Daar is twee dosente wat dikwels uitgesonder word as kenmerkend van die na-oorlogse Oxford University, naamlik Maurice Bowra (1898-1971) en Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997). In sy laaste boek, Hitch-22: a memoir (London: Atlantic Books, 2011), verwys Christopher Hitchens (13.04.1949-15.12.2011) na albei. Hitchens was 'n student aan Balliol-kollege, Oxford.
Maurice Bowra "always had the look ... of a near-extinct but still-smoldering volcano: on our first introduction he gave me one of the most frankly appraising 'once-over/up-and-down' glances I have ever had. ["You never get a second chance to make a good first impression", p 307.] The joke about 'Wadham and Gomorrah', apparently, had been his own idea" (p 95). [Alle lesers sal nie al Hitchens se verwysings verstaan nie. In hierdie geval moet 'n mens bv weet dat Bowra homoseksueel was en dat hy aan Wadham-kollege, Oxford, verbonde was.]
Oor Isaiah Berlin skryf Hitchens: "Berlin's urbanity and magnetism were like nothing I had ever met before and vindicated ... the whole point of coming to Oxford in the first place" (p 96). "I had felt a bit overawed by Isaiah Berlin" (p 129). Wat ek veral lofwaardig van Berlin vind, is "his famous insecurity about his own golden reputation: a self-doubt that he could never get his many disciples to take seriously" (p 97).
Hitchens: "One of the elements of an education: get as near to the supposed masters and commanders as you can and see what stuff they are really made of" (p 98). Oor van die voorste Britse politici was hy verbaas "how ignorant and sometimes plain stupid were the people who claim to run the country" (p 98). [Wat sou sy waarneming van Suid-Afrika se politici gewees het?]
Die boek maak 'n mens bewus van hoe selektief daar in die politiek op verskonings aangedring word. Slegs oor uitsprake en dade wat as regs geëtiketteer kan word, word normaalweg verskoning geëis. Daar was bv nog nooit sprake dat iemand wat 'n Afrikaanse universiteit grootliks of heeltemal laat verengels het (myns insiens 'n doodsonde) verskoning daarvoor hoef te vra nie. Is daar al ooit van enigiemand verwag om verskoning te vra vir die toestand waarin Zimbabwe of die nuwe Suid-Afrika verval het? "One has to be civil and smiling and curious when sitting with criminal lunatic 'freedom fighters'" (p 141). Van die ses Mitford-susters met hulle uiteenlopende politieke oortuigings (SêNet, 25.10.2011) was Hitchens "very close to Jessica" (p 59), 'n kommunis, "one of my heroines" (p 209), wat hy nie veroordeel nie. Hy neem 'n ander suster, die fascistiese Diana, egter kwalik vanweë haar "never uttering a repentant remark about her Third Reich period" (p 143). Daar is verwag dat die Dene verskoning moet vra vir die karikature van Mohammed wat daar gepubliseer is (p 272), maar daar was nooit sprake van 'n verskoning vir die "9-11"-ramp nie. Die kontras tussen die verdoeming van fascisme en die vergoeiliking van kommunisme is onaanvaarbaar as die volgende uitspraak van Susan Sontag onderskryf word: "Not only is Fascism ... the probable destiny of all Communist societies ... but Communism is ... the most successful variant of Fascism" (p 418).
Hitchens sê om te lees en te skryf ("the itch to scribble", p 70) is "the two things that mean most to me" (p xi). "In writing and reading, there is a gold standard" (p 71). Teen die populêre mening in, noem Hitchens kinderliteratuur "that most exacting form of all writing" (p 84). "I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn't have to rely on the press for my information" (p 140). Sy skryfwerk is maklik leesbaar. "Leaden prose always tends to be a symptom of other problems" (p 282).
Die sterwende Hitchens gee die volgende raad aan sy lesers: "If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or a visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it" (p xi). "The cause of my life has been that of combating superstition" (p xi). "The interruption of death into my life has enabled me to express a trifle more concretely my contempt for the false consolation of religion, and belief in the centrality of science and reason" (p xii). Hy verwys hier na sy vorige boek, god Is Not Great (2007, SêNet, 24 deser). Salman Rushdie "remarked rather mordantly that the chief problem with its title was a lack of economy: that it was ... one word too long" (p 9).
As kind vorm Hitchens "the picture of Catholicism as one of plump shepherds and lean sheep" (p 10). Die Anglikaanse Kerk in Engeland noem hy "the national absurdity" (p 64). "Methodism is a trade like any other" (p 66). Religie word as "cruel and stupid" bestempel (p 76). "One reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind" (p 332). Hitchens het geglo aan "the superiority of literature over religion as a source of morality and ethics" (p 391). Op skool: "I started bringing books to read during the sermons and the prayers, in order to improve the shining hour" (p 68). Hy het gedink daar is "irreconcilable conflict between the values of Athens and Jerusalem ... but ... sex and love have their ironic and perverse dimensions" (p 78). Dwelms word "almost as contemptible as religion" genoem (p 89).
Van sy ma skryf hy: "She had been absolutely everything to me in her way" (p 20). "She was the cream in the coffee, the gin in the Campari, the offer of wine or champagne instead of beer" (p 26). "My mother had not nurtured her firstborn son in order to hear him addressed as if he were a taxi driver or pothole-filler" (p 93-94). "I had hoped to re-make myself into a serious person and an ally of the working class" (p 94). Anders as sy ma word sy pa onsimpatiek voorgestel. Hy was "not one of those whom nature had designed to be a nest-builder. But his liver - to borrow a phrase from Gore Vidal - was 'that of a hero,' and I must have inherited from him my fondness ... for strong waters" (p 33).
Hitchens: "Alcohol for me has been an aspect of my optimism" (p 35). Hy verwys na "the charms of alcohol and tobacco ... so much of London journalistic life took place in pubs and bars ... It wasn't all that easy to get a reputation for boozing when you worked in and around old Fleet Street ... but I managed it" (p 150-151). Hy roem op sy "ability to carry my liquor" (p 191). Sy pa "preferred the predictabilty and loyalty of animals to the vagaries and frailties of human beings" (p 38). Hitchens se siening van sy ouers se stormagtige verhouding is: "Two stray branches that only war and chance could ever have caused to become entwined" (p 46).
Die laaste drie dekades van sy lewe, sedert Oktober 1981, was Hitchens nie in Engeland nie maar in Amerika gesetel. Hy kontrasteer hierdie twee lande; iets wat hy meesterlik in woorde uitdruk. "We consoled ourselves Englishly with the thought that we made up in good taste and refinement for what we increasingly lacked in money and influence" (p 206). "America seemed either too modern, with no castles or cathedrals and no sense of history, or simply too premodern with too much wilderness and unpolished conduct" (p 208). "Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy" (p 212). Hitchens dink "time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted" (p 212). "Life in Britain had seemed like one long antechamber to a room that had too many barriers to entry; here in the USA it seemed to be true that if you dared to give things 'your best shot' then the other much-used phrases like 'land of opportunity' would kick in as well" (p 218).
"English womanhood was, of course, adorable, and the idea of the 'English rose' had not yet acquired the sickliness of the Diana epoch, but it did have a slight tendency to leave the initiative to the male" (p 224). "American girls, I came to find, were more ... forward. They would come right out with it, and would give direct voice, sometimes in a tone of near-command, to their desires. I don't think that I can even begin sufficiently to express my gratitude" (p 225). Sosialisme bly by hom sluimer: "While the great edifices of New York may indeed be 'capitalist', they also represent a triumph of confidence and innovation and ingenuity on the part of the workers who so proudly strove to build them" (p 246).
Na sy aanvanklike verblyf in New York City het Hitchens na Washington DC verhuis. "To become a Washingtonian ... felt at first like moving to a company town where nothing ever actually got itself made" (p 235). Mettertyd kon hy sê: "I had ... ceased to notice ... things like the stubborn American belief that 'hot tea' is made with lukewarm or formerly boiled water, rather than water that is actually boiling. I now took it for granted that perfect strangers would mention their preferred churches or even ... their shrinks" (p 239-240). "America ... seemed full of light and space and liberty and good fortune" (p 240).
Johannes Comestor