More on Hitch

It just so happens that I picked up a copy of the New York Review of Books today, and it just so happens that the magazine had a review of Hitchens' memoir, Hitch-22: "The Believer" by Ian Buruma. Buruma definitely takes Hitchens on here, mostly lamenting his transmogrification into a warmonger and American toady.

I have watched with a certain degree of dismay how this lifelong champion of left-wing, anti-imperialist causes, this scourge of armed American hubris, this erstwhile booster of Vietcong and Sandinistas, this ex-Trot who delighted in calling his friends and allies “comrades,” ended up as a loud drummer boy for President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, a tub-thumper for neoconservatism, and a strident American patriot.

I'll let you read the review, except to point out two things. First, for some reason, every critique I have ever read of Hitchens are all leveled by people who count him among their friends: whether it's Thomas Eagleton or Jeffrey Goldberg. This Buruma guy is no exception. Indeed, he begins, "Like many people who count “Hitch” among their friends...." Either Hitchens is one of those people who every likes to imagine is their friend, or he is a genuinely gregarious and amiable fellow.

Second, apparently, Hitchens in his memoir, borrows a writing technique from the Homeric tradition. The Homeric epithet is a tag or nickname for a character that can be used on its own or together with the real name. Epithets add a bit of color and also fill out the meter when the name on its own doesn't quite fit. And so, for Homer it's never just Achilles, but swift-footed Achilles. It's Hector, breaker of horses; bright-eyed Athena; Agamemnon, lord of men; the resourceful Odysseus. Hitchens puts the technique to excellent use. As Buruma says, for Hitchens, "it is always the 'habitual and professional liar Clinton,' 'the pious born-again creep Jimmy Carter,' Nixon’s 'indescribably loathsome deputy Henry Kissinger,' the 'subhuman character' Jorge Videla.

I'm impressed.