In what may be the final “new” essay to appear since his passing, the late Christopher Hitchens takes on G. K. Chesterton in the March 2012 issue of the Atlantic. Ostensibly a review of Ian Ker’s recent biography of the man, it’s basically an attempt at a demolition job on a figure he deems “charming and sinister,” with high prose and low blows. While Hitchens obviously finds fault with Chesterton’s sometimes-whimsical defenses of religion, he is (perhaps a bit more surprisingly) furiously critical of Chesterton’s politics, and of his economic theory of distributism in particular:
The initial founders of the Distributist League could fit into one hall in the Strand, and could not at once decide upon a unifying name. An early suggestion was “The Cow and Acres,” which sounded to GKC rather too much like a pub. Another was “The League of the Little People,” which with its air of plaintive populism also retained the aura of a fairy glen. It was later generally agreed that the only genuine disagreement concerned the question of whether a true Distributist should also be a Roman Catholic.
To Chesterton’s bucolic conservatism, and his view that a certain kind of revolution was necessary to keep the counterrevolution in action, was to be added a working alliance with Roman Catholic conservatism. In the late 1920s and early ’30s, this was actually an unpromising initiative [. . .] the moth-eaten fringe of absurdity always hung around his political reflections, as it did his vastly draped and histrionic form.
Of his broader project to re-articulate orthodoxy, Hitchens writes:
The more that attempts were made to codify truth, the more elusive truth became. Chesterton became part of a forgettable rear-guard operation against the age of uncertainty, which has now definitively become our age. It seems that there are no rules, golden or otherwise, even natural or otherwise, by which we can define our place in the universe or the cosmos. Those who claim to know the most are convicted of claiming to know the unknowable. There is a paradox, if you like.
Certainly not a view of Chesterton (or of “our age”) that I find compelling, although (readers beware) there’s far more infuriating stuff in the full version, including what one critic terms the reductio ad hitlerum fallacy. But I suppose it’s always refreshing to have your heroes’ mythology challenged, especially when the final verdict leads to a retrenchment of your initial position.
Read Hitchens’ essay in its entirety here. And for a well-done negative assessment of the piece, see Robert Royal’s column at The Catholic Thing.
February 21st, 2012 | 10:21 am
Chesterton will be beloved long after Hitch is completely forgotten.
February 21st, 2012 | 10:24 am
Hitchen’s bitter attention during his last days only indicates the force of Chesterton. He fell short, understandably.
I’m resisting dwelling on this new found anti-distributist alignment. Lol.
February 21st, 2012 | 10:28 am
I just clicked on the amazon link, and HOLY COW, $60 for the book? That’s it. Down with Chesterton!!!!
February 21st, 2012 | 12:00 pm
American Chesterton Society members can get it for $52 here:
http://www.chesterton.org/wordpress/store/#ecwid:mode=product&product=5534309
And it is WELL WORTH every penny. Ker’s book is the best biography of Chesterton.
I agree with Henry: the fact that Hitch spent time with Chesterton during his last days indicates two things–1) his friends hoped Chesterton might help him and 2) he had an idea Chesterton might challenge him. Unfortunately, Hitch remained stubborn till the end, and Chesterton’s biography failed to help him. But he was dying of cancer at the time, we have to give him that.
February 21st, 2012 | 12:55 pm
I agree with Brian’s first comment. It was the exact thought I had when reading the post. In a hundred years from now, I doubt anyone will care much about anything Hitchens wrote. By contrast, I’m willing to bet that people will still be enjoying and benefitting from reading Chesterton.
February 21st, 2012 | 2:27 pm
Following on what both Brian and Gordon said, I suspect that Hitchens was smart enough to know that people would be reading Chesterton long after enough time had passed for Hitchens to be recognized for the facile crank that he was. And I suspect this knowledge really set him off.
February 21st, 2012 | 10:09 pm
One thing that always irked me about Hitchens’ literary criticism is that the first sense one gets when reading him is just how much stuff one has never read, probably will never get around to reading but probably should….and it’s not like I haven’t done a fair amount of serious reading to date.
February 21st, 2012 | 10:48 pm
So here we have six “hooray, hooray for our side!” comments. Occam’s Razor and common sense suggests that it’s likely Hitchens wrote about Chesterton in his last days because that was his last chance to (attempt to) discredit him.
To follow Christ is to love one’s enemy. To love him is to quit judging him all the time but instead to identify with him in his sin. Once that is done, it’s possible to acknowledge that sometimes when he does wrong, he does so admirably, i.e. out of moral conviction. It’s just that his conviction stems from faulty premises.
His faulty premises stem from ignorance and/or from sin. Hey, doesn’t that make him just life us? So if Christ as shown us love and mercy, shouldn’t we show the same?
February 21st, 2012 | 10:48 pm
Such bitter resentment directed toward Hitchens! So much for loving your enemies.
If being read 100 years in the future is the sole measure of one’s ideas, then I suppose we have to give a lot of credit to Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche as well.
February 21st, 2012 | 11:54 pm
I feel certain, with other commenters, that Chesterton is the more substantial and durable of the two writers–by about a mile.
However, I do agree with Hitch on one thing. Distributism is a bizarre, self-contradictory, unworkable imaginary system. The mystery is how an otherwise clever man like GKC could think it was any good, or any thing for that matter.
February 22nd, 2012 | 7:16 am
It’s not really clear just how much of Chesterton Hitchens actually read. Technically his article is a review of one biography of Chesterton and one compilation of actual writing of Chesterton. I found the focus on poetry at the beginning a bit frustrating partially because I just don’t have much of an ear for poetry but also because it would have been much more interesting to see Hitchens examine Chesterton’s arguments in defense of Christianity. Perhaps if he had another ten more years Hitchens could have developed his arguments against the more serious defenders of religion rather than the far more numerous ‘B-levels’ like the Falwells, the Jihadists, and other more petty types. Of course what one really would have loved to have seen would be an actual verbal debate between the two. If you really want to get the best of Hitchens watch his numerous debates on Youtube.
Speaking of which, how do I think he would respond to the gloating over his death and prediction that he will be soon forgotten by the more devout Christian commentators here? I think he would slyly smirk and note that is exactly what one would expect from those following a code that is entirely a human rather than supernatural invention. Quite often theists themselves are the best argument atheists have in their defense.
February 22nd, 2012 | 8:55 am
Not to wrench the conversation down again into considerations of sordid lucre, but if you check out Chesterton on Kindle, you find a great deal of extremely inexpensive stuff. Thirty-six books for one dollar? Probably the copyright has expired. Purchase while you can.
Do you think part of Hitchens’ bitterness stemmed from his recognition that, except for that horrible blind spot, he might have been the next Chesterton? What a wonderful apologist he would have made.
February 22nd, 2012 | 5:01 pm
Craig,
If you’re on Kindle you can get a lot of Chesterton books from Amazon for free! Likewise I believe you can pick up a few others from places like Project Gutenberg if you’re able to navigate importing files into your Kindle rather than using Amazon to beam them in.
I don’t think he had any bitterness for Chesterton and he was a wonderful apologist for atheism (and a pretty good foil for Christians, the enemy who makes you think should be greatly valued and is by smarter people). His review seems focused a lot on Chesterton’s take that England would have been better off remaining Roman Catholic than Protestant (or a variation of Protestantism since Henry th VIII’s break wasn’t quite the same disagreement with Rome that Luther had). To many I think that is a rather obscure issue that’s not easily approached if you’re not keen on the history. It’s also not quite what one would have liked to have seen, Hitchens really looking at Chesterton’s arguments for theism versus his own for atheism.
February 22nd, 2012 | 10:13 pm
Probably the copyright has expired. Purchase while you can.
When the copyright is expired, check Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) first.
They’re nonprofit, free, rely on volunteers to make books accessible to everyone, and don’t require a particular device (nor that you sign up with any particular software).
February 22nd, 2012 | 10:27 pm
Speaking of which, how do I think he would respond to the gloating over his death and prediction that he will be soon forgotten by the more devout Christian commentators here? I think he would slyly smirk and note that is exactly what one would expect from those following a code that is entirely a human rather than supernatural invention.
I am not at all sure you are taking the first comment in the correct tone and spirit. It is entirely possible to make value judgments about what is and is not great without “gloating”, per se.
Perhaps it depends on what one means by “gloating”.
But, assuming you are correct – so what?
Humanity is a fallen state. Sometimes Christians gloat, or are smug, or are snarky – not because they are Christians, but because they are humans.
So yes, Christians gloat. And then they will repent, and then be forgiven.
Meanwhile, if there’s something immoral, unloving, and/or unkind about gloating, then why does it please you so much to think that Hitchens (someone you think of as great) would indulge in such a petty behavior?
February 22nd, 2012 | 11:54 pm
I thought the most significant passage in Hitchens’ essay was when he brings up Chesterton’s view that Nazism was “of the Reformation” and has some sort of Protestant genealogy.
I don’t think it is a “low blow” at all to quote this and while Hitchens was falsely accused of “reductio ad hitlerum,” Chesterton does, in fact, indulge in Hitler comparisons rather directly.
February 23rd, 2012 | 12:59 pm
Blake,
I read the first few comments on this thread as gloating, not just a dispassionate prediction over who will or will not be read more often in the distant future. I think the original blog post at the top of this thread is free of such gloating.
February 23rd, 2012 | 1:28 pm
Mark
Indeed, I think it’s a bit annoying to be lectured that Chesterton’s dubious statements about Jews can’t be brought up because of the ‘context of the times’ yet the same leeway would never be granted to, say, Margaret Sanger. I’m perfectly willing to grant that Chesterton was no raving Nazi, wasn’t throwing rocks through the windows of Jewish owned businesses. But I think Hitchens has a point that the type of refrained ‘gentlemanly’ anti-semitism that was common in his era helped obscure the true nature of evil back then blinding people who would otherwise have been able to clearly see it for what it was.
February 23rd, 2012 | 6:12 pm
Indeed, I think it’s a bit annoying to be lectured that Chesterton’s dubious statements about Jews can’t be brought up because of the ‘context of the times’ yet the same leeway would never be granted to, say, Margaret Sanger
When it comes to applying today’s standards to history, we must be careful to apply what people had reason to know then (as opposed to applying to them things that they had no way of knowing then, because we learned from experience).
Margaret Sanger cannot claim anachronism as a defense. She advocated for doing things that were inhumane even by the standards of the time. She wanted to move us from a more charitable, more moral, more ethical environment to a less ethical one, because she wanted the world to have fewer of what she called “defectives”. She was moved by hatred, not love.
She hated children, she hated racial minorities, and she hated people whom she viewed as inferior to herself – and she defined those who were poor and/or less educated as inferior.
She can be excused for thinking that their defects were “genetic” in nature. She lived during an era when people still trusted the scientific method as a way of gaining reliable knowledge. She could not have known how relying on the scientific method leads inevitably to atrocities and dystopic horror. But even if you judge her only by the standards of her time, she was an ugly, wretched person, who pretended to be “helping” the very people she despised.
And the only people who defend her today are the ones guilty of her ugly, wretched sins – people who don’t understand the concept of “equality”, because they are so caught up in their own sense of their own false, smug sense of self-righteous superiority that they can quite comfortably condemn others to endure what they would themselves never consent to enduring.
February 23rd, 2012 | 6:15 pm
I read the first few comments on this thread as gloating, not just a dispassionate prediction over who will or will not be read more often in the distant future.
And I have no doubt that Hitchens would gloat, too. He was never any better than your average blog comment poster, in terms of what he had to say, though he was undoubtedly far more clever about saying it.
A shame that such brilliant wit was wasted on such a mediocre character.
February 23rd, 2012 | 10:40 pm
We can all be thankful such waste is not evident with Blake.
February 24th, 2012 | 5:16 pm
How is this newest biography so much better than the previous ones? Say the original biography by Maisie Ward, or an excellent contemporary one by Joseph Pearce?
Chesterton is a great writer well worth reading and exploring, but it is so much more rewarding to get all the wisdom straight from the horse’s mouth, rather then from a plethora of boring and often biased or mistaken books written about him, especially if these books rely heavily on quotes.
(See reviews on the Amazon, such as “On just about every page, one will find extended quotes from Chesterton…”)
And whatever happened to the CR-ROM of collected works of Chesterton promised many years ago? Will we ever be able to get it in our lifetime? Or at least be able to order one for our coffin to get buried with?
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