The argumentalist

ARGUABLY: ESSAYS

By Christopher Hitchens

774 pages

Available at National Book Store

In this age of “whatever,” it’s refreshing to read Christopher Hitchens: someone who will pick a fight over just about anything: George Orwell, John Updike, Harry Potter or even whether “F**k off!” is preferable to “F**k you!” (Hitchens leans toward the former, the British variant, which he finds more inclusive and self-reflective than the violent American version.)

Hitchens is currently dying of esophageal cancer, and Arguably is likely his last collection of essays. It’s a big, bad boy, ranging from America’s Founding Fathers through literary reviews, musings on jihad and post-9/11 politics, language and whether or not women are capable of being funny.

On this last subject (for Vanity Fair, 2007), Hitchens concludes that, on the whole, they are not, and he claims this is biological: that women are charged with the raising of children, the propagation of the human race, and therefore the frivolity of humor is best left to males, who must seduce women in order to produce more children. Yes, more often men play the “clowns,” the ones of whom women will coo, “Oh, and he’s sooo funny…” (Of course, Hitch’s argument ignores exceptions to the rule: Ellen Degeneres, Tina Fey, Wanda Sykes, et al.) But it’s this kind of dodgy line of argument that Hitchens loves to hitch his wagon to. And we should be thankful for this, because taking on all comers in an intellectual scrap-up is kind of a dying craft. He may be wrong roughly half the time, but Hitchens has opinions, and in our age of relative amusements, it’s almost bracing — like a slap of Aqua Velva from another era — to hear someone take up an actual position.

Hitchens — British by birth, American by choice — saves his strongest contrarian ammo for religion. The life-long pal of Martin Amis and author of the memoir Hitch 22 pulled out his biggest guns in the controversial book god Is Not Great (note the lower case). He calls himself an “antitheist” rather than an atheist, believing that the latter might concede that, somewhere down the line, a person could find evidence of God. (Hitchens sees none.)

He has a bone to pick, too, with the phrase “There are no atheists in foxholes.” As one who has contested the foundations of religion throughout his argumentative life, Hitchens begs to differ: even on the brink of death, he is unrepentant in his religious disbelief, even as “Christians” throughout the world warn him via e-mail of his imminent eternal damnation. (Actually, many attentive Christians just wish him well and hope he sees the “light” at some point. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks, though.)

When religious believers sometimes argue with Hitchens, “Well, since you don’t believe in God, what’s to stop you from lying and raping and killing to your heart’s content?” he finds the question insulting, as though the only thing holding most people back from such odious behavior (or, conversely, sanctioning their atrocious behavior) is fear of religious reprisal. His solid, secular answer is usually this: “Self-respect and respect for others.” And to those who say, “How can you find meaning and purpose in a life lived without God?” Hitchens answers (in Hitch 22): “A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others, cannot be called ‘meaningless.’”

Hitchens is now a naturalized US citizen, living in Texas, not exactly the most abiding place for athiests. Right at the start of Arguably, though, he devotes several long essays to arguing that the Founding Fathers of America were never really that religious to begin with, despite claims by Tea Party members or Right Wing conservatives to the contrary. (John Adams is quoted by Hitchens as fearing the “germ of religion” in human nature that allows a certain “order of men to persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, until there is no end to fraud, violence and usurpation.” Adams would find much to fear these days.) Yet Hitchens is also deeply American in the sense that he has earned a right to criticize his adopted country, or at least its politics. He may be the most well-read critic to take a verbal B.B. gun to national candidates, and it’s because one gains a certain honest view of proceedings as an outsider, a foreigner looking in at, say, lax gun control or the United States’ continuing role abroad after 9/11. Some see Hitchens as conservative, but he also champions animal rights (something most John Birchers couldn’t care less about); he was also a young supporter of Marxist revolution in the ‘60s and, viewing the recent carnage on Wall Street, he still sees validity in Marx’s ideas.

It’s not all rough slogging through difficult waters. Arguably contains a lighthearted essay on why fellatio is a peculiarly American pastime; one on how annoying it is when waiters interrupt dinner conversations in restaurants to lean in and pour wine; on why Harry Potter deserves a place on literary shelves (but not another sequel); and how the Me Decade has evolved into the You Decade (thanks to the Internet).

His pokes at religion are funny, thoughtful and generally reasonable, as when he notes there are “at least four” versions of the famed Ten Commandments in the Bible (Exodus 20 and 24, and twice in Deuteronomy), thus God’s dictates should be viewed as “a work in progress” rather than “written in stone.” He proposes a list of updated “Do Nots” instead (this list should be circulated on Facebook, if nowhere else):

Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature — why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that f***ing cell phone — you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

 So with Hitch, you get all the contradictions, all the little opinionated quirks that make up any thinking, engaged mind in these troubled times. “The most intense wars are civil wars, just as the most vivid and rending personal conflicts are internal ones,” he writes in Hitch 22, “and what I hope to do is give some idea of what it is to fight on two fronts at once, to try and keep opposing ideas alive in the same mind.”

Just like a born argumentalist to spend his life picking a fight with himself.

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