-
Self-Righteous Republic
May 8, 2013 | 258 comments
-
Understanding the Forest, One Tree at a Time
March 22, 2013 | 2 comments
-
A Stone’s Throw From the White House
March 14, 2013 | 11 comments
-
Echoing the Last Lion’s Roar
February 1, 2013 | 5 comments
-
Grits and Glitz
January 18, 2013 | 0 comments
Eminentoes
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
Gore Vidal versus Christopher Hitchens.
“As literary feuds go it has all the hallmarks of a classic.
In one corner, the journalist and polemicist Christopher Hitchens.
In the other, America’s great man of letters, Gore Vidal. The
latest salvo is in this month’s Vanity Fair….”
-The Independent, February 7, 2010
There’s nothing quite like a bitchy little food for-thought-fight to liven up a dull literary winter. Reading atheist-contrarian Christopher Hitchens’s spirited broadside against the doddering Dowager Empress of American letters, Gore Vidal, I experienced something like the momentary satisfaction that sane Westerners must have felt when Adolf Hitler tore up the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and invaded Stalin’s Russia. No matter who won, you knew that by the time the dust settled the world would be rid of at least one pain in the posterior.
To alter analogies but stick with the early 1940s, it reminds me of one of the last big gothic monster movies, Universal’s 1943 release of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. In it, reluctant lycanthrope Larry Talbot (played by a convincingly pathetic Lon Chaney, Jr.) is torn between the evil impulse of the full moon and his residual decency. Meanwhile, the totally bestial Frankenstein Monster (played by a down-at-heels Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff having long since moved on to better roles) engages in an orgy of soulless murder and mayhem. Under the circumstances, star-crossed Larry the Wolf Man is clearly the lesser of two evils and, in the best Hollywood horror tradition, he perishes while destroying the Frankenstein Monster, thus earning partial redemption in spite of his own beastly bits and bites.
Ditto Christopher Hitchens in the redemption, not death, department. As a casual acquaintance, I have always enjoyed Chris’s conversation and appreciated much of his prose. He is clever, well read, entertaining, and generally honest by his own lights. But, if his foreign policy common sense and common decency have separated him from Gore Vidal at the head, the two remain joined at the hip by their adamant atheism. Perhaps this is why Chris has always struck me as something of an intellectual Larry Talbot, a conflicted figure torn between a core of reasonable, ethically sound values related to human rights, individual dignity, and intellectual rigor on the one hand, and a mischievous/perverse pull toward indiscriminate iconoclasm — a kind of compulsive cultural vandalism — on the other. This latter streak of almost sadistic skepticism is probably best illustrated by his potboiler biography of the late Mother Teresa, a hatchet job with a smuttily sophomoric title including the words “Missionary Position.” A similar tone pervades his book-length paean to atheism, God Is Not Great. The subtitle tells you all you need to know about the author’s intemperate bias: “How Religion Poisons Everything.”
When it comes to atheism, Hitchens remains an apostle rather than an apostate of Gore Vidal. Indeed, Vidal was toiling in the barren vineyards of disbelief while young Christopher was still in diapers (British readers please substitute “nappies”). To continue along film lines, it was an old director friend of mine, the late Frank Capra (You Can’t Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, inter al.) who best described Vidal’s adamant atheism in his 1971 memoir, The Name Above the Title: “Playwright-author Gore Vidal is a caustic intellectual, a possessor of an eloquent bitchiness that I found entertaining. One would never expect him to also be a dedicated evangelist with a lifelong mission. But he was.” Frank then recounted a conversation between himself and Vidal when the former was considering directing a film adaptation of the latter’s political play, The Best Man: “I called Vidal’s attention to the queer coincidence that all the main characters in his script were confirmed atheists. ‘No coincidence,’ he said. ‘I’d like to convert the whole damn world to atheism. It’s my vocation.’”
Over a long career, Vidal, like Hitchens, has devoted much of his artistic and intellectual energy to that vocation. At least one of his major novels, Julian, tried to inflate a minor Roman emperor’s disastrous 20-month reign — remembered mainly for Julian the Apostate’s frenzied hatred of all things Christian and his failed bid to restore the spent force of paganism — into heroic tragedy. (Ironically, Julian came to a sticky end, possibly at the hands of his own subordinates, while invading what is now Iraq, the subject of some of Vidal’s most feverish fulminations.) In his later historical novels set in America, Vidal used the same crude device of inverting vice and virtue, fact and fiction, to serve his ideological agenda. To cite the best-known example, in Burr he casts that most thoroughly rotten of figures — the personally and politically corrupt Aaron Burr — as a hero, and then paints deliberately twisted, disparaging portraits of infinitely more important, and, for all their flaws, more worthy figures from George Washington downward. It’s a cheap literary parlor trick, but Vidal’s considerable talent as a novelist makes it read rather well and may even convince those in his audience with no independent knowledge of history.
When attacking religion and other social values and norms, Chris Hitchens sometimes uses similar tactics. But the same innate sanity that allows him to recognize the current terror war as a battle between rival worldviews — one of which is considerably more evil and barbaric than the other — has led him to attack Vidal, once a mentor of sorts, for the kind of snide blanket indictments that he himself directs at his chosen targets. None of which makes Chris Hitchens wrong in his selective condemnation of Gore Vidal’s increasingly bizarre espousal of crackpot conspiracy theories and his characteristic inversion of heroes and villains, e.g., describing Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as “a noble boy,” no more murderous than Generals Patton and Eisenhower, and opining that the Bush administration was “probably” criminally complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Where i would differ with Chris is in his rendering of Vidal as a pseudo-tragic King Lear type whose current failings are due to an intellectual, emotional, or, perhaps, geriatric meltdown. While it is true Gore Vidal’s hatred of contemporary America in particular and the Judeo-Christian-shaped ethos of modern Western civilization in general has become increasingly frenzied, sloppy, and illogical in its expression, it was always there. Only the sly, cynically engaging mask has dropped. It just took Chris Hitchens longer than most of us to recognize Gore Vidal for what he always was.
In his Vanity Fair musings, Chris expresses the view that Vidal once had the potential to become a latter-day American version of Oscar Wilde. But, for all his faults, Wilde’s art, while much of it had a weighted socio-sexual agenda, was never driven by bile. From beginning to end, Gore Vidal’s has been fed by little else. We should remember, however, that Oscar Wilde, who, as Hitchens writes, “was never mean-spirited” and never became an endlessly droning “Ancient Mariner,” was only in his mid-forties when he died. Gore Vidal is now 85 and, as so often happens to not very nice people who get away with a lot through surface cleverness and charm, old age is the great unmasker. Stylistic degeneration aside, Gore Vidal hasn’t changed very much at all. What he is has simply become more obvious. And, like Dorian Gray’s portrait, it doesn’t make a very pretty picture.
If his legendarily epicurean appetites allow Chris Hitchens to make it to 85, one hopes that, unlike Gore Vidal — but like Wolf Man Larry Talbot — his better side will ultimately prevail. If not, the scholarly epitaph Stewart Henry Perowne and E. Christian Kopff provided for Vidal hero Julian the Apostate may apply to Chris as well:
[His] religious policy had no lasting effect. It had shown that paganism, as a religion, was doomed. It is perhaps sad, in retrospect, that the odium of proving it should rest on [one] who, with a little less venom and more tact, might have been remembered for his many virtues rather than for his…blunders.
About the Author
Aram Bakshian, Jr. served as an aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan and writes frequently on politics, history, gastronomy, and the arts.
Deb| 4.7.10 @ 8:16AM
Has anyone seen Collision? In it Christopher Hitchen debates Pastor Douglas Wilson, author of God Is. The book is a wonderfully written response to Hitchen's book, God is Not Great.
Howard| 4.7.10 @ 8:58AM
I always loved the William F. Buckley/ Gore Vidal riff during the 1968 Democratic convention. Here is a Utube cut: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8
Vidal is a royal ahole. I'm not even fond of his writing. Great column.
Ted Travers| 4.9.10 @ 10:00AM
Christpher has brilliantly critiqued the Ten Commandments and added a few for modern times.
Here's one of them:
Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them?
American Spectator readers need to ponder this one. The writer describes Gore Vidal as the "Empress of American Letters." A typical acerbic putdown of accomplished homosexuals from your stable of ultra- Christian right writers.
Unlike the writers and readers of Am Spec, Gore Vidal and Christopher Hitchens are intellectual and artistic giants. They deserve your respect instead of your pathetic ridicule. viva Vidal!
Walter Lewkowski| 4.11.10 @ 1:20AM
Gore Vidal has always had the goods on the Organized Jewish Community.
He may agree with their central role in the victory of the Civil Rights Revolution, Sex and Pornography Revolution. He does seem to see the stupidity of ending a white America that OJC fought so hard to bring about in the 1965 Immigration Act. But he is definitely not in their corner when it comes to war in the Middle East to please the neo-Cons and Israel.
Every time I see Hitchens he just appears as a blow hard. How stupid does one have to be to write a book attacking Mother Teresa? This was the devil’s joke on Hitchens.
So the real problem today is AIPAC and Immigration. Who cares if a couple of left wingers don’t believe in God? At least Gore sees the nature of the enemy and that is most likely why Hitchens doesn’t like him.
Son Of Sam| 4.7.10 @ 9:06AM
"Twilight" and "True Blood" notwithstanding, there are no good vampires or bad vampires: there are just friggin vampires. I say garlic all around, pass the holy water, half of us bring the sharpened stakes and the other half bring the hammers to smash them in.
stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
Alec| 4.7.10 @ 9:07AM
Well said!
michigander_sandusky| 4.7.10 @ 9:50AM
To Mr. Vidal and Hitchens: "The fool hath said in his heart , There is no God." Unfortunately one day (an eternal day) they will regret their infidelity.
Sandra Spauldings| 4.9.10 @ 1:10PM
See Ted Travers' comment.
I believe Christopher Hitchens' sense of ethical behavior and morality is far superior to the typical Am Spec reader.
Interested Conservative| 4.7.10 @ 9:59AM
I've not seen any comment about one stark difference between Hitchens and Vidal. Namely, formal education.
To its credit, it may be what maintains the basic, underlying civility which remains, though often well hidden, in Hitchen's work. Vidal, though, had no such training. As impressive and intellectual as he is, it's essentially auto-didactic or tutored, not institutionally based.
Considered alternatively, Sarah Palin's "formal" education exceeds Mr. Vidal's.
Ray| 4.7.10 @ 12:59PM
A "formal" education does not make one inherently intelligent. Nor does a lack of one make one inherently stupid. The only thing a "formal" education does is add a degree of credence to "formality," a degree of "acceptability" to those who believe credentials are far more important than ability. That's not to say that Vidal is a genius. But you can't dismiss someone's intelligence simply because they don't have the proper credentials. That's nothing more than elitism.
Interested Conservative| 4.7.10 @ 2:46PM
Don't misunderstand me Ray. I agree with much of what you say. My point is that a "formal" education is a bit more than a "formality". I know plenty of stupid and ignorant folks with formal educations, and while it doesn't help the former (stupid is as stupid does) it certainly helps the latter.
I also know more than a few brilliant folks without formal educations, who wish they'd had one, only to the extent that it wouldn't otherwise interfere with their brilliance, but don't let it bother them or obsess about it.
Michael Young's "Rise of the Meritocracy" explains much of this, and anticipates the excessive reliance on credentials we've adopted.
Still, if anything, Vidal could have used a big ten degree to overcome leaven his prep school education and cloistered upbringing. His aviation and military background helped, but perhaps not enough. He was distilled into bitterness way too early.
Petronius| 4.7.10 @ 11:03AM
And when these two show up in Hell, I'll make Damned sure there's nothing for them to read except TAS.
Knuckledragging Hillbilly | 4.7.10 @ 11:06AM
I always found Vidal entertaining, though it always struck me as hypocritical when someone from a background such as his (of wealth and power), would accuse republicans of being the party of "the rich getting richer and screw everyone else." Not to mention leaving Italy to move back to America for health care. He's a classic limousine liberal; I've always wanted to see his tax return, to see how much he gave to charity. He once said "all the problems of the world would be solved if everyone would simply do as I advise." Well, gosh darn it, it always struck me that he was more of a "Liberalism (read: wealth redistribution) for thee, not for me."
Dave Williams| 4.7.10 @ 1:08PM
re Michigander & Petronius
You know, for a religion supposedly based on love, it sure doesn't take much to bring out the threat-of-burning-in-eternity hatred among Christians. It's too bad that there is NO evidence...still less proof...of ANY survival after death WHATSOEVER. And no, that doesn't mean that my life as a proud atheist is in any way unethical or impoverished. I am solidly with you AmSpec folks politically, but your hard-line belief in an Invisible Friend strikes me as immature at best and downright hateful at worst.
Oh, and Hitchens will win by TKO in the 8th round.
Interested Conservative| 4.7.10 @ 2:49PM
But Vidal's oddest line may be his obit to WFB wishing him well in hell. Coming from an atheist it's either ironic nonsense, or gratuitous bile.
R. Kinsley| 4.9.10 @ 1:16PM
Read Christopher Buckley's autobiography of his miserable parents, and you will see that Bill Buckley was in hell right here on this earth.
He was a pompous ass with a faux British accent; he was pretentious when showing off extensive, esoteric vocabulary.
Both he and his wife died miserable deaths caused by their incessant smoking. Miserable people. Good riddance.
toddes| 4.7.10 @ 3:25PM
Actually, there is evidence of life after death, you just choose to disregard it or explain it away.
The appearence of the risen Christ to his disciples and to hundreds of other witnesses following his execution can most assuredly be regarded as evidence.
toddes| 4.7.10 @ 3:28PM
That should be "appearance of the risen Christ..."
John B| 4.8.10 @ 7:36AM
Hi Dave. In the comments section of this article I still haven't found the 'threat-of-burning-in-eternity hatred' of which you write. In fact the only real hatred I can find is where you describe belief in God as 'hateful'. So it appears that you are the one doing the hating. Now there's a surprise!
streetfighter| 4.7.10 @ 1:16PM
You sure used alot of words to say you don't like atheists.
Nick| 4.7.10 @ 6:45PM
Has Hitchens recovered from the beating his fat, drunken backside received from some neo-nazi Lebanese youths?
As for Vidal, don't blame his age. I'm sure it is just the syphilis setting in.
Nickle| 4.7.10 @ 9:38PM
skechers shape ups skechers shape ups
IzeHavitt| 4.8.10 @ 2:00AM
Re. Michigander-Sandusky: It is also written:"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes; but they that hearken unto counsel are wise". It has also been said that, "At Judgement Day, there will be a lot of people who wished they'd lived their lives as Christians". Now therefore, let all concerned take their pick.
smooka| 4.8.10 @ 2:24AM
Vidal will never forgive the people of America for not electing him...something. He has become a hater because he feels his greatness was never recognized properly by the people. Funny, I have read nearly everything Vidal ever wrote and he showed virtually no connection at all to the common man. He wanted to be nothing less than a philosopher king, and most importantly he wished the power to punish those who disagreed. He was closer to Stalin than a social democrat.
True Religion | 4.8.10 @ 3:18AM
We launched the 2010 latest and most fashionable True Religion jeans
on our shop, welcome you to patronize.Here are many discounts for you.
Our aim is to provide high-quality products and excellent after-sales
service.
http://www.jeanushop.com
T1Brit| 4.8.10 @ 2:12PM
Brilliant illuminating stuff.
Poor Gore, Good ol Hitchens.
Patrick Carroll| 4.9.10 @ 4:36PM
I'm about three-quarters of the way through Hitchens' autobiography.
Apparently, he hates, *hates* being called "Chris," much preferring "Christopher," please.
Sic transit gloria mundi| 4.10.10 @ 4:56PM
Having seen Mr. Vidal recently on "The Charlie Rose Show", I was amazed at how decrepit and feeble he looked. The venomous nonsense that dripped from his lips would have been proof positive for me that senility had claimed him at last, except that he has been squirting this poison for some time now. Curious how seething hatred ages a man faster than either mere weight of years, or (in Hitchen's case) fondness for the bottle. Hitchens--who I've always felt to be an honest man, even when I disagree with him--deserves unstinting praise for taking the full measure of this vain harlequin--whose wrappings of elegant prose have completely fallen away to reveal the nihilism at his core. At Vidal's own rapidly impending dissolution, I can only repeat his comment at the death of Truman Capote: "Good career move."
PDD| 4.23.10 @ 9:35PM
Vidal's alleged literary gifts escape me. To this admittedly biased, benighted reader, he will always be simply an old poof who wrote books (pace Monty Python).