E-book non-fiction: on Christopher Hitchens’ faith, sex and the Bard, and North Korea
Late polemicist warned someone might pen just such a book as Christian apologist Larry Taunton has; what Shakespeare has to do with a spanking fetish; and the funny side of ‘NoKo’
The Faith of Christopher Hitchens
by Larry Alex Taunton
Brilliance Audio (audiobook)
1/5 stars
Through his directorship of an evangelical non-profit organisation, Christian apologist Larry Alex Taunton became unlikely friends with polemicist and cultural commentator Christopher Hitchens. Rigorous intellectual that he was, Hitchens, author of God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything – an excoriation of our man-made, prejudicial systems of belief – was able to recognise the merits of numerous conflicting philosophies concurrently … a talent seized on here in an effort to suggest that, as cancer came to claim him, Hitchens began to cave in and accept Christianity. Some friend Taunton has turned out to be, particularly with Hitchens no longer here to defend himself from such calumnious co-opting. (Shortly before his death in 2011, Hitchens warned that any such manoeuvres should be repulsed.) Based loosely on Taunton’s road-trip debates on religion with Hitchens, and other recollections, this audiobook, intoned by Maurice England, should come attached to a sanity warning. Its subtitle is The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist – “notorious” telling you all you need to know about the author’s convictions. One can’t help thinking the king of critical analysis would be horrified by this ploy to lure him into some credulous flock.