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Life without God

1:00am Saturday, 31st July 2010

Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens,
Reviewed by Kara Martin

Christopher Hitchens joins Phillip Pullman and Richard Dawkins at the forefront of the New Atheism which presents me with a problem in reviewing this book.
There will be many Christian sites that will talk about Hitchens’s description of behaviour the Bible would see as immoral, including sexual promiscuity with men as well as women, his lack of attention to family, his excesses with alcohol (he points out the moderation of his drinking now that he is in his 60s: down to a bottle of red and two whiskies a day, when not socialising, p.351), and his rampant blasphemy (even the title of his previous book: god is Not Great).
However, why do we expect biblical standards from someone who is not defined as a Christian nor has the resources of the Holy Spirit?
So, I can judge this book from its literary standards, and it measures up quite well. He is knowledgeable and witty, and has been to many of the world’s hotspots, with a wealth of interesting insights. There is a little too much name-dropping about people I do not know, and a little too over-valuing of his own importance, with this book perhaps aimed at the English intelligensia. There is also a lot of self-indulging, in referring to anecdotes of drunken sessions with some of his famous friends, which were probably much funnier if you were there, or if you shared a schoolboy humour for limericks involving bodyparts...
Secondly, I feel comfortable judging Hitchens by his own standards. For example when challenged by Christians to define a moral code he says “self-respect and the desire for the respect of others” (p.331). Obviously that code does not include respect for others, because he verges on defamation of almost every well-known Christian he can possibly insult. John Wesley is an “admitted maniac and demagogue” (p.64), Martin Buber is a “pious old hypocrite” (p.70), CS Lewis’s Narnia series is “puerile yet toilsome” (p.78). Perhaps most shockingly he refers to the “frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic”, in reference to Mother Teresa (p.337).
Christianity as a faith cops the biggest bashing among the religions. On p.10 he comments that “Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of the flock”. At school he is “compelled to sit through lessons in the sinister fairy tales of Christianity” (p.52). He sees all religions as “man-made phenomenon”, used to control people (p.269).
However, Hitchens is inconsistent. He can’t pretend that he didn’t enjoy singing hymns and reading from the lectern while at school (p.52), and his favourite musicians are Bob Dylan and JS Bach, whose music was inspired in large part by an encounter with God. He quotes from Christian Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, admires Solzhenitsyn, loves Dostoyevsky, is influenced by Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress. He admires those moments when the church either initiates or supports the revolutionary movements he gets caught up with, for example, in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Thank goodness he is able to employ humour and irony, even quoting his friend Salman Rushdie’s comment that the problem with the title of his book god is Not Great was that “it lacked economy: that it was in other words exactly one word too long” (p.9).
One wonders how different his life and philosophy might have been if most of his encounters with Christianity during his formative years had not been so negative. The Christian school he was sent to was very strict and include copious amounts of corporal punishment; his grandfather was a “mirthless Calvinist patriarch with a dim view of everything from music to television” (p.33). His Mother ran off with an ex-Church of England Minister and then tragically committed suicide with him in a secret pact. When Hitchens went to Athens to identify her body and arrange her burial in an Anglican cemetery he had to bribe the priest because the latter refused to bury one who had taken their own life. His best friend, the poet James Fenton, was brought up by two Aunts when his father, a renowned theologian, married a devout woman who wanted nothing to do with the sons of the former wife.
In the end Hitchens admits to many periods on his life when he emulates Bunyan’s “Mr Facing-Both-Ways” (p.148), and this is the recurrent theme of the book. Hitchens is two-faced: he will dine in splendour as “Christopher” with the genteel set at Oxford then rush off as “Chris” to join a demo against oppression of the workers (p.102), he will obtain a scholarship under false pretences to travel to Cuba to investigate its form of socialism (p.111), he will woo a Nazi-sympathiser for a TV interview yet speak out for anti-fascism (p.142), he would write for mainstream papers and TV stations churning out what was required and then “sneak down to the East End” and edit the Socialist Worker.
The most well-known moment of Hitchens “changing sides” was when he switched from supporting Saddam Hussein’s socialist renewal of Iraq, to actively campaigning for the second invasion of Iraq. The chapter on this era is particularly fascinating. There are copious amounts of self-justification, with the most obvious being his criticism of the US in bungling up the job by their incompetence (p.306).
That is why the memoir is titled Hitch-22, an obvious referenced to the Joseph Heller book Catch-22, referring to rules or regulations that place you in a paradoxical situation. There is a self-defeating logic in the rules of life, and you end up choosing something you might never have thought you would.
In his words: “Sometimes it was the right people who took the wrong line.” (p.200) However, he never provides such moments of grace to Christians.
To Hitchens’s credit he is very honest about the paradoxes he finds himself in, and the choices he makes; he even confesses to taking a bribe from an Iraqi embassy contact (p.287). However, he walks a tight line between self-righteousness and tolerance, and hypocrisy and complicit behaviour. This has been noted by secular reviewers also, questioning whether it is “doubleness” or duplicity.
In a sarcastic review in the Brisbane Times, author Peter Temple points out that all Hitchens’s heroes, including Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal, eventually disappoint him; in the end even friends become enemies. So, Hitchens has turned his sights to God:
The supreme being is, of course, Hitchens’s ultimate assassination target. He appears to see him as a sort of cosmic public-school headmaster, the shadowy figure glimpsed at his study window who capriciously summons victims for canings, issues irrational commandments and promises the gullible boys a better life after school.
Like Hitchens’ beloved Salman Rushdie, God will probably survive this fatwa. But he will know he has been in a fight.
In one of those moments which proves God has a sense of humour, the renowned atheist Hitchens discovers as an adult that he is a Jew. Thus begins a journey of self-discovery, tracing his roots, and coming to terms with what it means to identify with the Jewish people. He describes himself as a non-religious Jew, but has obviously been profoundly moved by the journey.
Even more ironic is the fact that his brother Peter is a right-wing Christian, who has written a book: The Moral Compass which made Christopher feel he should be wearing a necklace of garlic (p.405)!
My favourite part of the book was an unexpectedly human moment, when Hitchens discovers that a young man joined up and went to Iraq inspired by his articles providing a moral justification of the war. That man, Mark Daily, was tragically killed in a massive roadside bomb in Mosul, Iraq. Hitchens tracks down the family and touchingly paints an impressive portrait of a young man with ideals.
However, again, the uncomfortable thought is that he is using this tragic death of a well-meaning, impressive young man to provide further justification for his own stand in support of the war.
Hitch-22 is a difficult book to read as a Christian. There is a lot of sex described, and a lot of criticism of Christianity, and a fair amount of gossip, especially the sexual pursuits of famous people. It is draining to read.
More disturbing for me was the hint of misogynism in his relationship with women. He delights in sexual conquests without describing any relationships, not even with his wives. While he is for liberation of every other group: homosexuals, blacks, oppressed nations, Jews... he admits that he neglected to be present for his children until he could hold a decent conversation with them; thus confining the mother(s) of his children to virtual single-parent prison. While he mentions a story and provides photographs of his son, his daughters are shadowy characters, with only one named in relation to feminine embarrassment.
Most disturbing of all was his neglect of his mother Yvonne, a woman who was distant from his stern father. She was disappointed with her lot in life, but rather than caring for her, Hitchens pitied her (p.14), and ignored her, with a tragic lack of phone calls or attention. Tragic, because he spends most of the chapter dedicated to her speaking of his regrets, leading up to the lack of attentiveness in the final weeks before her death.
I am not sure whether to recommend reading this book, except to understand how others evolve in their thinking.
KARA MARTIN is a lecturer with School of Christian Studies (http://www.socs.org.au), and is an avid reader and book group attendee. Kara does book reviews for Hope 103.2’s Open House (http://www.theopenhouse.net.au).