Sunday afternoon update

[sabotabby]

New Gaybortion!: Overheard at Mitzi's Sister.

I finished reading The Trial of Henry Kissinger and it occurs to me that many of the things that irk me about Hitchens, such as his histrionic writing style, are present even when I agree with what he's saying. It's a good book otherwise.

Someone is playing music really loudly. I mean, it has to be incredibly loud for me to hear it in here. I can't move out of this building soon enough, I tell ya. The hot water tank is dying again.

Comments

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

One of the things I couldn't understand about the critical response to Martin Amis' Koba the Dread, was the acceptance by more than one critic of the author and Paul Berman's assertion that Hitchens' writing much improved after the end of the Cold War, over a previous, supposedly adolescent, play-to-the-left-wing-of-the-gallery standard (to paraphrase Geoffrey Wheatcroft). It seems clear that the two essay collections from that time, Prepared for the Worst (1989) and For the Sake of Argument, actually represent Hitchens at the height of his powers, when at least the theatrics were balanced by other idiosyncrasies that have since been smoothed out of his essays and reviews. Should one blame it on Vanity Fair?

[sabotabby]

I haven't read enough of his stuff to know. This and the Mother Teresa piece were the only vaguely Left things I've read; everything else was post-dark side.