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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

Just put it out there, If you love Orwell then Christopher Hitchens on Orwell is like the whole pudding, coffee and after-dinner mints. He's my fave Orwell scholar and throws a lot of light on the life, thoughts and implications of the writer.

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Hitchens had an arrogant and chauvinistic side that spoils his writing for me.

Indeed, The chauvinism is ugly and a real turn-off. But even as a Christian I loved his ballsy bitchynes, coining things like antitheism - because just not believing in god isn't enough... shame he left the stage too young.

Hitchens is pretty awful imo. Tried to paint himself as some type of lefty, as he got older agitated for war and just drank himself to death. That, and the weird new atheist sthick....he was a good writer when he was younger, but he was a careerist more than anything else.

Easily the most overrated writer of the last twenty five years, whose fame seems sustained by his chumminess with journalists and his preference for making loud, uninformed, combative statements that don’t hold up under much scrutiny. A man fit for the times, it seems.

Arrogant, chauvinistic, and know-it-all, when he was just of mediocre education at best (compared to much more substantial public intellectuals - yes, he went to Oxbridge, but he just had a run-of-the-mill degree and grades, like thousands of others every year). His takes on literature and other subjects were too shallow.

He did put on a good show, which TV and the press loved.

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