Doug wrote:
>
Damn, you guys are as sectarian as Trots!
Actually, Hitchens' love letters to Trotsky are a clue to his whole flawed personality.
Basically, the poseur affectations of the 1930s "New York Intellectual".
Hitchens brief fling with Trotskyism doesn't strike me as stemming from a commitment to revolutionary social change, but as a sort of stepping stone to a career as an "engaged" public intellectual who says "relevant" things. That sort of thing is what allows him to sell his cheerleading for the Iraq war as some sort of pained act of revolutionary commitment, rather than the safe exercise in conventional wisdom it was.
I actually read his entire memoirs, and I got the distinct sense that his whole life was just building up to a time when he would get to hobnob with the likes of Susan Sontag and boast about his friendships with people like Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie.
Honestly, if I want to read about such shameless fame-whoring, I'd rather read about Tariq Ali hobnobbing with **real** celebrities like Marlon Brando and John Lennon. ;-)
And while I wouldn't go as far as Eric as saying that he wasn't a good stylist, but I agree that in terms of intellectual substance, his work is really thin.
But then again, maybe I'm spoiled by Internet technology that exposes me to the thoughts of truly substantive Marxist intellectuals like Doug Henwood, Carrol Cox, Michael Yates, and Bhaskar Sunkara on a regular basis.
So to hell with the preening cafe society affectations of a faker like Hitchens.