Atheist bigwig Sam Harris: “If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.”

Another thing is that, even if you think God is Not Great is a little circlejerky, Hitch was a whole lot more besides an atheist. That’s what validates him. If you find PZ Myers annoying, or Richard Dawkins strident, well, they really don’t have a lot more to offer other than more tedious godhating, and it does get pretty tedious after a while. I personally do agree that Hitch’s atheist stuff wasn’t his best, from what I’ve read so far, but he was also one of the most versatile intellectuals I’ve ever seen. I’m almost done with the Arguably collection and everything in it is fucking A plus stuff. I do think a lot of Hitch’s haters are bitter assholes pissed that he can get wasted and produce a better piece of writing than they could even imagine. And then, obviously, you’ve got the bandwagon guys who just like to drink the haterade when it comes to popular stuff. Well, Hitch is popular because he was the best person. I can’t believe I didn’t discover his stuff until after he died. And that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject.

“versatile intellectual”? Srsly? Because he can say the same shit over and over on every subject that makes him a versatile intellectual! Damn. I begin to suspect that he is telling you what you want to hear, and that is the source of your delight and admiration.
If you do the “assume that what he says is true, what else is also true as a result” exercise you will get right the hell over Hitch.

@Skyrimjob: How long did it take you to think up that rejoinder?

Oh, in case you missed my lengthy reply to your stuff earlier, here it is–so you don’t have to work to get to it.

@Skyrimjob: Coming in a bit late, but I’m an English professor so love the whole debate about style, meaning, reading, etc.

IF you do not intend to be a troll (and I agree with the others who pointed out that the trollishness was not in your liking Hitchens’ writing but in insulting people who didn’t), and if you want to make a case for Hitchens’ writing as good or important or whatever, then there are better ways of doing it.

First, calling people who don’t like what you like stupid, ignorant, or haters, is a really bad way to persuade anybody to listen to you, just saying.

Second, and I’m speaking here as somebody who teaches Stylistics, and who has been involved in the whole debate about what should be taught in English for *ahem* decades now, you cannot prove any author’s stylistic chops or greatness by tossing random quotes at people–as you’ve seen, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work with people who don’t know the author or the text, and it especially doesn’t work with people who are familiar with the author already and who have come to a different valuation of his work (especially the content/message of the work), or with those who are familiar with the genre (in this case, philosophy/theology). For one thing, you have to have (as I think Pecunium said) a criteria that you’re using to judge the quality of the style–and proof (more than one or two short quotes) that the style of the writing meets those criteria more often than not.

Third, you have to understand that there is no objective way to measure greatness or beauty as an inherent quality in a text (or any material object): and, related to this, fourth, there is no inherent connection between the beauty of the work (however defined) and its message (i.e. just because something is well written does not mean it’s not racist, or misogynist, or homophobic).

The idea that there is a correlation is a nice Romantic notion (truth beauty, beauty truth, right Keats, rest in peace), and people like to think it, but the subjectivity of concepts of beauty and for that matter truth undermine it.

I don’t do aesthetics, but one of my best friends in the dept. covers that theory area, and it’s bally complicated.

I don’t know HItchens’ work–but lots of evidence was supplied by people here who do that he advocated some neoconservative, racist, and sexist content.

Based on the Harry Potter quote, which is in a genre I know well, I’d say that he’s missing a good deal about the work and the phenomenon: yes, it was a gateway fantasy for many readers (I know that because my students came to me asking for recommendations for other fantasies like HP when there was that gap in the publishing cycle–their child, who had never read before, now wanted to read). But it was also a work that attracted a large number of adults: some who were familiar with fantasy, some who were not. I’ve taught it in an intro to literature course (not a majors class, but my colleague who teaches Chaucer and Shakespeare, and who wrote on the Shakespearean allusions in Rowling’s work, has taught both upper level English and graduate English courses on it). As a cultural phenomenon, it’s fascinating–i.e. the huge fandom, the argument that the fandom was the first to “come on age” almost completely on the internet (as opposed to previous fandoms that had existed for decades, with some of us moving onto the internet), the cultural narratives around Rowling, and the cultural issues raised in the work (especially constructions of gender and race and ethnicity in Britain–something she’s developed in her most recent publication, CASUAL VACANCY).

I read Rowling’s work.

I read Pullman’s.

I enjoyed much of HP until the last two novels (I have a whole rant about what she set up and then did not follow through with, and what happened to Tonks, etc).

I loathed Pullman’s work (nothing like putting the female protagonist in a coma, and he’s even worse than Lewis at smacking his readers in the face with ALLEGORY–when Tolkien taught me about allegory–I was 10–I suddenly became aware of what had made me uneasy with Narnia). I donated the hardcovers to our English honors club book sale.

I not only bought and saved all of Rowlings, but bought her newest work as well.

There is a long tradition of elite (white straight cis) male intellectuals loathing popular works (yes, I’m looking at YOU Harold Bloom)–it came out in full force with Tolkien, and I think in ways it’s even worse when it’s a woman dares to write (although I wish she’d not fallen back on the default masculine by way of initials) a work that becomes massively popular (and not just with women and children). You might see what Hitchens said about HP as unique, original, shining, etc.–too me, it’s one more variant of the arrogant elitist male claiming that anything popular is garbage, and the plebes who are just too NOT LIKE HIM are {fill in the blank with insult of your choice}.

To some extent, your discourse fell into that category: the claim that people here are hating on Hitchens because his work is just too great, or whatever.

Rather than trying to make objective claims about Hitchens’ greatness (which seems to go hand in hand with insulting anybody who disagrees with you), you’d do better to shift to an “I” voice and a reader response in which you talk about what you found to like in his work, what impressed you, what made you think.

Share that sort of love, and you might find others to chime in with you, even if they changed their mind about the work, or critique the author’s later actions.

For example, I once loved Anne McCaffery’s work (in the late sixties, her work was amongst the few woman-centered texts out there). I eventually came to see problems with much of it–and passed the books on to be read by others. But I can understand why, for some readers at some points, her work is seen as empowering, even feminist–again, it’s not an inherent element of the text–it is what readers make of it.

The Sparrow is a masterpiece. Not sure skyrimjob would get it, though.

Time Team and Due South … love ’em. (Gave up on TT after Mick left, though; didn’t like the way the program was going.)

Phil Harding’s knees are the greatest. 🙂

BigMomma: I have read them more than once. I still have a vague unease about them; and some of the best insights to the human condition are in the first. I kept having to set it aside and let it settle, because I was getting emotional gut-punches from it about every thirty minutes.

The passage where, no I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice it to say there is one of the best expressions of agape I’ve ever seen in that book; and it takes place on earth.

The Problem of Pain indeed.

katz: She engages the reader’s intellect, posing questions for them to ponder, instead of telling them what they ought to think.

You know what, screw you, katz. If you’re too emotional to appreciate Hitch’s writing because you don’t like some of his politics, that’s on you not me.

Skyrimjob: now, now, kiddo. Your immaturity’s showing again.

Oh jeez, best possible end to Skyrimjob’s dead parade.

Don’t you love the way Skyrimjob spends paragraph after paragraph whining about haters, haterade, ranting generally about everyone who doesn’t worship Hitchens – and then does the classic “but YOU’RE too emotional” bullshit line?

Guess what, sonny: talking as if emotions = bad/irrational says everything about you, and nothing about the people you’re trying to insult. And trotting out misogynistic garbage (the ’emotional’ thing gets thrown at women all the time) on a site that mocks misogyny just makes you look ridiculous. And, yes, juvenile.

There’s nothing funnier than a “you’re too emotional!” argument from someone who’s spent their last 3000 words or so having a giant tantrum extending over the course of a week or so because someone insulted one of their heroes.