Cancer (or its treatment) has robbed Christopher Hitchens of his speaking voice, and in his latest Vanity Fair column he ponders what this means in terms of writing and life and the writing life. The essay is wonderful for his tips on writing — which make sense to me — but it is also full of the kind of grace notes that only Hitchens, and perhaps only Hitchens under a death warrant, can produce. A taste:
When you fall ill, people send you CDs. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen. So I have recently learned a song, entitled "If It Be Your Will." It's a tiny bit saccharine, but it's beautifully rendered and it opens like this:
If it be your will, That I speak no more: And my voice be still, As it was before …
I find it's best not to listen to this late at night. Leonard Cohen is unimaginable without, and indissoluble from, his voice. (I now doubt that I could be bothered, or bear, to hear that song done by anybody else.) In some ways, I tell myself, I could hobble along by communicating only in writing. But this is really only because of my age. If I had been robbed of my voice earlier, I doubt that I could ever have achieved much on the page. I owe a vast debt to Simon Hoggart of The Guardian (son of the author of The Uses of Literacy), who about 35 years ago informed me that an article of mine was well argued but dull, and advised me briskly to write "more like the way that you talk." At the time, I was near speechless at the charge of being boring and never thanked him properly, but in time I appreciated that my fear of self-indulgence and the personal pronoun was its own form of indulgence.
To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: "How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?" That had its duly woeful effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don't say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it's very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.
H/T: The Dish
It seems a bit ironic, at least to me, that Christopher Hitchens has recently learned Leonard Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will.” Cohen, an observant Jew, sometimes draws on Judaism for inspiration and themes in his songs. “If It Be Your Will” has a strong religious subtext that is perhaps most evident in the second verse:
If it be your will If there is a choice Let the rivers fill Let the hills rejoice Let your mercy spill On all these burning hearts in hell If it be your will To make us well
Interesting choice by Hitchens.
What a lovely piece on writing and speech–thanks, DG.
It doesn’t surprise me he likes the Cohen song, or strike me as so ironic, really, at least not more ironic than if he were quoting a passage from Homer. Hitchens appreciates the Bible as literature and acknowlesges its significance for Western culture (for good and ill). His essay on the King James Bible is really fine, imho.
“Though I am sometimes reluctant to admit it, there really is something ‘timeless’ in the Tyndale/King James synthesis. For generations, it provided a common stock of references and allusions, rivaled only by Shakespeare in this respect. It resounded in the minds and memories of literate people, as well as of those who acquired it only by listening. From the stricken beach of Dunkirk in 1940, faced with a devil's choice between annihilation and surrender, a British officer sent a cable back home. It contained the three words ‘but if not.’ All of those who received it were at once aware of what it signified…. A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one. To seek restlessly to update it or make it ‘relevant’ is to miss the point, like yearning for a hip-hop Shakespeare. ‘Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,’ says the Book of Job. Want to try to improve that for Twitter?”
http://m.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/hitchens-201105?currentPage=all
The excerpt cited by Mary includes this:
It contained the three words “but if not. . .” All of those who received it were at once aware of what it signified.
Maybe those who received it knew what it signified, but I didn't "“ until I went and checked the article. In case there were others who, like me, didn't get it, here "“ from Hitchens' article "“ is the full text:
All of those who received it were at once aware of what it signified. In the Book of Daniel, the Babylonian tyrant Nebuchadnezzar tells the three Jewish heretics Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that if they refuse to bow to his sacred idol they will be flung into a "burning fiery furnace." They made him an answer: "If it be so, our god whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, o King. / But if not, be it known unto thee, o king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."
Shocked! Shocked I am that the reference wasn’t apparent. How can you not have Daniel memorized? These days, at least the evangefundicals would.
Sorry, ya’ll, for the bad cut.
Hitches is the only one of his fellow contemporary atheists who is so very eloquent. I will miss his writing skills.
Hitchens offers a wonderful riff on written and spoken word, and I also thank David for posting it.
Like my friend William Collier, I was also surprised by Hitchens’ quoting Leonard Cohen, even ruefully, not just because of the references to the Almighty’s will, but because I expected Hitchens to have better taste in poetry.
It’s one thing to appreciate the literary contributions of Shakespeare or the KJV, but “Suzanne”? Or (mercy!) “Jazz Police”? I’m sure I could not be so tolerant as to listen to that stuff even (or especially) in my final illness.
Amazing how this man has won a place in so many hearts.
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