By Christopher Hitchens

I’ve read articles by “Hitch” in newspapers a few times over the years, but was otherwise unacquainted with him.

I was picking up some books for Radio a few months back and found myself gravitating toward the “me” side of the store, all serious books on history and what not. In the corner stood out this book with the ‘can’t miss’ title.

Thankfully, it wasn’t the atrocious original cover, unmissable though it is that was on this particular copy, else I would’ve skipped it. It’s pretty garish anyway, but I’m really put off by its resemblance to an old album from the 80s that my dad had. Harvestime rings a bell, and it was a Christian cassette that he would play often in the car. I think it was more “low-quality home-made pap” that it reminded me of more than any sentiment of “I bet this is religious!”

Anyway, it’s a pretty easy read. Having not yet read Bertrand Russell’s Why I’m Not A Christian, I have to defer to the book with which Dawkins is synonymous as a comparison.

I much prefer Hitch’s, to be perfectly frank. It’s perfectly easy to read, and meanders gently through. There’s none of the obnoxiousness of Dawkins, no mentions of “faith-heads” or application of other derogatory labels.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t particuarly mind Dawkins being a little aggressive, but it’s nice that Hitch doesn’t feel he has to. In fact, he actually makes mention of Dawkins, criticising his suggestion that atheists refer to themselves arrogantly as brights.

He’s a clever man, Hitchens. There was an early excerpt of an interview he did with right-wing columnist Dennis Prager, where the host got phrased a question in that way that normally guarantees victory: Yes or no?

It’s normally a cheap tactic, since it disallows the respondent to offer context, elaboration, or extenuation. In this occurrence, the question was “Yes or no? Imagine yourself in a strange city at the onset of evening. You see a large group of men approaching. Would you feel safer if you knew they’d come out of a prayer meeting?”

Allowed to give a little elaboration in the answer, one could come up with instances where this wouldn’t hold, but of course this wasn’t an option here.

Hitch gave a brilliant answer: “No.” Not what anybody would expect, and a response that could’ve robbed him of his credibility, except that he then elaborated: “Just sticking with the letter B, I can give you numerous examples where I was in a city and felt frightened by just this scenario”, and he gave relevant anecdotes of trips to Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad.

The book is split into nineteen short chapters, including the wonderfully named “Why Heaven Hates Ham”, a few-paragraph look at the outlawing of pigs in the monotheistic religions.

I thought this was a fun read anyway. I won’t use adjectives such magisterial to describe Hitchens’s work, even though he mentions that it’s an essay he has spent his adult life working on. Rather, I’ll pay him the compliment of saying that his work is a triumph of common sense

Tags: Atheism, Christopher Hitchens

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