Customer Reviews

For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports

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December 1995 - I have been sent to Australia's national capitol for 3 weeks to undertake testing of some new software for my employer. Any one who has been to Canberra knows that it is like any other purpose built national capitol - some stately buildings, a certain amount of intellectual grandeur about the place but otherwise a giant surburb infected by too much narcotic abuse.

It was in this environment I read this book and it saved my sanity (if not my life). I was loaned a paperback copy by my hostess's housemate after watching Hitchens perform brilliantly as part of a panel discussing Watergate which also included G Gordon Liddy - after sitting through a 5 minute tirade by Liddy, the interviewer (Australia's Kerry O'Brien) said "Christopher Hitchens" to which Hitchens responded as if just woken from sleep with the words "Err yes? Do you want me to plug my book?"

At that point I decided I must read (if not purchase) that book.

And the book - any writer who can work PG Wodehouse into a critique of the Gennifer Flowers phenomenon gets my stamp of approval.

Hitchens's critiques and analysis are taut, energetic and yet also built upon the relaxed auro of the supremely confident without (much) arrogance. And even if he does get a bit smug, it's still highly entertaining and more informative than any comparative writing.

Most impressive (on the "quality" side of things) is the breadth of subjects he covers - all the way from George Eliot (yeah, I know that one's on the blurb) to smokin' 'n' drinkin' via Nixon's mother.

And there are no half-arsed marsupial metaphors as in his piece on Robert Hughes in Vanity Fair.

Buy this book and become a better smart arse.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I naturally learned a contempt for journalism as it is currently practiced. The great problem with journalists today, seems to me, is not their slavish conformity, their scandal-mongering, or even their sales-and-marketing obsession with the bottom line. It is their LACK OF IDEAS. They have little or no training in logic, history, aesthetics, or any of the other arts that are necessary if one is to continually shed light on the present.

Christopher Hitchens, by contrast, has all of these things. I bought this book three years ago and have read it through more times than I can remember. It makes intelligible sense of almost every major event that occurred during the late 80s and early 90s. To boot, it is witty and entertaining. If you feel suffocated by the evening news, NPR, the New York Times, and other demographically-tailored drivel, buy this book and everything else Hitchens has published.

I became familiar with Mr.Hitchens' work through his Vanity Fair articles where I became intrigued that a publication that devotes much of its space to the ongoings in the Hamptons and the biceps of Tom Cruise would publish such a pungent and brilliant observer of monarchy, faith, Congress and the lies of the rich and famous.
In the meantime he has become quite a household name and I'm afraid some of the exposure, the networking and the various stints on not so objective and erudite Pol talkshows have somewhat mildened his capacity to irritate with truth. But this volume and "Prepared For The Worst" are topnotch and it's a pleasure to follow him to wherever his curiosity takes him. It is a rare man who can skewer the follies of the policies towards Nicaragua, the smug "humor" of the darling of the neo-con set P.K.O'Rourke and relish in the joys of uncensored boozing, cigarette smoking as a tool for thinking and pleasure( or in the least nobody else's business) and the merits of any pleasure that is private and not available through an ad or state sponsored through the family values crowd. These essays read like the work of a strong idealist who has the brain power and nerve to back up his findings.

Erudite, measured, vitriolic, grim, dark and humorous. These are all words I feel can be spent in the measure of this collection of essays and book reviews by Hitchens. Every page of this book is overtly pitched at the upper intelligentsia, quoting and referencing a seemingly inexhaustible number of relevant people, books and events. I believe that Hitchens quite deliberately aims for his articles to be an assault on the minds of the audience and that is probably a large part of his overall appeal. Another large portion of his appeal owes to his clarity of thought, his ability to dissect an event or decision and find the owner of the fingers plucking the strings. I believe his nickname should be razorblades, because his targets never quite know they have been cut until their reputations bleed, so sharp are his lacerations. There are quite a few targets in this book: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Nixon, Kissinger (especially Nixon and Kissinger), the Tories, the British Labour Party, the CIA, the British Monarchy et al.

A review of Francis Wheen's Tom Driberg: His Life and Indiscretions made me chortle, cough, roar and gasp for breath, such is Hitchens' delight at having the opportunity to be overtly crude in a doting essay. He also takes the opportunity to target homophobic weasels that attempted to suggest Driberg's homosexuality was evidence in itself of a propensity for treason and espionage. Something clear in other articles is that Hitchens once had a high degree of respect for Noam Chomsky, something that no doubt has not persisted to the present day. Another great piece is a defence of Salman Rushdie against the weak apologists and principle dodgers.

A few sycophantic lines about Leon Trotsky genuinely seem out of place in my view (I am aware that Hitchens socialist beliefs had begun slowly dissolving at the time of writing this particular book but were still quite strong). I understand Trotsky's appeal, however Hitchens' gushing fatuities (perhaps that is too strong a word) seems to ignore the fact that before being anti-fascist Trotsky was Lenin's right hand man in an imperialist regime, presiding over murder, terror and famine. This makes Hitchens, whom relishes in criticising people for all manner of rights and morality abuses, including by their associations, seem somewhat hypocritical. Martin Amis seems to have summed this up rather well in his book Koba the Dread, where he describes Hitchens' as postponing the truth on Trotsky for the sake of the socialist cause.

Criticisms aside, this is a thoroughly enjoyable book. If I may impart but one slight warning it would be this. The book is not a book likely to be read in a weekend. It has too many topics and too many characters for that, and at times its prose permits not a moment of lapse in concentration. I read the book over about 6 weeks, picking off a couple of longer essays per day, or perhaps a few more if the essays were short.

I might close with a quote from Thomas Paine that I think best summarises Hitchens' approach to writing - `Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice'.

An outstanding book; while Hitchens is a powerful writer and superb analyst, his conclusions are often cynical and violently naive.

He still thinks that violence can solve problems. Unraveling the layers of secrecy lead him, too often to a few villains not to full analyses of villains.

No matter, reading him is educational, exciting, and pleasurable. His command of the language is delightful. At least, he is not afraid to be disagreeable; He give me hope that debate can actaully happen and that some people hide behind civility.

Hitchens is my favourite non-fiction writer. Perhaps I am a Philistine, but I didn't really enjoy this one - Hitchens today usually writes taut, apt prose, while this book is more on the flowery side. I also wasn't particularly interested in a lot of the subject matter, but this is perhaps because I was born in 1980. I'd recommend Love, Poverty and War over this as it is both more topical and contains more cutting and interesting writing.

expose on several topics
not always an easy read if you are not familiar or itnerested in the particular subject that christopher is writing about