"Arguably" is an essay collection by the writer Christopher Hitchens. A ponderous yellow book, its two inch thickness is filled with prose that flows quickly as water in a brook, so well and authoritatively written are they. Hitchens, English by birth, is droll, has traveled widely in pursuit of newsworthy topics, makes a habit of vilifying bullies and lyers, and dislikes dislikes dogma. Some essays were written during his tenure with Vanity Fair, and others just prior to his death.
Hitchens is hard to classify on ideologically. That is, conventional categories don't easily subsume his range of opinions. Originally, when writing in England, he was more clearly a socialist, and maintained to his death that still he was socialist. To me he seems to have more purely literary cast of mind, and a rationalist center. Some liberals were puzzled, particularly after his support of American intervention in Iraq and elsewhere. But his hawkish essays are consistent with his vitriol towards tyrannical forms of government. He may be regarded as an anti-tyranny leftist--hostile to ideology, to dogmatic efforts to extend ideologies instead of helping people, to oppressive government.
A few essays are particularly memorable. Hitchen's discussion of JFK's medication problems, concealed infirmaries, and flawed decisions undermine the mythology of Camelot that has turned this mediocre president into an icon. Hitchins makes a case that our embroilment in Vietnam may have been due to Kennedy's clouded thinking associated with prescribed and recreational drugs. Kennedy's disabilities and his amphetamine use probably affected him during pivotal talks with Khrushchev. He also remarks on Kennedy's womanizing and the distracting, energy consuming quality this might have had on his abilities, already compromised. Hitchens finds most fault not with Kennedy--that is just history, but the smarmy biographers making a living out of Kennedy hagiography and perpetuating the mendacious myth of Camelot. Parenthetically, he adds that Kennedy may not have even read the book that he supposedly wrote which won him a Pulitzer Prize.
A discussion of John's Brown raid on Harper's ferry also is intriguing in that he posits this event as the very start, the very nexus of the civil war. Far from being the madman portrayed by those wishing to discredit him, Brown planned his raid with some strategy, and moreover, was enlightened from the point of view of including blacks and Indians as equals in the endeavor.
Essays on Sinclair Lewis and Vladimir Nabokov are laudatory and well informed. He certainly likes these two authors. Indeed, a number of other essays also concern the purity of and power of language and those authors who commanded the language absolutely. His views are complicated: his discussion of Dickens and Twain capture them as complicated and flawed but real people. The English short story writer Saki is given a sensitive treatment--an individual , homosexual when it was dangerous to be so, with unique literary gifts who eventually died in the trenches, a middle aged volunteer, an aristocrat who had given up the high life.
Hitches knowledge of WWII is good, and several essays discuss our bombing of Dresden, really unnecessary from a strategic point of view, with, moreover, Churchill choosing to destroy just those working class neighborhoods housing the most people but also those portions of German inhabitude where most anti-Nazi sentiment flourished. The diaries of a rather skeptical, circumspect middle aged German intellectual named Kemperer also are discussed--a Jew married to a gentile whose writings, not widely available, equal in importance the more sentimental recordings of Ann Frank, and were prescient regarding the aftermath of war.
included in the collection is one of his Hitchens better known essays is when he had a batch of special force operatives waterboard him. It was done with medic nearby, by individuals who had gone through SERE training. He did not last very long. His commentary is of the panicky horror of the procedure. As to its morality, he implies that this is the stuff of wars, and the enemy does it, that it may save lives, and the men who are covert have a world of different life and death realities than stateside critics. On the other hand, he states that the information obtained can be useless, that it creates a slippery moral slope, and is even seen as objectionable by some military brass, and finally, morally untenable.
In foreign affairs, Hitchens is particularly powerful and unique voice in decrying any American accommodation to a terrorist group. Dictators do not fare well with Hitchens. His essays on North Korean and Cuba and Venezuela leadership are no holds barred, as to astound and shock. His hatred of the crazed, Caligula like leaders of such commercialized dictatorships is pure.
These are first rate essays on myriad of subjects associated with modern political, literary and historical thought and reading. Generally, he seems to have a reliable moral compass based on reason and equality. He has a good grasp of western politics, literature and history to inform his work, and is an engaging, contrarian writer. His loss is estimable.
Hitchens is hard to classify on ideologically. That is, conventional categories don't easily subsume his range of opinions. Originally, when writing in England, he was more clearly a socialist, and maintained to his death that still he was socialist. To me he seems to have more purely literary cast of mind, and a rationalist center. Some liberals were puzzled, particularly after his support of American intervention in Iraq and elsewhere. But his hawkish essays are consistent with his vitriol towards tyrannical forms of government. He may be regarded as an anti-tyranny leftist--hostile to ideology, to dogmatic efforts to extend ideologies instead of helping people, to oppressive government.
A few essays are particularly memorable. Hitchen's discussion of JFK's medication problems, concealed infirmaries, and flawed decisions undermine the mythology of Camelot that has turned this mediocre president into an icon. Hitchins makes a case that our embroilment in Vietnam may have been due to Kennedy's clouded thinking associated with prescribed and recreational drugs. Kennedy's disabilities and his amphetamine use probably affected him during pivotal talks with Khrushchev. He also remarks on Kennedy's womanizing and the distracting, energy consuming quality this might have had on his abilities, already compromised. Hitchens finds most fault not with Kennedy--that is just history, but the smarmy biographers making a living out of Kennedy hagiography and perpetuating the mendacious myth of Camelot. Parenthetically, he adds that Kennedy may not have even read the book that he supposedly wrote which won him a Pulitzer Prize.
A discussion of John's Brown raid on Harper's ferry also is intriguing in that he posits this event as the very start, the very nexus of the civil war. Far from being the madman portrayed by those wishing to discredit him, Brown planned his raid with some strategy, and moreover, was enlightened from the point of view of including blacks and Indians as equals in the endeavor.
Essays on Sinclair Lewis and Vladimir Nabokov are laudatory and well informed. He certainly likes these two authors. Indeed, a number of other essays also concern the purity of and power of language and those authors who commanded the language absolutely. His views are complicated: his discussion of Dickens and Twain capture them as complicated and flawed but real people. The English short story writer Saki is given a sensitive treatment--an individual , homosexual when it was dangerous to be so, with unique literary gifts who eventually died in the trenches, a middle aged volunteer, an aristocrat who had given up the high life.
Hitches knowledge of WWII is good, and several essays discuss our bombing of Dresden, really unnecessary from a strategic point of view, with, moreover, Churchill choosing to destroy just those working class neighborhoods housing the most people but also those portions of German inhabitude where most anti-Nazi sentiment flourished. The diaries of a rather skeptical, circumspect middle aged German intellectual named Kemperer also are discussed--a Jew married to a gentile whose writings, not widely available, equal in importance the more sentimental recordings of Ann Frank, and were prescient regarding the aftermath of war.
included in the collection is one of his Hitchens better known essays is when he had a batch of special force operatives waterboard him. It was done with medic nearby, by individuals who had gone through SERE training. He did not last very long. His commentary is of the panicky horror of the procedure. As to its morality, he implies that this is the stuff of wars, and the enemy does it, that it may save lives, and the men who are covert have a world of different life and death realities than stateside critics. On the other hand, he states that the information obtained can be useless, that it creates a slippery moral slope, and is even seen as objectionable by some military brass, and finally, morally untenable.
In foreign affairs, Hitchens is particularly powerful and unique voice in decrying any American accommodation to a terrorist group. Dictators do not fare well with Hitchens. His essays on North Korean and Cuba and Venezuela leadership are no holds barred, as to astound and shock. His hatred of the crazed, Caligula like leaders of such commercialized dictatorships is pure.
These are first rate essays on myriad of subjects associated with modern political, literary and historical thought and reading. Generally, he seems to have a reliable moral compass based on reason and equality. He has a good grasp of western politics, literature and history to inform his work, and is an engaging, contrarian writer. His loss is estimable.
