His final collected essays prove Christopher Hitchens in dazzling form,dampening festive spirits and eviscerating Hillary ClintonI don’t know if Christopher Hitchens left written instruction, but the publication date of this sixth collection of his essays seems pointedly to have been designed to miss Christmas lists. I had forgotten that among the things Hitchens, or the contrarian’s contrarian,sought to dismantle was the festive spirit; there are two reminders here of that particular heroic and unwinnable campaign. The rhetorical onslaught of each is instructive of the method. As ever, Hitch begins enjoyably anecdotally, or in one case (Bah,Humbug, an essay from Slate of 2005) with a sharp account of being physically barred from a Bible belt talkshow for observing that “Christmas trees, or Yule logs,and the rest were symbols of the winter solstice holidays before any birth had been registered in the greater Bethlehem area”, in the other (The sincere Spirit of Christmas for the Wall Street Journal in 2011) by revealing that (of course) he knew all the words to Tom Lehrer’s gloomy holidays carol, and sang them loudly in the presence of any holly and ivy gathering,as evidence of his “root-and-branch resistance”.
Like all remarkable essayists, Hitchens was at his best when least entrenchedContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com