Unhitched

The Trial of Christopher Hitchens

$9.99 US
Verso Books | Verso
On sale Jan 16, 2013 | 9781844679911
Sales rights: US/CAN (No Open Mkt)

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Among the forgettable ranks of ex-Leftists, Christopher Hitchens stands out as someone determined to stand out. Rejecting the well-worn paths of hard-right evangelism and capitalist “realism,” he identified with nothing outside his own idiosyncrasies. A habitual mugwump who occasionally masqueraded as a “Marxist,” the role he adopted late in his career, as afree radical within the US establishment, had ample precedents from his earlier incarnation. It wasn’t the Damascene conversion he described. His long-standing admiration for America, his fascination with the Right as the truly “revolutionary” force, his closet Thatcherism, his theophobia and disdain for the actually existing Left had all been present in differentways throughout his political life. Post–9/11, they merely found a new articulation.

For all that, the Hitchensian idiolect was a highly unique, marketable formula. He is a recognizable historical type—the apostate leftist—and as such presents a rewarding, entertaining and an enlightening case study.
“Clever, incisive ... Unhitched offers a more thorough and in-depth discrediting of Hitchens than anything previously published. And in doing so, Seymour has made an important contribution to understanding the political role of the intellectual celebrity in our time.” —In These Times

“Richard Seymour’s Unhitched, a slim and scathing denunciation of turncoat scoundrel Christopher Hitchens, is a thoroughly satisfying and politically important book by one of the few remaining great radical left journalists.” —Jordy Cummings, Rabble

“Seymour reveals Hitchens as having had a lifelong admiration both for the United States and for empires as civilizing forces.” —Washington Post Book World

“Richard Seymour employs a unique technique to shred Hitchens’s political philosophy to pieces: Seymour puts the late writer on trial.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“In Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens, we again find Seymour’s customary clarity, rigor, and intelligence as he offers a brilliant analysis of the shifting landscape of Hitchens’ path from socialist internationalist to Liberal Hawk. It is a work brimming with hot anecdotes and tangy tidbits as Seymour goes at it mano a mano with “The Great Contrarian,” recapitulating the menu of contradictions that comprise the life of this practiced ironist.” —Alan Wald, Against the Current

“Well-argued ... I think Seymour rather pitied Hitchens, as the married man pities the philanderer.” —Keith Miller, Daily Telegraph

“He is not worthy of changing Christopher Hitchens’s printer cartridge.” —Stephen Robinson, The Times

“A nasty piece of work ... (Full disclosure: Hitchens was a friend, mentor, and neighbor of mine.)” —James Kirchick, Newsweek

“Seymour’s book offers an exciting counterbalance to the often uncritical praise that has flowed heavily since Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in June 2010.” —Truthdig

“Seymour is certainly master of the records; he knows the work closely and cites it scrupulously. But his headlong, foam-flecked interpretation, voiced in a manner recklessly close to Hitchens’s own but without the grace, the wit, the tearing high spirits and the faultless ear for the fall of a cadence of his great original, becomes merely tedious, repetitive and unconvincing ... This little book is 134 pages long. The author shouldn’t have done it. It is paltry and it is trivially abusive. Its subject was as eloquent, cultivated, exuberant, unstoppable, sheerly gigantic a journalist as British or American politics has known since George Orwell.” —Fred Inglis, Independent

“Caustic demolition of Hitchens—not dissimilar to Hitch’s way with Mother Teresa or the Clintons.” —The Big Issue In The North

About

Among the forgettable ranks of ex-Leftists, Christopher Hitchens stands out as someone determined to stand out. Rejecting the well-worn paths of hard-right evangelism and capitalist “realism,” he identified with nothing outside his own idiosyncrasies. A habitual mugwump who occasionally masqueraded as a “Marxist,” the role he adopted late in his career, as afree radical within the US establishment, had ample precedents from his earlier incarnation. It wasn’t the Damascene conversion he described. His long-standing admiration for America, his fascination with the Right as the truly “revolutionary” force, his closet Thatcherism, his theophobia and disdain for the actually existing Left had all been present in differentways throughout his political life. Post–9/11, they merely found a new articulation.

For all that, the Hitchensian idiolect was a highly unique, marketable formula. He is a recognizable historical type—the apostate leftist—and as such presents a rewarding, entertaining and an enlightening case study.

Praise

“Clever, incisive ... Unhitched offers a more thorough and in-depth discrediting of Hitchens than anything previously published. And in doing so, Seymour has made an important contribution to understanding the political role of the intellectual celebrity in our time.” —In These Times

“Richard Seymour’s Unhitched, a slim and scathing denunciation of turncoat scoundrel Christopher Hitchens, is a thoroughly satisfying and politically important book by one of the few remaining great radical left journalists.” —Jordy Cummings, Rabble

“Seymour reveals Hitchens as having had a lifelong admiration both for the United States and for empires as civilizing forces.” —Washington Post Book World

“Richard Seymour employs a unique technique to shred Hitchens’s political philosophy to pieces: Seymour puts the late writer on trial.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“In Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens, we again find Seymour’s customary clarity, rigor, and intelligence as he offers a brilliant analysis of the shifting landscape of Hitchens’ path from socialist internationalist to Liberal Hawk. It is a work brimming with hot anecdotes and tangy tidbits as Seymour goes at it mano a mano with “The Great Contrarian,” recapitulating the menu of contradictions that comprise the life of this practiced ironist.” —Alan Wald, Against the Current

“Well-argued ... I think Seymour rather pitied Hitchens, as the married man pities the philanderer.” —Keith Miller, Daily Telegraph

“He is not worthy of changing Christopher Hitchens’s printer cartridge.” —Stephen Robinson, The Times

“A nasty piece of work ... (Full disclosure: Hitchens was a friend, mentor, and neighbor of mine.)” —James Kirchick, Newsweek

“Seymour’s book offers an exciting counterbalance to the often uncritical praise that has flowed heavily since Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in June 2010.” —Truthdig

“Seymour is certainly master of the records; he knows the work closely and cites it scrupulously. But his headlong, foam-flecked interpretation, voiced in a manner recklessly close to Hitchens’s own but without the grace, the wit, the tearing high spirits and the faultless ear for the fall of a cadence of his great original, becomes merely tedious, repetitive and unconvincing ... This little book is 134 pages long. The author shouldn’t have done it. It is paltry and it is trivially abusive. Its subject was as eloquent, cultivated, exuberant, unstoppable, sheerly gigantic a journalist as British or American politics has known since George Orwell.” —Fred Inglis, Independent

“Caustic demolition of Hitchens—not dissimilar to Hitch’s way with Mother Teresa or the Clintons.” —The Big Issue In The North