Christopher Hitchens | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 12 pages of analysis & critique of Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 12 pages of analysis & critique of Christopher Hitchens.
This section contains 3,243 words
(approx. 11 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Review by R. W. Johnson

SOURCE: Johnson, R. W. “Further Left.” London Review of Books (16 August 1990): 3, 5–6.

In the following review of Prepared for the Worst and Blood, Class, and Nostalgia, Johnson praises Hitchens's provocative writing, but criticizes his preference for acerbic personal attacks on “soft targets” and his resort to irony as a principal mode of critique.

Many years ago it was the habit of the PPE tutors in Magdalen College, Oxford to hold a discussion group for their undergraduates. At one such meeting we were somewhat disconcerted to find we had been gatecrashed by an extremely loud and talkative outsider of Marxist bent who laid down the law about everything, referred to the dons as ‘comrade’—he did not know my name, so I was ‘the red-headed comrade’—and rather capsized the whole evening. Not long after, the discussion group was disbanded. The gatecrasher's name, we learnt, was Christopher Hitchens, and he...

(read more)

This section contains 3,243 words
(approx. 11 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Review by R. W. Johnson
Copyrights
Gale
Critical Review by R. W. Johnson from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.