Hitchens part deux

Not sure if my previous post said what I wanted it to. I also made the usual mistake of publishing long before I had finished editing (and no doubt will do so again on this post). Anyone who reads this blog soon after posts appear is reading something often quite different from a reader of the same post a while later. Hitchens was praised for his ability to write publication-perfect prose at 100 miles an hour, often after drinking "enough to kill or stun the average mule."

So what did I want to say ? Well, as confirmed by some of the less-glowing tributes (and therefore more in the spirit of the man himself), I often found myself put off by his old-school pomposity and mannered style, at least when debating on camera. He was supposed to write well because he took the advice (from Simon Hoggart) to "write as you speak". But sometimes his speech seemed just too affected, like someone permanently acting and unable to switch off. All a bit last-century. Especially the constant use of "brothers, sisters, comrades" and suchlike when addressing audiences. Not to mention the ubiquitous, gratuitous French phrases.

Then there was the cliqueness and crescendo of self-congratulatory back-slapping among the group of well-known writers that constituted his inner circle. As one profiler (Lynn Barber) noted while he was still alive, Hitchens was an amazingly social creature for someone who professed to follow the road less travelled.

I ended the previous post by saying that Hitchens was likeable, in marked contrast to many supposedly more godly men against whom he pitched himself in atheistic debate. I'll give an example of that: I tried reading a book called "Nonsense of a High Order" by one Rabbi Moshe Averick, subtitled "The confused and illusory world of the atheist". He takes aim at all the usual atheist targets, including Hitchens. I found much of interest in this book; it provoked thought which is surely the mark of a good book. Yet the author seemed, well, obnoxious: insufferably smug and childish for someone purportedly discussing the meaning of life (as also seen in his interaction with readers in the comments section of a website.) Sadly, I'm all too familiar with that personality type from my time inside Jewish "outreach".

Hitchens may well have been obnoxious himself at times, as well as sloppy in some of his thinking. But he also had ... something. As he said himself, his greatest fear and hatred was to be boring / bored. Communicating without being boring and with a degree of charm is too important to leave to chance. It really should be taught in schools.

Despite my reservations about Hitchens-the-man, over the years I have found myself lapping up his columns and, latterly, his books. I read his autobiography, Hitch-22, on my iphone while in Brazil; and I listened to the audiobook of "God is not great" also while over there. It was a great comfort and stimulation to have a big fat dose of Hitchens while stuck in a Latin land of tedious superstition. And on that occasion his Richard Burton-esque reading voice went down very well. As so often, I found myself laughing out loud numerous times.

I must have been pretty desperate for intellectually stimulating company since, as I said, I emailed him a fan letter. I suppose it was more of a get-well-soon letter. But my Hitchens-watching had long put me in the "twitcher" camp. Some years ago I had actually stalked the guy while he was walking in Manhattan and then again in London's Soho. By stalked I mean followed for a few hundred yards, during which time I was wondering if I had anything worth saying to him, unprompted, and whether he would anyway be receptive at that particular moment. I decided not, on both counts.

The fact that he was still writing so incredibly close to the final curtain, and writing about all the usual subjects rather than his own dire predicament, also leaves me with a pretty big sense of loss: his articles are part of the ebb and flow of my life, as they are for so many other people. I still expect them to be churned out, week after week, month after month, year after year. I suppose that makes me an addict.

But hang on a minute. I've had this same sense of "what am I going to do ?!" and even "what is the world going to do ?!" after others have left the stage. And that brings me back to the opening sentence of my previous post, about the illusion that we are connected to people who are, in fact, complete strangers to us. I didn't "know" Hitchens, or Steve Jobs or Amy Winehouse (I hesitate to mention her name alongside these two) just as they didn't know me. We were not acquainted. I was acquainted with things that they put out there for general consumption.

Let me reveal something else: with both Hitchens and Jobs, whose terminal illnesses had been widely broadcast, I found myself thinking, once or twice, "come on, then, weren't you supposed to have died by now ?" I was waiting for the moment of drama. That was also part of the "show". Of course, when they did actually die my dirty little question disappeared in a puff of amnesia, to be replaced by genuine shock and sadness - perhaps even mild panic.

But that's the theatre of public life for you: watching people strut and fret upon the global stage means we, the audience, are captivated as much by the superficial drama as by any deep and meaningful content. Only time will help us untangle our muddled, muddied minds. For now I'll conclude by adding my own "rest in peace" wishes to an especially familiar stranger; an occasional fellow-traveller whom I never met; and to someone "out there" who's no longer ... there.

The time-worn RIP phrase just seems to be the right thing to say immediately after the trauma of dying. The individual words may be meaningless if you subtract the emotional intent behind them but can you ever really do that ? Hitchens may have preached an anti-theistic extinction of all consciousness once the brain dies but the emotional heartbeat of his life - reflected back at him by all who felt its force - can at least carry him across the river to the unknown shore.

Whatever has become of you, Hitch, this abandoned reader wants to remind my own reader that you were an anti-theist, not an atheist. Which to my ears bespeaks a Jew-ish kind of non-believer: he who wrestles with God. Or god.