Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere [Hardcover]

Christopher Hitchens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2001

Hitchens provides rich evidence that his own sallies as a political journalist are nourished by a close engagement with a broad sweep of novelists.

A celebration of Percy Shelley's assertion that 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world', these thirty-plus essays on writers from Oscar Wilde to Salman Rushdie dispel the myth of politics as a stone tied to the neck of literature; Norman Podhoretz's 'bloody crossroads'. Instead Hitchens argues that when all parties in the state were agreed on a matter, it was the individual pens that created the space for a true moral argument.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Hitchens's writing is tough, heartfelt, coruscating, funny ‒ and imbued with the understanding that the task in hand is an important one.” (The Times )

“I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens.” (Gore Vidal )

“A Tom Paine for our troubled times ... He picks up the sword and mantle of E. P. Thompson, and carries them off with swashbuckling impertinence, valiant for truth, last in the line of English gentlemen-intellectuals.” (Independent )

“Unacknowledged Legislation is a big, handsome book containing some of the best, most polished and wittiest writing you are likely to encounter this or any other year ... Gore Vidal should be so lucky to have this boy for an heir.” (John Banville - Irish Times )

“Christopher Hitchens is indeed hit-man to the intelligentsia. If there is an inflated ego to puncture, he has the red-hot needle to do it.” (Sunday Times )

“Lionel Trilling once observed in his diaries that, to his genuine surprise, he was no longer simply a critic of literature but had become a fact of literature himself ... Christopher Hitchens, political and literary journalist extraordinaire, should now be considered a fact of political and cultural reality. His astounding capacity for work has produced a body of work; his vastly ranging, deeply driven devastations and illuminations make up a reliable outlook on the world.” (Lee Siegel - Los Angeles Times )

“He is a loose cannon, a sharp wit, an ironist, a polemicist of exceptional talent, and editor's dream.” (Times Literary Supplement )

About the Author

Christopher Hitchens is the author of God Is Not Great, Hitch-22, and Why Orwell Matters.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Verso (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859847862
• ISBN-13: 978-1859847862
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was the author of Letters to a Young Contrarian, and the bestseller No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Atlantic Monthly and Slate, Hitchens also wrote for The Weekly Standard, The National Review, and The Independent, and appeared on The Daily Show, Charlie Rose, The Chris Matthew's Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and C-Span's Washington Journal. He was named one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine wine and conversation at the bloody Crossroads, March 17, 2001

By 

[e-mail] (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (Hardcover)

Admiring Christopher Hitchens is very easy and for excellent reasons. He is cultured, witty, humane, passionate and principled. Most people compared to George Orwell are humbugs and frauds, but Hitchens is one who shares Orwell's indignation, passion for truth and unstinting honesty. Hitchens often quotes Orwell, and indeed prays upon him in aid. Unlike Orwell, Hitchens is not one for the ascetic life, and his deflation of cliche and euphemism owes more to Dwight Macdonald. This collection praises many writers, such as Oscar Wilde, Salman Rushdie, and P.G. Wodehouse. It offers nuanced portraits of other writers, such as Philip Larkin, H.L. Mencken and Anthony Powell. And it provides slashing polemics against the likes of Tom Wolfe and Tom Clancy, and details the sad declension of Conor Cruise O'Brien. What unites this collection is a rather vague disquisition on the clash between politics and literature. Naturally enough, says Hitchens, one should avoid crass politicization and ideological traps, and instead be generous, open-minded, but not uncritical.

For so controversial a writer these are rather anodyne sentiments. There are disturbing signs that Hitchens is becoming an "unpredictable" socialist, who is hardest on his own side and generous to the other side. What is wrong with that, one may ask? Well there is the problem that this refrain has been echoed for two decades by the New Republic and by the Bill Clinton that Hitchens so sincerely loathes. And while Hitchens is very generous to Rudyard Kipling and Philip Larkin, and perhaps even a bit too generous to T.S. Eliot, I don't think he would treat the Catholicism of Waugh and Greene with the same respect. It is one thing to concede Alger Hiss' guilt, but must we concede Sacco and Vanzetti's as well (especially when the book by David Kaiser and William Young screams reasonable doubt at every stage of the proceedings)? And is Allan Bloom's Love and Friendship really superior to say, F.R. Leavis or Joseph Epstein, let alone Frederic Jameson simply because his fellow Straussians wouldn't tolerate his homosexuality? (Personally I think Bloom's dogmatically presented paraphrase amounts to Coles Notes with megalomania.) Finally, praising Jorge Luis Borges' criticism of the Falklands war (at Gabriel Garcia Marquez's expense) foreshortens Borges' consistent support for Argentinian military regimes not led by Peron. One may also point out Hitchens' complete failure to appreciate or understand the religious impulse. Much religious discourse in the United States is empty, but that's no excuse for comparing Christmas to Stalinism or saying that Stephen Hawking is more awe-inspiring than Genesis or Ezekiel. Similarly even if one concedes that Gore Vidal is a brilliant essayist and that Saul Bellow is too uncritical about Israel's aggressive policies, one cannot deny that Bellow is clearly the superior novelist.

At his best though Hitchens is a brilliant and stimulating critic. The attack on Tom Wolfe is well worth reading, as Hitchens convicts Wolfe of self-importance and self-plagiarism. He is particularly acute on the shabby writing and self-pity of the conservative espionage novel. On the one hand he quotes the grim relish Tom Clancy has on giving orders about prisoners of war that got Keitel and Jodl hanged at Nuremberg. On the other hand he shows how Clancy could be so incompetent as to write several passages twice while at the same time imagining that a germ warfare specialist would glibly spill infected blood on himself thinking it was tomato juice. An article on Michael Frayn's Headlong shows that Hitchens shares with John Leonard the vital quality of arousing an enthusiasm for the work in question. Here in the best sense, Hitchens is a propagandist for literature. An article on Wilde (there are several in fact) really arouses the proper indignation one feels of seeing this fine man crushed and destroyed. He is acute on how the young Bellow criticized the workhouse condescension of social workers, while in his old age seems to wish such regimentation be applied to Chicago's "minority" population. And consider this damning passage that reveals the fatal flaw of H.L. Mencken: "About the rise of Fascism in general, Mencken was sanguine; more sanguine, let us say, that he was about FDR. That might be condemnation enough. Yet it is not. Think of the incredible LITERARY failure that is involved in Mencken's failure that is involved in Mencken's refusal to write a serious polemic about Hitler. Here, aside from the grotesque embodiment of all hatred and superstition, was the quack, charlatan and crank to end all quacks, charlatans, and cranks. Such a target! And from the pen that flayed and punctured the `booboisie,' there comes little or nothing." It shows all of Hitchens' finest literary qualities: accuracy, juxstaposition, and moral outrage that is no less sincere for being carefully modulated. More mixed are essays on Anthony Powell and George Orwell. Before praising Burnet Bolloten and Noam Chomsky's essay on Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship as the last word on the Spanish Civil War, Hitchens should perhaps take the time to read Paul Preston and the upcoming work by Helen Graham. (Preston's The Coming of the Spanish Civil War shows clearly that Largo Caballero could never have led a successful revolution). On the other hand there is a fine essay on Isaiah Berlin which points out his love for Anna Akhamotova and the genuine admiration that surrounded him, but reminds the reader of his unfairness to the Palestinians and his disgraceful conduct towards Issac Deutscher. If you liked No One Left to Lie To you will love this book. If you hated No One Left to Lie to you will still like this book, because here at least Hitchens demonstrates that is not what to think, but how, that is most important.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very different Hitchens, November 29, 2001

By 

Lou Ford (Snyder, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (Hardcover)

I recommend this volume to my friends not only as a great collection of literary essays but as a rare event for Hitch-watchers: for most of the book, Christopher Hitchens is not kvetching! Granted, he gets in some very nice digs at Right-wing ideologues Tom Wolfe and Norman Podhoretz,and manages to include a laughably ignorant piece on the Ebonics debate, but the majority of the essays here are encomia to authors whose writing and political actions the Hitchster admires! It's uplifting, informative, and very moving. Oh, Hitchypoo's usual detractors will come up with the usual non sequitors: he doesn't like religion, he whitewashes George Orwell's sins, he fails to distort a rumor spread by Frank Harris about Oscar Wilde, he's abonded his old political loyalties since he wrote this book. But Unacknowledged Legistlation will remain a generous and valuable work, respected by all who care about literary courage.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet my friends ..., November 22, 2008

By 

'amerye' (AT THE FOOT OF THE FOOTHILLS) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (Paperback)

It's great to spend some time with some old friends - Conan Doyle, Wilde, (contemporaries who shared a publisher) Orwell, etc and a few new names, all given the inimitable Hitchens analysis. This is a different writer than the political one; here CH is kind, sympathetic, understanding. As much as I have read, and read about the Victorian authors in these interesting essays on literature, there is yet something fresh and insightful in each cameo portrait. Ah, they just don't write like this anymore! Craftsmanship is fast disappearing from all types of work. Many people have never read a well-written novel; many have never seen a well-made piece of literary criticism. One may have both by picking up this collection of essays and following Hitchens to any of these authors.
The title refers to a quotation by Shelley: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
And on a personal note, many thanks to my Amazon Friends and others who have appreciated my reviews and comments here. There will be many more reviews as I write them, no comments, but you know how to reach me if you wish.