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Title: Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens ISBN: 0-465-03032-7 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 16 October, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.68 (22 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: It's so cool to be Contrarian
Comment: This book, and all of Christopher Hitchens' books for that matter, are perhaps the most irrelevant and yet most interesting books written on current history. Yes, Hitchens is extremely bright (even in an extremely bright profession) , controversial, radical, iconoclastic, informed, experienced, and still very very irrelevant. One time he is taking on Mother Teresa, then appearing as a huge liberal on C-SPAN against his conservative British brother, then he turns up on Charlie Rose saying he is a libertarian, then he writes regularly for The Nation (while preferring globalization), and finally he applauds an article in National Review or the Weekly Standard. This latest book is the most scattered of all amounting to little more than a general pep talk about how to keep up your radical credentials, or, how to be Christopher Hitchens. Being so cool and intellectual and affected may be good for ones' career but how does it really help the reader who time and again is given only the choice of voting for a Democrat or Republican?
In the beginning there was Thomas Jefferson arguing for freedom and Alexander Hamilton arguing for Government. Today the Democrats and Republicans are arguing about the same issue, while Mr. Hitchens is oddly arguing about something else not even defined, let alone on the ballot? Why doesn't he write a book on why Trent Lott and Sam Daschel have spit the United States gov't along stupid or irrelevant lines? In truth, the more relevant and central an issue is to World history the more Mr. Hitchens stays away from it. So, if you want to be a proud but harmless radical, read this book. But, please consider that when you are done, like Marlon Brando in "The Wild Ones" you'll still have to figure out what it is that you want to be radical about, if that should matter to you at all. Perhaps in an existential world "cool" has a value all by itself? If you want to read a book that seeks to be relevant as much as this book seeks to avoid it try "Understanding The Difference Between Democrats And Republicans"
Rating: 2
Summary: As I Please on My Repining Chair
Comment: First, the publisher should get high marks for producing such a good-looking book: its decipherable typeface and neat margins, made for a pleasant reading experience. Mr. Hitchens complements its production by his smoothly-written text. Hullo!: a man who makes you look up the word "repine" cannot be all bad. He cannot be all good either. When he writes: "It doesn't matter what one thinks, but how one thinks." the mind reels. (At least this mind.) This formulation cannot stand. When Noam Chomsky remarks to an interlocutor that he esteems Angela Davis higher than Alexandr I. Solzenhitsyn, it is of no interest to me how he arrived at such a silly opinion, only that he held it. This formulation also misses the very virtue of Orwell's writings (which Mr. Hitchens has extolled elsewhere): that intellectuals (like non-intellectuals) can at times be right (e.g., J.M. Keynes' claim that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were too harsh) and some times be wrong (pardon any blows to amour-propre).
Dissent is necessary in a free and democratic society [especially during a Republican administration which loves, among other things, the Fallacy of the Shifting Rationale]; a global distribution of Little Miss Marys,though, riding not "high horses" but particular hobbyhorses is as dispiriting as one filled with dogmatists.
Rating: 4
Summary: Stirred but not shaken
Comment: Recently stumbled onto this little book that wants to make a stir, somewhere, somehow. I think that and wanting to become a national best-seller is on the list for Hitchens, i.e., to write something intellectual, controversial and garner broad public attention (like the Closing of the American Mind was for Mr. Bloom). Both authors are roughly in the same camp and enjoy the fine art of biting.
But I could be wrong in my impression and perhaps this is just for those rebels on the fringe who enjoy free thought. But there is something ambitious about this book. If Thomas Paine could write pamphlets and be famous, why not Hitchens! Not to detract from what Hitchens is saying throughout the book, it is a good message, and the cover gives us the right image of the rebel (Bogey and Dean). But will America be stirred, provoked? Probably not and controversy remains more in the hands of the irrationally rational, eg., somebody like a David Lynch. Still a good biting message!
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Title: Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens ISBN: 0465030491 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq by Christopher Hitchens ISBN: 0452284988 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $8.99 |
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Title: No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family by Christopher Hitchens ISBN: 1859842844 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: July, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens ISBN: 1859843980 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens ISBN: 185984054X Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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