I've written before that my sense is that book reviewing is not in the state of crisis many people (book reviewers mainly) seem to think it is. But if there is a malaise afflicting American book reviewing it may be in part because no respectable American newspaper would dare to have quite so much fun as the Mail on Sunday did with Christopher Hitchens' bracing blast against religion, God Is Not Great.
The MoS turned to their in-house expert on all things Hitchens who, happily, also happens to be the paper's star columnist, Peter Hitchens. I suspect most American newspapers would consider Peter reviewing his sibling's book as something of a conflict of interest.
Which would rob American readers of all manner of fun and games. Though Peter - whose voyage from the left to right predates and is vastly more complete than Christopher's - owns that:
I liked and enjoyed this book, and recommend it to anybody who is interested in the subject. Like everything Christopher writes, it is often elegant, frequently witty and never stupid or boring.
That's just the warm-up. Having dealt with the necessary pleasantries, Peter can move on to putting the boot in.
Many decades have passed since I fancied the story of Adam and Eve was literal truth, if I ever did. Rather more recently I have realised the great warning against human arrogance that is contained in it, the serpent’s silky promise that if we reject the supposedly foolish, trivial restrictions imposed on us by an interfering, jealous nuisance of a God, then we shall be liberated.
As the serpent promises: "Ye shall be as gods." These may be the most important words in the whole Bible.
Take the enticing satanic advice, and you arrive, quite quickly, at revolutionary terror, at the invention of the atom bomb, at the torture chamber and the building of concentration camps for those unteachable morons who do not share your vision of a just world.
And also you arrive at the idea, embraced by Christopher, that by invading Iraq, you can make the world a better place.
I hesitated about mentioning this. Was it unfair, a jab below the belt? No.
Much of his book is devoted to claiming that religious impulse drives Man to do, or excuse, or support wicked and terrible things in the name of goodness.
Is this not a perfect description of the Iraq War, which he backed?
This highly entertaining spat was willingly prolonged by The Independent who commissioned James Macintyre to wind things up further while providing an entertaining recap of the brothers' often awkward and sometimes stormy relationship:
Peter, 55, confirms to me that he was implying in his review that Christopher, 58, was closer to religious belief than he had ever accepted. " There is always, in the atheistical struggle with God, the fight against temptation. If it didn't matter to you, why write a book about how wrong it is? The first person you have to convince with any book you write, is yourself. If you didn't need convincing... why go to all those lengths?"
On a book tour in Los Angeles, Christopher agrees to read the review by email and then flatly rejects the idea that he is, as he put it, a " repressed seeker". Prefacing his response to his brother's review with faint praise - "a quite stirring and eloquent piece" - Christopher says: "The sickly idea that this interest is a disguised cry for help... only demonstrates the insecurity and the bad faith of the godly." The elder brother then adds: "Though I slightly dislike to say this, [Peter] offers himself as yet another example of how the religious mentality forces honest and reasonable people to say dishonest and irrational things."
All good knockabout stuff. So too is this:
With characteristic eccentricity, Peter even once described the Iraq invasion as "a left-wing war". For Christopher, "It was classic Peter – mad, but with a logic to the madness". In response to this, completing one of their most fraternal exchanges, Peter said: "Classic Christopher – spiteful, but with a logic to the spite ".
But, as I say, no American newspaper would have the wit or boldness to get Peter to review Christopher. And if you do want to create a crisis on the books pages then stripping them of any wit or imagination ensures that you're off to a galloping start.
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