Finished Love, Poverty and War by Christopher Hitchens

Love, Poverty and War is an fascinating collection of essays by the journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens. It was very much to my taste as it provided a reasonable variety. The title was was from the old idea that a mans was incomplete until he experiences the trials of love, poverty and war. These make up three sections of the book with Americana added for travel stories. I find Christopher Hitchens a always intriguing writer and speaker because he's the ultimate anti-sheep with an often acidic wit for what he dislikes.

Love is books he has written about either as reviews or introductions. It was particularly useful for scholarship english as it contained analysis of authors and works. One of the best essays was an introduction to Brave New World which seems to cover almost every concept one could use in an essay about Brave New World. Particularly intriguing to me was the fact Huxley taught George Orwell at Eton and Hitchens traces probable influence of Brave New World on Orwells novel. However one of the most interesting was finding the social context. Huxley was writing 1930s when modernity was just becoming into full view, when cars, condoms and genetics were just entering society. Huxley also was part of the upper class and as such had an interest in breeding in both the aristocratic and scientific sense. Also there is Huxleys contempt for the masses and his favourite philosopher Pyrrho who taught judgement could be suspended on all matters of truth. To put it suavely, I will definitely use his ideas to develop my own on Brave New World and the theme of dystopian novels. Anyway the other good ones in love were review of a Kipling biography and Byron which went through there poems and lives giving me a hunger for them though Kipling especially.

The second section was Americana which was interesting but least interesting of the sections. It basically consisted of travel writing around America. Not too much relevant for scholarship but this quote I might find a use for “The food! The Coffee! The newspapers! the radio! These would all disgrace a mediocre one party state, much less a prosperous country.” Its in the "Ballad on Route 66" and is aimed at the standardization of america, which should apply to my dystopia theme. Thinking about it something to do with Brave New World which is going to pop up all too often in this blog. Probably something to do with stress-free consensus and consumerism.

The third section was poverty. This I really enjoyed. Here one gets a real taste of his polemics against a number of famous figures. This is where is his anti-sheep reveals itself. Thus armed with facts and an acidic prose, I enjoyed re-evaluating a number of figures, the Dalai Lama and Michael More, who despite liking his work in my youth was already suspicious but this confirmed a dislike and distrust of his work once and for all. One everyone must read is his review of a biography of JFK where Hitchens mobilizes the very open but rarely reported evidence that JFK was one of the sickest presidents in office, on a cocktail of drugs and thus the image of a young healthy, vigorous person was the fabrication of his spin doctors. My favourite quote of the section was something like this 'My definition of ‘celebrity culture' is one where people's actions are judged by their reputations and not their reputations by their actions." (I filched this one off the net but it was basically the same as in the book). These points will be good for real life references for themes such as appearance vs reality. The infantilization of celebrity culture and all that jazz. Another excellent essay in the section is "Why Americans Aren't Taught History" I may quote use this in scholarship as most dystopian novels have historical amnesia as a pivotal part of their system of control. The essay itself explores the absolutely poor history teaching and knowledge in America and examines the revolting text-books and causes.

The final section is his work as a war correspondent. All was very interesting, but most chilling was writing about his time in North Korea where Nineteen Eighty-Four lives with its constant adulation of their dead god president Kim Il Sung and his remaining version on earth the dear leader Kim Jong Il.