Bright Light on the Left
Wang, Christopher Hitchens Hill and
Bright Light on the Left PREPARED FOR THE WORST: Selected Essays and Minority Reports by Christopher Hitchens Hill and Wang. 357 pp. $19.95. Christopher Hitchens has a lively mind and easy style...
...It would warn me of a loss of nerve...
...Speaking purely for myself, I should be alarmed if my knee failed to respond to certain stimuli...
...Still, it's a collection: If you don't like what you are reading, turn the page...
...He also has the annoying tendency to use foreign phrases...
...In a particularly interesting chapter, he spends a week with Israel Sha-hak, Holocaust survivor and pioneer Zionist who sees Israel menaced by fascism...
...Nor has the expression knee-jerk ever struck me as a witty way of denigrating a set of strongly held convictions...
...Hitchens hasn't lost his nerve, or his style, or his smarts...
...Hitchens intelligently discusses Albert Camus, Thomas Paine, and George Orwell, rescuing them from historical or revisionist oblivion...
...Parts of the book are of only minor interest for American readers...
...Best known in America for his columns in The Nation, Hitchens also writes for The New Statesman, The Spectator, Grand Street, and Raritan, and this collection serves the reader well who can ill afford multiple subscriptions...
...For instance: "I have never been able, except in my lazier moments, to employ the word predictable as a term of abuse...
...Christopher Hitchens has a lively mind and easy style that make him stand out as one of the brighter lights on the Left...
...He mercilessly exposes Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz and Louis Far-rakhan...
...you're bound to find something better...
...Hitchens (who is British) has chapters on British politics and reports from abroad that are not always compelling...
Vol. 53 • February 1989 • No. 2
