities of public intellectuals, a continuity on societal topics of public concern is an explicit conceptual requirement. In his hugely influential work La Trahison des clercs, Julian Benda famously stated ‘the duty of the intellectual was to defend universal values, over and above the politics of the moment,’15 in effect calling for a
form of ultimate consistency. Written at the turn of the twentieth century in opposition to the anti-Semitism suffered by Jewish Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus, Benda and his fellow Dreyfusards stood up for values of liberty and justice. More recently, prominent black American Intellectual Cornel West has had his credibility called into question owing to
9 Maria Todorova, “On Public Intellectuals and Their Conceptual Frameworks,” Slavic Review (2015), Vol. 74, Accessed 30 May, 2016: 709, http://jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.74.4.708
10 Todorova, “On Public Intellectuals and Their Conceptual Frameworks,” 712. 11 ibid.
12 ibid.
13 Cynthia Ozik, “Public and Private Intellectuals,” The American Scholar (1995), Vol. 64, Accessed 30 May, 2016: 358, http://jstor.org/stable/41212342
14 Ozik, “Public and Private Intellectuals,” 355.
perceived inconsistencies in his political alliances. In the 2000 Presidential election, West threw his support behind the candidacy of Bill Bradley, a politician who campaigned on policies West had spent his career ‘assiduously’ attacking: Multinational capitalist
corporations, institutionalised racism and violence, and the disempowerment of American workers.’16 Public intellectuals are required to engage politics and commit to a position.
Having done this, crossing back over political divides can terminally damage credibility. Chametzky states – as in the case of West - that such actions undercut and interrogate the seriousness of the speaker.1718 The following study of Christopher Hitchens is designed to both test and develop these definitions and conceptions, which in themselves provide a sound framework in which to locate this thesis.
xii Methodology
This thesis is structured as an intellectual biography of Christopher Hitchens. This is a challenging, yet appropriate vehicle of delivery. Poor biography occurs when ‘criticism clumsily intrudes upon the continuity of a life;’ whilst successful biography relies on ‘sweeping chronology,’ but also the highlighting of ‘major patterns of behaviour that give a life its shape and meaning.’19 However, chronology may also create the illusion of a
consistency that never existed. This study of Christopher Hitchens is concerned with rupture and discontinuity, thus intellectual biography drives towards the intended target of this work, enabling discussion of these facets of Hitchens’ life and writing as well as facilitating their potential deconstruction. Indeed, Hitchens provides a perfect subject of enquiry for this paper. A perfunctory glance at his life and writing career reveals manifold discontinuities: Politically, Hitchens has supported and attacked figures and politics on either side of the left/right divide. A ferocious opponent of Henry Kissinger, Hitchens was equally vociferous in his support of George W. Bush, and was a friend to characters as diverse as political dissident Adam Michnik; prize winning cultural author Salman Rushdie; the neoconservative
16 ibid., 224. 17 ibid.
18 Indeed, a recent article published by the American Journal Counter Punch reveals that West is still struggling to regain credibility (see: Ajamu Baraka, “Why is Cornel West Playing a Human Shield for the Democrats – Once Again?,” Counter Punch, September 10, 2015, accessed 26 June, 2016,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/10/why-is-cornel-west-playing-a-human-shield-for-the-democrats-once-again/).
19 Paul Murray Kendall, “Biography: Narrative Genre,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/art/biography-narrative-genre
politician and head of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz; and Holocaust denying historian David Irving. Hitchens was born of imperialism and yet quickly espoused internationalism; was a freedom of speech fundamentalist, but also opposed abortion. Hitchens was born British and died American, has won literary prizes whilst his prose was simultaneously castigated, and claimed Marxist credentials at a point in his career when he was widely labelled a neoconservative. For those who appreciated his work, Christopher Hitchens was a writer of ‘staggeringly prolific output,’20 for those less enamoured his output represented
‘manic industry.’21 Thus, the polarising Hitchens, one of the most visible public intellectuals in recent British and American history, represents a veritable goldmine of ruptures and contradictions for the purpose of this study, and raises interesting questions about
contrarianism – as oppose to ideological political consistency - and success and longevity in the public sphere.
Whether one appreciates Hitchens’ works or not, it is indisputable that he produced a formidable amount of literature including fourteen books and another three co-authored or co-edited, and six collections of essays in addition to a staggering amount of newspaper columns and magazine articles not chronicled in book publications. Hence, approaching Christopher Hitchens’ body of work and life in narrower terms of contradictions and ruptures makes the task intelligible. Producing even this study requires much textual analysis, a technique and methodology central of the discipline of intellectual history. With both biography and history dealing mostly with the past, ‘in the hunting down, evaluating, and selection of sources they are akin.’22 Indeed, in his 1830 essay On History Thomas Carlyle wrote that ‘history was the essence of innumerable biographies.’23 Carlyle saw biography as an interrogation of the subjects ‘half-conscious aims’ and ‘beliefs.’24 Conversely, the study of
biography also requires the context provided by historical academic methodology: Biography and History enjoy a symbiotic relationship. With public intellectualism having firm roots in European intellectual culture, the medium of intellectual biography with its close relations to historical inquiry appropriately anchors this investigation into a British born American subject in transatlantic intellectual, literary, and scholarly traditions.
20 Nick Gillespie, “Christopher Hitchens RIP,” Reason.com, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-rip
21 Michael Wolff, “The damnation of ST Christopher,” GQ Magazine, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/michael-wolff-on-christopher-hitchens
22 Murray Kendall, “Biography: Narrative Genre.”
23 Barbara Caine, Biography and History (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 13. 24 ibid.
This thesis is divided into three distinct chapters. Chapter one chronicles Hitchens’ life, focussing on rupture both in his personal life and writing career. The chapter seeks to deconstruct these ruptures where possible, and tease out consistencies in a life and career where on first glance there appear to be few. Chapter Two focusses exclusively on criticisms of Hitchens meted out by fellow public intellectuals and social commentators which attacked his credibility as a public intellectual. These criticisms are heavily focussed around
inconsistencies in Hitchens’ writings, with Hitchens framed as either a political flip-flopper or left wing apostate. But there were also attacks on ‘unwanted’ consistencies. These were aimed firstly at Hitchens’ person, with many critics pointing to a moral bankruptcy and overriding career avarice. Secondly, Hitchens was accused in some quarters of being an imperialist fighting to maintain a veneer of cosmopolitanism. Chapter Three offers a counter narrative, seeking to locate and explore underlying consistencies of thought and principle which give meaning and structure to Hitchens’ politics, thereby again deconstructing credibility robbing political inconsistencies. In conclusion this thesis will highlight the difficulties of pinning down contrarianism, despite demonstrating that analysis of Hitchens’ career shows salient themes emerge which at least partially serve to dispel some accusations and offer consistency. Additionally, analysis of Hitchens’ career as a public intellectual facilitates an interrogation into how robust the parameters offered by academics are, and will show that salient features of public intellectualism do emerge.
1. Chapter One: Christopher Hitchens’ Life and Writing Career 1.1 Autobiography and Hitch-22
In his 1968 life narrative, W.E.B. Debois wrote that ‘autobiographies do not form
indisputable authorities.’25 Dubois acknowledged that memory may fail to serve accurately, and his book represented what an old man dreams his life to have been, ‘and what he would like others to believe.’26 In A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson recommend that reading life narratives is an intersubjective process, demanding an adjustment of expectations of truth.27 The reader should consider whether the writer explicitly
exerts the coherence of their story, and analysis of omissions, contradictions, and silences inform the reader’s picture of the life being animated on the page.28 Christopher Hitchens’ own life narrative was released in 2010, a year before his death. Towards the end of writing the book, entitled Hitch-22, Hitchens became unusually tired, eventually cancelling the accompanying book tour. He was subsequently diagnosed with stage four oesophageal cancer, an issue discussed in a new preface written for the second printing run. In it, Hitchens emphasises consistency in his his life through the dialectic, that ‘a continuous theme in Hitch-22 is the requirement, exacted by a life of repeated contradictions, to keep two sets of
books.’29 At the time of writing the preface Hitchens explains the rigors of making
preparations to die, whilst simultaneously continuing to live; the ultimate final contradictory process of a self-acknowledged – and self-portrayed – contrarian and master of the
dialectic.30 Hitch-22, emphasises a coherence underpinning manifold inconsistency and rupture: It is exactly this claim that the following study will investigate. Thus, Hitchens implicitly acknowledges the notion of consistency as a crucial factor in establishing credibility in his own life and career, that of a public intellectual.
25 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Lives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 13.
26 Smith and Watson, “Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Lives,” 13. 27 ibid.
28 ibid., 171.
29 Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22 (New York: Twelve, 2010), xiii. 30 Christopher Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” xiii.
1.2 Early life, Oxford University, and the International Socialists
Christopher Eric Hitchens was born into a context of post-World War II British imperial decline; a phenomenon felt particularly acutely by the Hitchens family. His parents had met during the war where his father, Eric Hitchens, had served as a naval commander, whilst his mother, Yvonne, had volunteered as a Wren. Hitchens’ father was a stoic man of simple needs and few words, who had captained the ship that sunk Hitler’s Scharnhorst.31 By contrast, Hitchens describes his mother as vivacious: A social butterfly and frustrated socialite, with whom he enjoyed a close and loving relationship.32 It was Yvonne who
provided Hitchens with what he describes as his ‘first identity.’33 Hitchens’ earliest memories were of living in Malta and observing the British fleet as it crossed the port at Valletta. The Hitchens family were posted to Malta from the English naval town of Portsmouth, where Christopher had been born April 13, 1949. The time in Malta was the high water mark of the Hitchens’ family life: It provided sociability amiable to the sensibilities of Yvonne; whilst his father’s Naval detachment in Valletta still had a ‘shimmer or scintilla of greatness’ to it.34 The post-imperial afterglow of Malta contrasted sharply with the austere surrounding of the Hitchens’ next home, the Scottish naval base at Rosyth, in which Yvonne struggled to flourish. The declining British Empire represented a metaphor for his father’s condition: After the tumultuous days of war and harbours of Malta, Hitchens recalls his father donning his uniform to set foot upon non-seagoing vessels that had become centres of administration and bureaucracy. This caused Eric Hitchens to suffer very deep yet repressed grievance.’35 The war afforded the Hitchens’ upward mobility and they achieved lower-middle class status by the time Christopher was of schooling age. He recalls overhearing a conversation between his parents whilst he was seven years old, whereby Yvonne forcefully stated: ‘If there is to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it.’36 It was, according to
Hitchens, thanks to his mother’s insistence and the family’s self-imposed frugality that he was afforded him the opportunity of firstly, attending a private school in Cambridge, and ultimately university education.37
31 ibid., 36. 32 ibid., 11. 33 ibid., 22. 34 ibid., 37. 35 ibid. 36 ibid., 13.
37 ibid., 14. This page also includes the single mention of his brother, Peter, in the entirety of the book: …’the money… was instead being spent on school fees for me and my brother, Peter (who had arrived during our time in Malta) …
Before arriving at Balliol College, Oxford University in 1967, Hitchens had already joined and been expelled from the Labour Party owing to participation in protests against Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s ‘contemptible support for the war in Vietnam.’38 Hitchens’ early propensity for left wing politics was strengthened and ideologically tuned through
interactions with fellow Oxford undergraduate Peter Sedgewick. Sedgewick recruited Hitchens for the International Socialists39 after being impressed by his ability in public
debates held at Balliol. Attending university to study philosophy, politics, and economics, Hitchens’ interest in the works of Karl Marx was furthered by Sedgewick, who exposed him to the socialism of Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxembourg.40 It is probable that Sedgewick also introduced Hitchens to two figures that were fundamental to the formation of his early political principles. The first was Belgian-born left wing revolutionary and anti-Stalinist Victor Serge,41 who Hitchens credits with being the first man to coin the word ‘totalitarian.’42 Sedgewick had translated Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolution in 1963 and published an article called The Crucial Year: Victor Serge on Class and Party in the January/March edition of International Socialism, a small quarterly with a circulation of roughly two thousand copies per quarter.4344 It was probably Sedgewick - also on the editorial staff of International Socialism - who first introduced Hitchens to the writing of George Orwell: Sedgewick had published in 1969 an article entitled George Orwell: International Socialist?.4546 Hitchens joined the International Socialists against a backdrop of a world engulfed by radical
revolutionary upheaval and internationalist sympathy. The year of 1967 had seen a military coup in Greece, America struggling to maintain the ascendency in Vietnam, the Salazar regime on the retreat in Africa, the oppressive Czech Communist Party facing intellectual bankruptcy, and stirrings of the civil rights movement in America: With the 1968 Paris revolt the world appeared ripe for revolution from below. In 1968 Hitchens travelled to Cuba just
38 Christopher Hitchens, “Long Live Labor: Why I’m for Tony Blair,” Slate, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2005/04/long_live_labor.html 39 The International Socialists were a forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party.
40 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 87.
41 Victor Serge receives much mention and is often quoted in Hitchens’ writing. As late as 2002 Hitchens wrote an article entitled Victor Serge: Pictures from an Inquisition in which he reviewed Serge’s The Case of
Comrade Tulayev and Memoirs of a Revolutionary whilst working as a literary reviewer for the American
publication The Atlantic. 42 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 91.
43 Camilla Royal, Deputy Editor International Socialism, e-mail message to author, May 25, 2016.
44 Incidentally also the first issue to feature an article written by Hitchens, a review of The End of Inequality? By David Lane (Christopher Hitchens, “The end of Inequality,” International Socialism, January – March, 1972, accessed 26 June, 2016, https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1972/no050/hitchens.htm). 45 http://www.petersedgwick.org/navigation/Writings.html
46 Peter Sedgewick, “George Orwell International Socialist?,” International Socialism, accessed June 26, 2016, https://www.marxists.org/archive/sedgwick/1969/xx/orwell.htm
months after the death of Che Guevara, after Fidel Castro extended an invitation to young internationalists. Hitchens claims in his memoirs to have found Cuba anti-climactic: Castro was a less than captivating speaker; whilst the regime’s support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia riled public opinion which was far from sympathetic to Stalin’s
governance.47 On returning to England he met Polish dissident Leszek Kolakowski, a reform
communist intellectual of the Polish Spring of 1965.48 Hitchens recalls that Kolakowski had
become sceptical about the prospects of left wing radicalism.49 Whilst Hitchens offers lucid
recollections of these experiences, he is clearly keen to emphasise cognitive dissonance occurring in post-1968 socialists - himself included - possibly as an explanatory vehicle for later life and career events.
At Oxford Hitchens began to live a double existence. One half involved donning a donkey jacket and distributing leaflets or selling copies of the Socialist Worker on street corners; whilst the second saw the swapping of donkey for dinner jacket, and attendance of lavish luncheons and cocktail parties populated by young Toryites.50 One important occasion belonging to the finer half of Hitchens’ Oxfordian existence occurred when his tutor invited him to attend a private lecture on John Locke to be given by Noam Chomsky; and weeks later to host Isaiah Berlin at a cocktail party.51 Chomsky’s knowledge was impressive,52 but
Hitchens found him uninspiring and a disappointing public speaker.53 Berlin delivered a lecture on Karl Marx, and, by contrast, failed to convince Hitchens with his apparently poor knowledge of Marxism, but dazzled with his wit and easy manner: He was dynamic and engaging, stopping afterwards to relay to Hitchens an anecdote involving Winston Churchill and Henry James.54 The young Hitchens was impressed by Berlin’s style of public
intellectualism.55 Hitchens went on to graduate from Oxford with a disappointing 3rd class
47 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 115. 48 ibid., 122. 49 ibid. 50 ibid., 102-103. 51 ibid., 95.
52 Hitchens recalls the evening in a 1985 article entitled Chorus and Cassandra, collected in Cristopher Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst (London: Atlantic Books, 1988), 70-94.
53 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 98. 54 ibid., 96-97.
55 There are many parallels between Hitchens’ description of Berlin’s style of delivering public speeches and his own public appearances. Hitchens was often described as being light on his feet, terribly witty and ironic, but occasionally loose on facts (see Geoffrey Wheatcroft, “Dove into Hawk,” a review of And Yet… by Christopher Hitchens, The Times Literary Supplement, April 13, 2016, accessed June 26, 2016,
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/dove-into-hawk/). Arguably Berlin was an influence on Hitchens style as a public intellectual. Additionally, Hitchens, like Berlin, was renowned for spending lots of time offering advice to young students and writers, and was a visiting lecturer at the New School, New York. George Eaten, now a
degree, and initially struggled as a journalist. His first job at the Times Higher Education Supplement ended abruptly when he was sacked, according to now editor of the British Medical Journal, Annabel Ferriman, ‘for showing a distinct lack of interest in higher education.’56 It was not until 1973 when Oxford roommate James Fenton introduced him to
Anthony Howard, Fenton’s editor of The New Statesman, that Hitchens’ career began in earnest.
1.3 Bohemian Bloomsbury and The New Statesman
It was in 1973 in Bloomsbury, London, that Hitchens first met Anthony Howard. Howard became editor of the New Statesman in 1972 with the task of arresting a malaise that had set in under previous editor Richard Crossman in the quality of a magazine’s copy whose circulation had been declining since the 1950’s.57 Howard was a ‘meticulous and courteous editor’ who positioned the magazine politically as the Labour party’s ‘candid friend.’58 He valued journalism that was ‘good, vivid, witty writing – “do me a flashy piece” – he would say.’59 Peter Kellner, who co-wrote a short book with Hitchens on James Callaghan, believes Howard’s editing style greatly helped young Hitchens.60 Howard’s decisions were ‘quick, even brusque, and, once made, very hard to shift’, which – along with his demands for entertaining copy – had a formative effect on Hitchens’ journalistic style. The ensemble of journalists Hitchens joined in 1973 would be retrospectively viewed as a golden generation. The staff included poet James Fenton, who by 1973 had already won the Newdigate Prize for poetry.61 Author Martin Amis was also on the payroll. Amis had recently published his first novel The Rachel Papers, which had established him as an exceptional satirical novelist.
journalist at the New Statesman recalls: ‘Perhaps because of his early struggles, Hitchens was always supportive of young journalists starting out. With characteristic generosity, he continued to reply to my emails even as the cancer ravaged him. "Hope you thrive," his final message ended’ (see: George Eaton, “Christopher Hitchens: The New Statesman Years,” The New Statesman, January 2, 2012, accessed June 26, 2016,
http://www.newstatesman.com/magazines/2012/01/hitchens-write-editor-fenton).
56 Matthew Reisz, “On the Shoulders of Giants,” Times Higher Education, October 13, 2011, accessed 26 June, 2016, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/417788.article
57 George Eaten, “Christopher Hitchens: The New Statesman Years,” The New Statesman, January 2, 2012, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.newstatesman.com/magazines/2012/01/hitchens-write-editor-fenton 58 Peter Wilby, “Anthony Howard obituary,” The Guardian, December 20, 2010, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/20/anthony-howard-obituary
59 ibid.
60 Eaton, “Christopher Hitchens: The New Statesman Years.”
61 The British Library, “The PEN Pinter Prize – James Fenton,” The British Library, October 6, 2015, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.bl.uk/events/the-pen-pinter-prize-james-fenton
Another employee at the publication was talented young author Julian Barnes, who, like Amis and Hitchens, would contribute reviews to The Times Literary Supplement throughout the seventies. Rounding off the team was Australian born author Clive James, a poet and columnist for The Observer, whilst past writers who graced the pages of The New Statesman include John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and Virginia Woolf.62 Hitchens’
breakthrough article for the magazine was steeped in tragic irony and contradictory emotion. In London that year Hitchens had been introduced by his mother to her new lover Timothy Bryan. Both Bryan and Yvonne Hitchens had become devotees of Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation Movement.63 Yvonne had swapped her ‘dutiful and thrifty and devoted husband’ for the ‘improvident, volatile’ and manically-depressed Bryan.64 The pair absconded to Athens where they committed suicide in an apparent pact in a hotel room. Hitchens travelled to Greece to confirm the identities of the deceased at a time when
Georgios Papadopoulos, leader of the ruling military Junta, had been supplanted by the more extreme Dimitrios Ioannidis. Whilst in Athens Hitchens wrote a fine article about the
political situation entitled The Greek Lesson,65 which became his first lead feature.
At the insistence of Martin Amis66 the New Statesman journalists met on Friday afternoons for lunch in Bloomsbury, accompanied by other members of the London literati. Author Ian McEwan was a regular attendee, as were poets Peter Porter and Craig Raine and cartoonist Mark Boxer. Martin Amis’s father Kingsley would join when occasion permitted, whilst Milan Kundera was also an infrequent attendee.67 Over copious amounts of wine the group would discuss the London cultural scene, politics, and engage in drunken word games.68 It was during this period that Hitchens developed a love of the bohemian lifestyle he would lead throughout his career. Luckily for Hitchens he had an amazing tolerance for alcohol; drinking
62 Jason Cowley, “About the New Statesman,” The New Statesman, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.newstatesman.com/about-new-statesman
63 Christopher Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 19. 64 ibid., 29
65 Christopher Hitchens, “The Greek Lesson: After the Junta Fell, a Portrait of a Country in Turmoil as Hopes for Democracy were Crushed,” Literature Resource Centre (1974), January 2, 2012, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A278632002&v=2.1&u=amst&it=r&p=Lit RC&sw=w&authCount=1
66 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 169. 67 ibid., 176.
68 ibid., 172: ‘Exchange the word ‘house’ for ‘sock’ and see what literary titles leap into existence: ‘Heartbreak Sock’; ‘The sock of the Rising Sun’. Or, more crudely, the word ‘cunt’ for the word ‘man’: ‘The Cunt Who Shot Liberty Valance’; ‘Batcunt’. Or examine a synthesis of the two such as Clive James’ offering: ‘A Shropshire Cunt’, by A.E. Sockprong.’
‘like a Hemingway character: continually and to no apparent effect.’69 Hitchens never
concealed his passion for grape and grain.70 Rather, his relationship to cigarettes and alcohol became a cornerstone of a roguish persona, and develop into a daily routine: ‘At half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker’s amber restorative, cut with Perrier water. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk and ready to repeat the treatment at evening meal. Nightcaps depend on how well the day went.’71
Hitchens’ early career unfolded in an economically challenged Britain. Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was struggling to an arrest an economic slump, achieved only via a bail out from the International Monetary Fund and at the price of 30% inflation.72 With strikes rife and the unions growing, the contradiction that the son of a conservative naval commander with an Oxford education and love for lavish lunches should identify with the causes of the political left requires unpacking. Firstly, Yvonne Hitchens had experienced the pitfalls of lower-artisanship when her small dress-shop business went bankrupt,73 whilst his father finished life as a low income book keeper.74 Hitchens was well aware of the dangers facing the proletariat. Additionally, the war in Indochina had turned many of Hitchens’ generation away from imperialism and made them suspicious of conservative politics. In literary terms the seventies saw the growth of the exposé, with Bernstein and Woodward enjoying success with The Final Days, a documentation of Richard Nixon’s downfall, whilst Alice Walker’s Meridian documented the American civil rights movement.75 The eminent American journalist and contrarian Gore Vidal released Burr in 1973, a novel based around fictional memoirs of eighteenth century politician Aaron Burr, confirming a trend in
American literature of the increasingly narrowed boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. As the decade wore on, Hitchens became increasingly engaged with foreign reportage. In 1976 he travelled to Poland to meet Jacek Kuron, author of the Socialist Manifesto for
69 ibid.
70 ibid., 350: Grape and Grain is part of the title of a short sub-chapter entitled A Short Footnote on the Grape
and the Grain.
71 ibid., 351.
72 BBC News, “Why Does the 70’s get Painted as a such Bad Decade,” BBC News, April 16, 2012, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17703483
73 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 15. 74 ibid., 44.
75 Rick Musser, “The 1970’s,” The History of American Journalism, December, 2007, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://history.journalism.ku.edu/1970/1970.shtml
Poland76 and organiser of the student uprisings in the late sixties against the authoritarian regime in Warsaw.77 Hitchens recalls that Kuron had become disillusioned with revolutionary politics, claiming the Polish press had become a propaganda tool of an increasingly jumpy, authoritarian government. Kuron had grown to identify the real struggle as the safeguarding of civil liberties and rule of law.78 Interestingly, this 2010 recollection of Hitchens’ meeting
with Kuron collaborates with a 1977 New Statesman article Hitchens wrote about his experiences in Poland. Entitled Liberté À La Polonaise it suggests that Hitchens’ account of Poland 1976 in Hitch-22 is credible and representative.7980
In December 1977 Hitchens travelled to an Argentina suffering under the authoritarian rule of Jorge Rafael Videla’s military government. He arrived in Buenos Aries in the wake of the disappearances of Jacobo Timerman, the missing editor of Buenos Aires newspaper La Opinion, and political activist Claudia Inez Grumberg.81 On meeting Videla82 Hitchens raised Grumberg’s disappearance and was met with the astonishing admission that: ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas, maybe that’s why she’s been detained.’83 During Videla’s ‘process of national re-organisation,’ Argentines critical of the military regime were regularly kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured and killed.84 On returning to England, Hitchens wrote an article about South and Central America and the nature of United States-backed military regimes entitled The Southern Cone. The brilliant exposé not only reflected the political and journalistic Zeitgeist and intermarriage of transatlantic public spheres, but
76 Einde O’Callaghan, “Jacek Kuron & Karel Modzelewski: A Socialist Manifesto for Poland,” International
Socialism, Spring, 1967, accessed June 26, 2016,
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1967/no028/kuron.htm
77 Michael Simmons, “Jacek Kuron,” The Guardian, June 18, 2004, accessed June 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jun/18/guardianobituaries.michaelsimmons 78 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 190.
79 Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst (London: Atlantic, 1988), 261.
80 Hitchens was far from the only Western intellectual who critiqued Eastern Communism and intellectuals. Between 1968-1971 Frenchman Stephan Courtois was a Maoist, who, like Hitchens, was turned away from the radical left owing to the experiences of European nations under communist rule (see: Revolvy, “Stephane Courtois,” Revolvy, accessed 26 June, 2016,
http://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=St%C3%A9phane%20Courtois&item_type=topic). In 1997 he edited a devastating account of the atrocities committed under the banner of Communism entitled The Black
Book of Communism. Additionally, like Hitchens, Courtois became a supporter of the invasion of Iraq in 2003,
and of America and its politics after overcoming a heavy dose of cognitive dissonance (see: Par Bertrand Le Gendre, “Exercice d'américanophilie à la française,” Le Monde, November 22, 2007, accessed June 26, 2016,
http://www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2007/11/22/exercice-d-americanophilie-a-la-francaise_981343_3260.html) 81 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 195.
82 ibid., Hitchens describes Videla as ‘bony thin and mediocre in appearance, like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush.’
83 ibid.
84 H.C., “Death of a Dirty War Criminal,” The Economist, May 23, 2013, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2013/05/jorge-rafael-videla
also prompted Anthony Howard to make him foreign editor in 1979. Nonetheless, Hitchens’ relationship with Howard became strained as he, according to Peter Kellner, no longer wanted to be edited by someone he regarded as an inferior writer.85 Clearly, the unabashed honesty and forcefulness of opinion that characterised Hitchens’ journalism also extended to his professional and private relationships. The final years of the decade were to be Hitchens’ last as a resident of the British Isles. In 1977 he met the leader of the opposition Margaret Thatcher.86 In Thatcher Hitchens recognised an impressive figure – a ‘conviction
politician,’87 leading to the ‘awful premonition’ that on some matters Thatcher might be right.88 Appalled by Labour policy towards Northern Ireland, Hitchens neglected to vote in the 1979 general election.89 Hitchens decided to end his relationship with the New Statesman, sever his explicit fraternity with the British left, and end his time in Britain itself: He had decided to leave London for America.
1.4 America and The Nation
Hitchens’ foreign reportage had attracted the attention of Victor Navasky, editor of the Nation magazine in the States.90 Hitchens had been contributing occasional articles to the magazine since 1978, but it was in 1981 that the offer of a full time position with the
publication materialised. With the outbreak of the Falklands War in 1982, Hitchens relocated to Washington D.C. to cover the hostilities where he remained, becoming the magazines first Washington correspondent since the radical Izzy Stone in the sixties. A bi-weekly column, The Minority Report, was born and would remain in print until autumn 2002.91 Hitchens was now writing for the oldest continuous publication in America, and one regarded as the
85 Eaton, “Christopher Hitchens: The New Statesman Years.”
86 In 1977 he had had a curious meeting with the leader of the opposition Margaret Thatcher, which resulted in Hitchens being ‘spanked’ by the Iron Lady with rolled up Parliamentary papers (see: Christopher Hitchens, “Lessons Maggie Taught Me, The Nation, December 17, 1990, accessed June 26, 2016,
http://www.thenation.com/article/lessons-maggie-taught-me/). 87 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 178.
88 ibid., 178.
89 ibid., 178; 202-203.
90 Victor Navasky, “Remembering Hitchens,” The Nation, December 22, 2011, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.thenation.com/article/remembering-hitchens/
91 One underpinning consistency involved in Hitchens’ cross-Atlantic undertakings was ensured as he exported with him his bohemian lifestyle and flamboyant journalistic practices. Navasky recalls: ‘Christopher
demonstrated that it was possible to down his share of lunchtime martinis, supplemented by however many glasses of red wine, return to the office and, in fifteen to twenty minutes, write an elegant 250-word unsigned editorial to space, not one word of which had to be altered (see: Navasky, “Remembering Hitchens,”).
leading magazine of its kind, boasting a circulation of 40,21992 copies per issue.93 Hitchens negotiated his new social context by ‘remain(ing) a blood brother of the American left,’ with whom he already felt a kinship.94 This kinship was felt in an internationalist sense, namely through Karl Marx ‘great solidarity’ with Lincoln in the civil war; the humanism of Eugene Debs; and the class battles that ‘baptised’ the labour movement.’95 These recollections
happily lend a socialist veneer to a process of integration into the world’s foremost capitalist nation. However, whilst contributing to the Nation on a freelance basis, Hitchens had written a 1980 article criticising Margaret Thatcher’s rampant privatisation programme in England entitled This Thatchered Land, This England,96 which did provide a bridge across the Atlantic. It was a familiar topic which would resonate with the Nation’s values. Likewise, events in the Falkland Islands were also familiar territory for Hitchens and provided his first major Washington assignment. Hitchens first articles for his American employers exhibited an unlikely congruence to Hitchens journalism and life in England, dealing, as they did, with the intersections of class and empire in a way that would surely have appealed to a liberal American audience. The cognitive dissonance of the competing intuitions involved in analysing contrarianism of this form makes establishing clear lines of continuity or rupture difficult. The level of fractured ideology is as great as to be romantic in a Byronic fashion.
The start of the 1980’s in America coincided with the decline of ‘New Journalism’, a
movement prevalent since the sixties. New Journalism increased the subjectivity of objective news reporting: It combined ‘journalistic research with the techniques of fiction writing in the reporting of stories about real-life events.’97 Central figures in the movement include Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote. Whilst the practice went into decline as Hitchens arrived in America, it had nonetheless introduced a literary twist to factual reporting that suited Hitchens journalistic upbringing: In his Bloomsbury days he was surrounded by a generation of great British literary figures; whilst he had long been contributing articles to the the Times Literary Supplement. Hence, this dramatic ‘rupture’ in his career was also a part of a steady evolution.
92 Caitlin Graf, Employee The Nation, e-mail message to author.
93 The editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “The Nation American Journal,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Nation-American-journal
94 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 236. 95 ibid.
96 Christopher Hitchens, “This Thatchered Land, This England,” The Nation (1980), Vol. 231, Academic Search
Premier EBSCOhost, accessed June 26, 2016.
97 Liz Fakazis, “New Journalism: American literary movement,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Journalism
With Ronald Raegan coming to power in 1980 the American political landscape was altered greatly. The liberal attitudes that had punctuated the previous decade succumbed to
conservatism and political activism declined. Under Raegan tax cuts and big business bias was rife, engendering the promotion of culture of self-interest.98 Hitchens used his platform at
The Nation to launch incessant attacks at the Raegan administration, particularly on the topic of the Iran-Contra scandal.99 The eighties also witnessed the release of Hitchens first book
Cyprus, published in 1984. The book was a fusion of Hitchens’ political and private concerns. In Cyprus Hitchens criticised the realpolitik of Henry Kissinger, which he forcefully asserted had resulted in American support for the military regime in Athens provoking the Turkish invasion of independent Cyprus, which in turn created mass
displacement of ethnic Greek-Cypriots, war, and humanitarian crisis.100 The Mediterranean was central to Hitchens’ conceptions of his own early family life and as such Cyprus represented a conflation of transatlantic political and personal interests. Whilst in Cyprus conducting research, Hitchens met future wife Eleni Meleagrou who became mother to his son Alexandros and his daughter Sophia.101 Meleagrou is conspicuous by her absence in Hitch-22, as are details of his strained relationship with brother Peter Hitchens, the conservative Daily Mail journalist, and his relationship with second wife, Carol Blue.
Hitchens left Meleagrou for Blue in 1989102 whilst she was pregnant with their second child, no mention of which is found in Hitch-22. Accounts of high profile fall outs with editors and former friends are also omitted. An explanation lies in Hitchens’ labelling of Hitch-22 as a memoir rather than an autobiography. Memoirs are ‘autobiographies that usually
emphasise what is remembered rather than who is remembering;’ the author, rather than recounting an entire life, ‘deals with those experiences of his life, people, and events that he considers most significant.’103 Or, if one is to be cynical, those stories and experiences that
are most expedient in the creation of desired narratives. Either way, the episodes omitted from Hitchens’ memoir were a cause of at least minor disappointment to professional
98 Rick Musser, “The 1980’s,” History of American Journalism, 2007, accessed June 26, 2016, http://history.journalism.ku.edu/1980/1980.shtml
99 Christopher Hitchens, “Minority Report,” Nation, no. 24: 842. Academic Search Premier EBSCOhost, accessed June 26, 2016.
100 Christopher Hitchens, Cyprus (London: Quarter Books, 1984).
101 Theo Panayidis, “The Cypriot Terrorist,” Cyprus Mail, May 27, 2013, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://cyprus-mail.com/2013/05/27/the-cypriot-terrorist/
102 Theo Panayidis, “The Cypriot Terrorist.” 103 Kendall, “Biography: Narrative Genre.”
reviewers104 and fans105 alike. The last momentous moment of Hitchens’ decade arrived in the shape of the 1989 Rushdie Affair. The hysterical reception that greeted Salman Rushdie’s polemic on Islam, The Satanic Verses, culminated in the issuing of a Fatwah by the Ayatollah Khomeini and drew scathing condemnation from Hitchens, sparking a ferocious defence of Rushdie - his personal friend. For Hitchens, the death threats levied upon an author of fiction represented ‘a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humour, the individual, and the defence of free expression.’106 On this issue Hitchens was quite clear.
1.5 Vanity Fair and the 1990’s
The beginning of the nineties was a successful period for Hitchens. In 1991 his journalism was recognised with the Lannan Award for Nonfiction,107 whilst a year later he landed a regular column for Vanity Fair, a glossy monthly American magazine dealing in a mixture of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs: With over a million subscribers, Vanity Fair offered a massive increase in exposure.108 His new editor Graydon Carter had left the New York Observer to take over in 1992. A greatly respected figure, Carter was honoured at the 2014 National Magazine Awards where he was inducted into the Editor’s Hall of Fame.109 That Hitchens began writing articles about such topics as the merits of a full body wax in a glossy magazine seems a huge departure from his previous journalism. However, the nineties saw a reincarnation of the American journalistic tradition of New Journalism that became known as Literary Nonfiction.110 Across America journalists and editors drew upon the tropes of New
Journalism in experimentations to create a tradition that sought to be ‘simultaneously
104 Jennifer Senior, “Do I Contradict Myself?,” review of Hitch-22, by Christopher Hitchens, The New York
Times, June 17, 2010, Sunday Book Review,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/books/review/Senior-t.html?_r=0
105 Matt Hanson, “Panache to Burn: Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch-22,” review of Hitch-22, by Christopher Hitchens, The Millions, August 30, 2010, Reviews, http://www.themillions.com/2010/08/panache-to-burn-christopher-hitchens-hitch-22.html
106 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 168.
107 Lannan, “Nonfiction Awards by Last Name,” Lannan, accessed 26 June, 2016, http://www.lannan.org/literary/awards-list/nonfiction-awards/
108 Vanity Fair, “Circulation Demographics,” Conde Nast, accessed 26 June, 2016,
http://www.condenast.com/brands/vanity-fair/media-kit/print please note: information for 1992 is not available to the public.
109 American Society of Magazine Editors, “Graydon Carter Elected to Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame,”
American Society of Magazine Editors, April 8, 2014, accessed June 26, 2016,
http://www.magazine.org/asme/graydon-carter-elected-magazine-editors%E2%80%99-hall-fame 110 Fakazis, “New Journalism: American literary movement.”
creative, personal, and true.111 Vanity Fair was one of only a handful of leading publications that indulged in literary criticism of creative nonfiction, with Hitchens deeply involved.112 In addition to easy-reading copy that allowed Hitchens to exploit his witticism honed under Anthony Howard, he also wrote more searching articles ranging from the state of American prisons to the nuclear capabilities of North Korea. His first article published in December 1992, Mr. Universe, provided an early insight into Hitchens’ growing atheism as he used his considerable platform to question the existence of God.113
In the second half of the decade Hitchens released two pamphlet style publications. The first, released in 1995, was a re-assessment of mainstream opinion of Mother Teresa entitled The Missionary Position. Hitchens argued that Mother Teresa was less interested in helping the poor, and was rather intent on spreading fundamental Catholicism. The second extended essay was 1999’s No One Left to Lie to: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, a polemic on the career of the President that critiqued his psychology, record in war, alleged sexual abuses, and his relationship with Hilary. Hitchens’ pursuit of Clinton culminated in controversy when he swore of an affidavit against long-term friend and Clinton aid Sidney Blumenthal in the President’s impeachment trial over the Monica Lewinski scandal. Hitchens’ evidence against the President was based on a conversation between Blumenthal and Hitchens over lunch, in which he divulged information about Lewinsky that contradicted evidence given under oath in the courtroom.114 The two volumes offer more evidence of continuity in Hitchens’ career as a writer. The books were a conflation of the growth in the nineties of biography, but simultaneously harked back to the popularity of exposé, which had been so prevalent during Hitchens’ formative years in the seventies. A third such book was to follow in 2001, entitled The Trial of Henry Kissinger, in which Hitchens summarised the arguments he had been making for the trial of Kissinger as a war criminal since the Nixon government took over the handling of the war in Indochina in 1968. Indeed, on the 10th of
September 2001 Hitchens had been giving a lecture about Kissinger’s crimes in Whitman
111 ibid.
112 Lee Gutkind, “What is Creative Nonfiction?,” Creative Nonfiction, accessed June 26, 2016, https://www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/what-creative-nonfiction
113 Christopher Hitchens, “Mr. Universe,” Vanity Fair, December, 1992, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/1992/12/mr-universe-199212
114 Todd Gitlin, “Goodbye, Mr. Hitchens, and Enjoy your Betrayal of a Journalist Pal,” The Observer, February 22, 1999, accessed June 26, 2016, http://observer.com/1999/02/goodbye-mr-hitchens-and-enjoy-your-betrayal-of-a-journalist-pal/
College, Walla Walla.115 Events on the next day were to ensure discussion of Hitchens’ damning assessment of Kissinger were to be suspended.
1.6 Later Career and American Citizenship
Hitchens final Minority Report, entitled Taking Sides, was published on October 14th 2002. Since the attacks on the World Trade Centre Hitchens had become an isolated figure in left wing circles in his support of the Bush administration’s ‘War on Terror.’ The article criticises Navasky, claiming that the editorial staff had turned the Nation partisan and relativistic: It was ‘becoming the voice and echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama Bin Laden.’116 It was another acrimonious departure from a magazine that he had served with such distinction. Hitchens promptly found a fitting new home for his political journalism at the online current affairs, politics, and culture magazine Slate. The magazine’s journalists wrote short argument driven – often contrarian – pieces. His new editor, June Thomas, described editing his work as ‘the easiest job in journalism,’ as his writing style ‘defied editorial intervention.’117 Hitchens would write for Slate up until his death in December 2011. In 2005, the same year his first Slate article was published,
Hitchens was voted fifth in poll of the Top 100 public intellectuals by readers of American news agency Foreign Policy.118 Television appearances for a variety of news channels were frequent, as were public debates, often about religion - a topic of increasing concern for Hitchens. Despite frequent public appearances and ever growing visibility, Hitchens never embraced forms of post-modern media theorized by academics to be changing the scenery of the public sphere.119
115 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 240.
116 Christopher Hitchens, “Taking Sides,” in Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left, eds. Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman (New York University Press: New York, 2008), 104.
117 June Thomas, “Herewith, Hope it Serves. As Always, Christopher,” Slate, December 16, 2011, accessed June 26, 2016,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/12/christopher_hitchens_his_greatest_sla te_hits_.html
118 Admin, “Prospect/FP Top 100 Public Intellectual Results,” Foreign Policy Magazine, October 15, 2005, accessed June 26, 2016,
https://web.archive.org/web/20150611230220/http://foreignpolicy.com/2005/10/15/prospectfp-top-100-public-intellectuals-results/
119 In a 2008 public debate on the nature of interactions between YouTube, google, and the printed press, Hitchens was dismissive of the impact of these post-modern phenomenon on the public sphere, and sceptical about online journalistic credibility (see” “Christopher Hitchens Discussing Pop Culture Politics,” 12:30; 16:00: and 28:50 – 36:20, August 1, 2012, accessed June 26, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATQB5S5ErGo)
The year 2007 was momentous for Hitchens both privately and professionally. It was the year he was sworn in as an American citizen by Michael Chertoff, then United States
Undersecretary of Homeland Security, in a ceremony at the Jefferson Memorial.120 In Hitch-22 Hitchens’ becoming an American is portrayed as gradual process, underpinned by
consistency of principle. With the American intelligentsia generally opposing George Bush’s foreign policy, Hitchens aligned himself to, in his view, the voice of wider society. He felt compelled to ‘say a word for the fortitude’ that was manifesting in the wake of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre.121 Hitchens gradually became aware of departing from the position of the likes of Noam Chomsky: Whereas Chomsky ‘didn’t believe America was a good idea to begin with,’ Hitchens did, and began to fell ‘less shy about saying so,’122 a quality intrinsic to the public intellectual theorised by Cynthia Ozik. Indeed, it was the efforts of the ‘American proletarian’ in the rubble of the Twin Towers that awoke a new respect, particularly when juxtaposed with the efforts of more refined elements who ‘wrung their hands’ of the task.123 The final decision to apply for citizenship was inspired again by the proletariat. Hitchens one day became engrossed in a conversation with a taxi driver, a Bosnian Muslim, who asked him ‘you citizen yet?;’ a question with which he followed up with the apparently profound observation that Hitchens should ‘get on with it: America needs us.’124 In the same year as Hitchens’ conversion, his work for Vanity Fair was officially recognised, as he scooped the National Magazine Award for ‘Columns and Commentary.’125 In 2007 the success kept coming as his new book ‘god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’ went to number one in the New York Times bestseller list.126 The book was a polemic on religion; heavy on irony and wit, crushingly rhetorical and enjoyable to read. It was framed by subjective interpretation of historical fact, echoing Hitchens’ public debating style and recalling the influence of Isaiah Berlin. It belonged to the increasingly popular genre of creative nonfiction, and was the culmination of a literary career, of which the
development can be mapped against changing literary traditions and cultures emanating from
120 Hitchens, “Hitch-22,” 257. 121 ibid., 245. 122 ibid., 244. 123 ibid., 246. 124 ibid., 250.
125 American Society of Magazine Editors, “2007 National Magazine Award Winners Announced,” American
Society of Magazine Editors, January 13, 2009, accessed June 26, 2016,
https://web.archive.org/web/20090114030507/http://www.magazine.org/ASME/ABOUT_ASME/ASME_PRES S_RELEASES/22246.aspx
126 Hawes.com, “New York Times Bestseller List,” Hawes.com, June 3, 2007, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.hawes.com/2007/2007-06-03.pdf
both sides of the Atlantic. Today, Hitchens’ works are often cited as examples of creative nonfiction young authors interested in the genre should familiarise themselves with.127128 In May 2010 Hitchens returned to the New York Times best sellers list with his memoir Hitch-22,129 just months before being tragically diagnosed with cancer. Even in his declining days
Hitchens continued to write, penning his final original work, Mortality, which was published posthumously in 2012. Christopher Hitchens passed away on December 15, 2011. His life was remembered in a ninety minute service held in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union in Manhattan, New York, where press and intelligentsia gathered to pay tribute in 2012, led by the stories from Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie.130
Reflecting on Hitchens life it appears little wonder that his most renowned work should be a polemic attack on religion. Hitchens’ first hand experiences with religion were tantamount to run ins with a death cult: His mother committed suicide after joining a quasi-religious cult; his friend Salman Rushdie was threatened with death for the production of a novel; whilst another friend, Barbara Olsen, was a passenger on one of the hijacked planes in 2001.131 He was consistent throughout his career in mercilessly severing ties with those who had been either professionally or privately close to him: He quickly and suddenly ended working relationships with Anthony Howard and Victor Navasky; distanced himself from friends on the left; and showed little scruple in his interactions with his first wife or his long term friend Sidney Blumenthal. Hitchens implicitly acknowledged the importance to public intellectuals of a consistency of principles through his efforts to emphasise a coherent narrative in his memoirs. Declining to divulge details of ruptures in his private life, Hitchens convincingly posits a dialectical approach to life, emphasising a confusing form of coherence. However, this consistency appears strained in the romantic account of his journey to American citizenship. Hitchens couched his ‘Americanisation’ in the rhetoric of socialism. On this point – perhaps the biggest rupture in a long life of wanton contradiction - Hitchens is least convincing.
127 Gutkind, “What is Creative Nonfiction.”
128 Dave Hood, “Find your Creative Muse,” Creative Nonfiction Writing, July 17, 2013, accessed June 26, 2016, https://davehood59.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/writing-creative-nonfiction-the-opinion-essay/
129 New York Times, “Hardcover Nonfiction,” The New York Times, June 27, 2010, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2010-06-27/hardcover-nonfiction/list.html
130 Ed Pilkington, “Christopher Hitchens’ wit and warmth remembered as New York pays tribute,” The
Guardian, April 20, 2012, accessed June 26, 2016,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/20/christopher-hitchens-memorial-new-york
131 Christopher Hitchens, “Simply Evil,” Slate, September 5, 2011, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/09/simply_evil.html
2. Chapter Two: Criticisms of Hitchens and Attacks on Credibility
Many public intellectuals and social commentators vehemently claim that Hitchens was consistent in lacking moral integrity and sacrificing friendships owing to a career avarice that cost him credibility. Other critics posit Hitchens’ lack of consistency on political issues as the driving force undermining his credibility as a public intellectual, seeing him simply as an intrinsic flip-flopper. Charges are also brought against him – again in the form of an
unwanted consistency - of being an ardent imperialist with capitalist sympathies and never a true man of the left. Hitchens is also accused by numerous prominent intellectuals of
following a path many leftist intellectuals had gone before him, that of the left wing apostate. Traditionally the inconsistency regarded as the most pernicious corroder of credibility in the public sphere, apostasy is thought to see the former left wing intellectual lured and attracted by the power of government. Additionally, whilst praise for the quality of his prose was almost universal with regards to his pre-9/11 writing, critics claim of his later work an aesthetic rupture and decline in his abilities as a journalist and writer.
2.1 Attacks on Personal Integrity
A body of criticism levied at Hitchens saw commentators question his morals, character, and personality in a powerful assault on his credibility as a person and as a public intellectual. Academic theorists of public intellectuals and the public sphere Patrick Baert and Josh Booth assert that public intellectuals ‘have always straddled a number of opposing values, one of which is the opposition between critical distance and passionate involvement.132 Throughout the 1990’s Hitchens was a vehement opponent of Bill Clinton, a fellow Oxford student of the class of ’68. Hitchens engaged in a decade long pursuit of Clinton many critics saw as a personal obsession devoid of the rational principle that affords credibility to public
intellectuals’ interactions with their publics. Hitchens was criticised for attacking Clinton’s personality rather than his politics. Indeed, Clinton did intervene as Hitchens had demanded in Bosnia, and did it in the face of opposition of anti-interventionist Republicans whom Hitchens would later come to support. For the duration of Clinton’s presidency, Hitchens scolded the left for their inaction against what he perceived as the crimes of the White House. However, many on the left felt there was no case to answer: ‘It’s true,’ wrote Chomsky in
