Christopher Hitchens apparently recognised the dangers of Islamic theocracy and the ‘intellectual bankruptcy of the left’ during the Rushdie affair. Debate about that as much as you want, but it is pretty hard to dispute that Khomeini’s fatwa took heavy toll on Rushdie’s writing. His novels have worsened since 1989, with the last effort (Fury, set partly in New York, released in August 2001, with the cover spookily showing a plane flying pretty close to the Empire State Building) being barely readable. Step across this line, a collection of non-fiction written in the decade to 2002, is not quite that bad. But neither does it match Imaginary homelands, collection of non-fiction written in the 1980s. And even here, one can see how the quality slipped over the 1990s. (more…)
August 17, 2005
August 2, 2005
Stupid white men
I somehow managed to miss Fahrenheit 9/11 in the big screen last year. Among my lefty friends it was a big hit, as it was with the general public. Chris Hitchens trashed it, Paul Krugman raved it, but I never really got around to watching it. After all, I didn’t need uber-left ‘polemics’ to convince me that the Iraq War is fundamentally flawed. It seems I didn’t miss much. (more…)
