Matt Johnson Didn’t Read My Hitchens Book Very Carefully

About a month ago, I was one of three guests on Iona Italia’s podcast. Two of us had written books about Christopher Hitchens and the other was planning to do so. The recording ended up lasting for several hours but we all agreed to scrap it and rerecord since at least a couple of those hours largely consisted of me and the other two guests yelling at each other about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and it wouldn’t have been especially fun for anyone to slog through as a listener.

One of those other two guests, Matt Johnson, just wrote a review of my book for Quillette. Most of the substance of that review is about what you’d expect. Mostly he seems upset that I didn’t emphasize the points he thinks should be emphasized (and that presumably will be in his one book) and befuddled about why I’d choose to write about Hitchens even though I’m neither a hater nor an uncritical admirer and I spend most of my time evaluating his arguments (and those of his interlocutors) and exploring the underlying subjects rather than just describing what Hitchens himself said.

All I can say is that (a) part of the reason I find Hitchens fascinating is that he wrote about so many subjects I’m interested in, (b) evaluating arguments is kind of my thing, and (c) a big element in why Hitchens still matters to me is that I have severely mixed…