I’ve been rereading a pile of Hitchens. His essay collections are … patchy. Some hit the spot, some look dashed off in half an hour after a boozy evening (as they frequently were). He was clearly brilliant, but relied on it rather too often.
god is not Great is probably the best thing he ever wrote. I’m listening to the audio book (read by the author) now, and it’s so clearly a book written to be read aloud. A master polemicist, expertly bludgeoning bad arguments to death. If you’ve seen videos of Hitchens debating theists (well worth seeing too—there’s lots on YouTube), it’s pretty much that stuff, organised into a single philosophical steam-hammer assault.
Letters To A Young Contrarian is very good, if you enjoyed god is not Great and want more of the good stuff. Then hit the essay collections.
Thank you very much. Letters is probably my favourite of his books, and frankly the amount of Hitchens debates I’ve watched on youtube is embarrassing.
One thing to be cautious of is that Hitchens teaches you polemics, i.e. really forceful rhetoric. This can be put in the service of anything, and sweep along everyone including the speaker. That he believed everything he said does not make this stuff not dangerous.
If you find yourself tangling with annoying theists a lot, god is not Great is just the source material you needed. However, its arguments are very easy to accept while forgetting to examine and kick them thoroughly. And bits of it do go off the rails IMO, e.g. the section on pigs.
I’ve been rereading a pile of Hitchens. His essay collections are … patchy. Some hit the spot, some look dashed off in half an hour after a boozy evening (as they frequently were). He was clearly brilliant, but relied on it rather too often.
god is not Great is probably the best thing he ever wrote. I’m listening to the audio book (read by the author) now, and it’s so clearly a book written to be read aloud. A master polemicist, expertly bludgeoning bad arguments to death. If you’ve seen videos of Hitchens debating theists (well worth seeing too—there’s lots on YouTube), it’s pretty much that stuff, organised into a single philosophical steam-hammer assault.
Letters To A Young Contrarian is very good, if you enjoyed god is not Great and want more of the good stuff. Then hit the essay collections.
Thank you very much. Letters is probably my favourite of his books, and frankly the amount of Hitchens debates I’ve watched on youtube is embarrassing.
Oh! The other Hitchens in the “read first” pile is HItch-22, his not-quite-autobiography.
One thing to be cautious of is that Hitchens teaches you polemics, i.e. really forceful rhetoric. This can be put in the service of anything, and sweep along everyone including the speaker. That he believed everything he said does not make this stuff not dangerous.
If you find yourself tangling with annoying theists a lot, god is not Great is just the source material you needed. However, its arguments are very easy to accept while forgetting to examine and kick them thoroughly. And bits of it do go off the rails IMO, e.g. the section on pigs.