In an interview a few years back with The Sun magazine, atheist bigwig Sam Harris had this to say about the comparable (de)merits of religion and rape:
If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.
You can read the whole interview starting here.
And some people wonder why so many atheists have broken with Harris and the rest of the Old School New Atheist Boys Club to start Atheism Plus.
EDITED TO ADD: Hadn’t noticed that the interview was from 2006, so maybe this is old news to a lot of atheists. Still horrible.
Note my lack of a tantrum at this news 😉
BTW I’m not implying that his writing is childish! It’s just that Less Than Zero came out when I was an actual teenager. Teenage me could, like, totally relate, which in retrospect is rather embarrassing and a sure sign that I was indulging in too many recreational chemicals.
Tell me about it, I think I first read it when I was about 15. I’m not a huge fan, I like The Rules of Attraction’s use of different characters’ POV to show the unreliable narration. I really liked the film adaptation of that actually, they showed off the writing style and black humour very effectively, and it’s difficult to convey the style a book’s written in on a screen instead of just re-telling the story.
Were you me as a teenager? Teenage me could totally relate to BEE and McInerny. *hangs head in shame*
Skyrimjob has to be Brown Baby. Let’s shit on David Foster Wallace and see what he does. Even G. R. R. Martin will do in a pinch.
I missed a trollsplosion!
So, one of my favorite authors as a teenager was Knut Hamsun. Hunger, Growth of the Soil… Then I found out about his Nazi sympathies and it really did change how I viewed his writing.
Did I just Godwin this thread?
@ hellkell
Given that we seem to be married to the same guy too, if we ever meet irl do you think the universe will explode?
(And yes, I liked McInery too. Pretentious little fucker I was, and so sure that I was the most hardcore and angsty person who had ever lived.)
Skyrimjob: I’m loving how you’ll all scoff at Hitch and yet sit, slack-jawed, at videos of fucking KITTENS on Youtube. This is hilarious, or would be if it weren’t so sad. Our literary culture really is in the toilet. I’ll continue to appreciate good stuff, thanks.
I’m sorry for you. I read Aquinas. I read Eco (you might want to try, “The Name of the Rose”, since we are discussing books which make one think. The “Annotated Name of the Rose” might help, esp. if you speak neither Latin, nor the understand the arcana, and history of the church; particularly in the period being discussed).
It’s not that Eco fails to moralise, which makes his work better (IMO), than Hitchens, it’s that he allows for the reader to reach a differnt conclusion than he does (and make no mistake, Eco is wrestling with exactly the same questions Hitchens does).
But I read all manner of things, by all manner of writers. I can still appreciate a kitten video, or a bulldog puppy, or kids making a dam to try an catch the water running from a hose. I appreciate them more than an essay; no matter how sublime the writing. I can always revisit the proofs of Newton solving Xeno’s Paradox of finite infinities. The kitten will grow old and die, the scrawled drawing will yellow, and fade, and end up in the rubbish bin.
The morning walk to the train will end, and I will walk home by way of the coffee shop, and the face the barrista made in the foam of latte will be consumed; like a season of calm weather, or a glass in the making
Even if the painting, or the glass lasts, the moments of it’s making don’t.
Those moments, are sublime. Life is full of impermanence, and we enjoy it. That you can’t see 1:The two sides of the coin, and 2: scorn people who enjoy them, because they don’t like the same writer you do, is just sad.
I don’t care for Hitchens. I’ve read enough of him to know the type; he got a good education, one that allows him to toss of allusions most people haven’t the training to spot. He uses that to abuse them; to feel superior (see the, “harry in the night reference, cited above). Worse, he used it to make those who shared that sort of education feel superior to hoi polloi who don’t (and yes, I just used that tool to illustrate the point).
But what he said was banal. It may have been revelatoryto you (and if so, power to you), but it was neither new, nor clever to me. I’m smart. I’m educated. Having someone retread Teresa of Avila, Hildegaard of Bingen, The Bacons, and any number of more modern writers on the Question of Pain, all the while talking down to me, and condescending to me, in his faux collegiallity of the educated set, Did Not Impress.
That it hurts your widdle fee-fees that I abuse the sacred memory of your idol, bothers me not a bit. Hero worsip is a mug’s game. None of ’em were perfect. Lincoln thought blacks were inferior to whites, and would have let slavery linger; had the South not forced his hand. He’s still great, but I’m not going to get offended; certainly not take it personally, when someone tells me about it.
Hitchens was clever, and could be witty. I’ll grant you that, but his “style” wasn’t original, nor were his thoughts, and your adulation doesn’t require me to think so. Your whining scorn is most certainly not going to encourage me to revisit his work, if this is the level of sophmoric defense it creates.
I’ve seen better insults by eight year olds; they were straining the limits of their invention; you aren’t even managing that. What would “HItch” think of the level of your invective?
I should probably get around to reading Less than Zero, considering how much I liked American Psycho (well, the content is horrific and nauseating but I loved the style of writing and the humor/satire worked enough for me to love it even though the violence was absolutely atrocious). Thankfully I was old enough when I discovered American Psycho to avoid falling into the “Patrick Bateman is so COOL” nonsense that seems to permeate most discussions of the film especially.
Hmm, I think that Less than Zero is one of those books that might not hold any appeal at all once you pass a certain age.
Hmm. Maybe I’ll check out The Rules of Attraction instead.
It’s not directly related to the topics at hand, but since we’re discussing (1) books that were better when you were a teenager, and (2) authors worshipped by young men who think they know everything, I thought I’d share this quote:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.“ (John Rogers)
Skyrimjob: It’s fine to have differing tastes. I know that Hitch is not for everyone. But you need a legitimate reason to dislike him, not “I disagreed with him sometimes”.
We gave them. You stamped your feet and cried, “groupthink”.
Go back and look at the list of authors/works alluded to in this thread, then ask yourself (honestly) if the people who were discussing that can’t come to an honest evaluation of a work.
Then try to explain why the critiques of Hitchens fail to meet that honest evaluation.
Also, I’ve yet to see you posting a piece of his that you think is, “sublime”. What is it about his work; in concrete detail, which so pleases you?
Don’t give me pap and pablum about how “sublime, and penetrating” his analysis of things is. Show, don’t tell. Give me a quotation, and explain why it works for you.
Anyway, as Professor Harold Bloom has said, if you’re looking for artistic sublimity, personal politics will only poison your search. You have to suspend that, at least temporarily. Which I’ve already said.
HaHAHAhhaAHHAHAhaHahHHaaaa!
Harold, “Closing of the American Mind” Bloom? The dude who denies the merit of entire swathes of literature because they aren’t the right sort of book?
The point here is you are either stupid, or so wedded to the idea of Hitchens the Great, that you refuse to open your mind to the idea there isn’t any “objective standard” of writing.
@ emily
Bravo.
Cassandra: It might be Mr. Al, but if so it shows a difference in kind for the style. Al has his problems, but his literary sense was a bit more developed (not in terms of whom he liked; which isn’t the issue), but in terms of discussing the subjects.
No, that’s not dispositive (see Dr. Pell, MD, Ph.D, Esq.), but his usual approach has been to sidle up to something he knows we disagree with, and try to edge a point in. This was more frontal assault.
If it’s Mr. AL, he’s backsliding, a way more depressing than merely coming back here.
Cassandra: (Random aside – I have visited the cottage where Shakespeare’s girlfriend lived. The doorways were very low. Since we have a lot of people who know a lot about history here – were people really that much smaller back then or was it just customary for doorways to be low? The guide told us that people really were that much smaller, but that seems unlikely to me.)
People were shorter, but not that much (though Richard II was, “The Tallest Man in England” and he stood 5’11” (we have his armor). Average height of men was about 5’6″, women seemed to be about 5’4″. It was a function of 1: style, and 2: durability. If you look at the ceilings of the houses which survive you will find they are quite low.
This is because the rooms on the second floor were added well after the houses were built. Pre-tudor houses tended to be single story, but very tall (for a single story) It’s because brick chimneys, and semi-enclosed hearths hadn’t been invented/added yet. So when they floored the second story, there wasn’t as much room as if it had been purpose built.
And you want a door to be lower than the interior ceiling.
Beds are deceptive, because from the 1400-1700s people slept semi-reclined (hence the very tall headboards).
It definitely can’t be Pell since this one can write complete sentences, and there aren’t enough sad attempts at humor for it to be Om Nom.
Cassandra: I don’t know what the universe would do!
Then I got into Irvine Welsh and was truly insufferable. His works still stands up, though. The others I’ve re-read not too long ago, and they haven’t aged well.
omfg how did I miss the fartworld part
how
Ahem, the full name of this alternate universe is “Cassandra’s stupid fartworld.” And the masterful way in which Skyrimjob fleshed out the rich details of this world, well that is an example of the kind of sublimity for which his heroes, Bloom and Hitchens, were well known.
More high-toned literature:
There once was a troll named Skyrimjob
Who was a teensy bit of a lit snob.
When he spoke of his “fartworld”
How manboobzers hearts twirled —
A chance for a feminazi hate mob!
The odd thing is that usually when people fanboy over a writer they try to copy that writer’s rhetorical style. No matter how many quibbles I might have with Hitchens I’m quite sure that he could have come up with a better put-down than “stupid fartworld”.
I wanna play the troll poetry game. I’m gonna go with a double-dactyl for challenge.
Higgledy-pigglety,
Dear little Skyrimjob
Crafts a weak paean to
His hero Hitch,
Chastised by heralds of
Antimisogyny
Shows off his penchant to
Whine, moan, and bitch.
I kind of want to do another of my “Pencunium is better than you” screenplays, but I don’t know where I’d take it after the foam lattes and glass-making.
It’s hard… I know that I’m a sad excuse for a real writer. Skyrimjob has told me that, compared to the Almight Hitch (of Sainted Memory), I am not able to craft insightful sentences; I lack the needed sophistication required to design an insult at trenchant and penetrating as, “stupid fartworld” (which is, I am sure, a sign that I have not read enough Hitchens) and am condemned to the realm of “cave scratchings”, which is all the merit he says I have.
It crushes me to see the comparisons; how great my grief that I am barely as elegant as the work to be seen at Lascaux.
A pity I don’t have the level of Hitchens education, so I’d know how terrible such a comparison really is.
Lauralot: It was a very nice face. I enjoyed destroying it too. 🙂
SkyTroll announces with great fanfare: ’ve started reading Harold Bloom too, and it’s like he says- to experience the sublime, you have to suspend your political beliefs.
So is the the time to mention that a couple of summers ago, I gave a plenary talk titled:
“Slashing the Fathers: Who’s Anxious Now? Queering Harold Bloom and J. R. R. Tolkien in
Female-Authored Fantasy”
Haven’t had a chance to turn that into an article yet, too much work on grants, and program assessment, and other stuff.
But I really must get to that because it’s a damn fun piece of writing.
“to experience the sublime of slash fiction, you have to suspend your political beliefs”
Yep, a new motto for for slash writers….