Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Michael Lind: Envious and Invertebrate

         Michael Lind lacked the spine to take on Christopher Hitchens while the polemicist was alive.  Lind only saw fit to trash him in a long, dull, and inaccurate column on Salon's website once Hitchens had succumbed to cancer.  Unlike Hitchens, who had no problem hurling mud before and after an opponent's death, Lind had insufficient decency.   
          "Some claim that Hitchens was a fascinating conversationalist, but as I recall he showed no interest in ideas and preferred to peddle gossip about politicians and journalists and authors, until I found opportunities to excuse myself," Lind wrote.  So, Lind boasts that Hitchens favorably reviewed his own book, paid for drinks, and his response is to complain about the content of the conversation years after the fact?  As someone who was lucky enough to have Hitchens as a teacher in New York, I can verify that over drinks the famed polemicist spoke of nothing but ideas and poetry and literature.  Stories about Arthur Schlesinger, arguments with Sam Harris, descriptions of Syria, and quotations from Mencken.  Perhaps Hitch was so rocked to sleep by Lind's "on the one hand" shifting, one had no choice but to engage in a little vivifying personality chat?  One thing Hitchens did hate was a crashing bore.  (Check out Lind's book chats:  Pure chloroform.)    And to accuse Hitchens of being all over the map when you yourself have swung from Texan conservative to Hamiltonian progressive is a bit much.  
            Lind has a litmus test for real intellectuals:  "First, intellectuals need to produce some substantial works of scholarship, literature or rigorous reporting, distinct from the public affairs commentary for which they may be best known to a broad public."  Well, if anyone can read For the Sake of Argument, Unacknowledged Legislation, or Love, Poverty, and War without discovering "rigorous reporting," you've got me.  The incisive arguments, eye for quotation, and close attention to language illustrates the best of Orwellian cultural criticism--not scholarship--a claim Hitchens never sought.  Though, regarding academe, I should add that his review "Transgressing the Boundaries" is a Hitchens essay/review at its best regarding universities at their worst.
         Hitch's work for Harper's on polls ("Voting in the Passive Voice") helped change the conversation about the emergent industry and his amazing polemic The Trial of Henry Kissinger not only was turned into an excellent film documentary.  One can easily see that C.H. plumbed the archives and formed a hard-hitting and persuasive argument for Kissinger's arrest.  So much so that the filthy old criminal thinks thrice before leaving his adopted country, as did his old comrade Augosto Pinochet in Chile.  And I should also mention, Hitch's discussion of literature and reportage in places like Contra-befouled Central America; his letters to young radicals; his interview with Borges and Fallaci; his defense of Bernard Henry-Levy; and his evaluation of novelist Anthony Powell will surely live much longer and is much closer to truth than say, the prose of Lind's novel Powertown.  (If you don't know the work you can buy it online for .75 cents.  Oh, and Hitchens' own essays from the 1980s, collected in Prepared for the Worst, are going for $80.00.)   
              Lind continues:  "Second, genuine intellectuals base their interventions in public debate on the basis of some coherent view of the world.  Hitchens left behind no substantial scholarly or literary work, and if he had any core principles or values they are hard to discern."  Well, Hitch's polemics about Mother Teresa and Clinton have just been republished to wide acclaim and introduced by scholars like Douglas Brinkley and literary icons like Ariel Dorfman.  I doubt Lind's arguing that Vietnam was a "necessary war" (while whining about the liberation of Iraq) will attract such quality of collaborators on his next reprint, if there is one.  And regarding the many "lumpenintelligentsia," who Lind denounces as Hitch's fan base.  This group, which is, I chance to guess, Lind's slur against the young readers with an interest in literature and criticism and philosophy outside of the skunk-tank consensus of D.C.  The lumps might testify to Hitchens' principles which, for better and for worse, devoted him to a lifetime of speaking up for the victims, attacking the powerful, seeking the truth, forming original arguments, rejecting "the gift" of absolute authority innate in religion, and rejecting consoling fictions.  As he said in one of his last orations, "Think of [authority] as a poisoned chalice, push it aside however tempting it is.  Take the risk of thinking for yourself.  Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way."  
                Hitch forgot to add "respect," which came his way, deservedly.  

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