Monday, March 03, 2008

We the People Together Dream of and Hope for New Change in America

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6 comments:

My Frontier Thesis said...

As Hitchens nudges his readers toward, Orwell said all this back in the '30s and '40s.

With this piece, Hitchens really stepped it up a notch and gave it 110%. He came here to play.

The aversion Americans have toward sporting events (and the announcers' moronic phrases) is, I believe, mostly to blame. It's spilled over into our political discourse, making it so anyone who listens closely to John Madden can effectively run for town mayor, or President.

This all reminds me of the post a couple weeks ago that said Americans are getting dumber. Meanwhile, the Catholic Conservative Sean Hannity and the Ivy Liberal Alan Colmes pejoratively call Hitchens an "Intellectual." (Air-quotes theirs, not mine).

3/03/2008 6:36 PM
Tecumseh said...

Hitch is good, but let's not overdo it: Orwell was taking on Hitler and Stalin and such -- Hitch puts down some post-modern babblers. (Also, Orwell saw action in war, and had some close encounters with the Grim Reaper -- Hitch at most with Mr. Laphroaig.)

3/03/2008 7:49 PM
Mr roT said...

AI, I don't see how Orwell's military service qualifies him.... (JJ Steinem here)

3/03/2008 8:22 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...

You don't need military service to think before writing (and think prior to speaking for that matter). What happens, though, is when authors (or whoever) write about experience they haven't lived. I'm thinking of (and I've mentioned him before) B.R. Myers wonderful rip on the post-Moderns authors of our contemporary world, authors who have their works rendered into screenplay and put before open-mouth breathers on the celluloid. I should really just sit down and draft a manuscript on all the idiocy, but Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would probably call me a communist if I started making constructive criticism toward American and Western Civilization. Then I'd be black-listed, certainly kicked off FCP, and Pepe wouldn't even take me in because he rightfully understands me as some weird kind of American patriot.

I'd have to go and live in Alaska, or something like that. So I'll probably just shut my mouth about anything anymore (not really), and just use air quotes from time to time to undermine an author's credibility.

On the inside and in the spirit of melancholy I often go "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!" out of frustration toward what I honestly consider my beautiful country. Externally, I'm calm.

...back to furrowing my brow...

3/03/2008 8:33 PM
Tecumseh said...

To write something like Hommage to Catalonia it helps to actually go there and fight, not just drink whisky in a pub. It also helped Orwell get the kind of understanding necessary to write 1984 and Animal Farm. Perhaps he could have done it by just sipping Laphroaig and dreaming of Big Brother, but somehow I doubt it. At any rate, I don't mean to put the Hitch down (though he gets under my skin now and then with his radical anti-religious bias), but can we all agree he's not George? (I don't think he pretends to be, either.)

3/03/2008 9:15 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...

Yeah, I've got Homage to Catalonia on the shelf too. Like I said (which you also pointed out), authors are better writing about lived experience. At least we get better novels that way.

I don't think Hitch has written a novel about being in pre-WWII Catalonia, though. He has written pretty extensively about Orwell, one amongst many topics. And he has read and re-read Orwell, and this gives him just as much right to comment on the wintry conscious (Jefferey Meyers phrase) as anyone else who has read Orwell.

As far as Hitch's religious bashing: he has his reasons, and he's just continuing an intellectual tradition in Western Civilization in challenging authority and/or dogma. Gotta watch my niece now, so cutting this response short.

3/03/2008 9:50 PM

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