Unacknowledged Legislation

Writers in the Public Sphere

by Christopher Hitchens

In this collection of 35 essays, many initially published in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, Harper's, and elsewhere, Hitchins explores the political stands raised in literature. He discusses the ideas of Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, George Orwell, Salman Rushdie, Ernest Hemingway,Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, and others.

Editions of Unacknowledged Legislation

ISBN

9781859847862

Binding/Format

Hardcover

Publisher

Verso Books

Date

2001

Price

$1.00

Good

Publisher Notes

What passes for political discussion in conventional circles rarely runs the gamut, even from A to B. To probe the deeper meanings of power requires inquiry beyond the vapidity of would-be Presidents, in Britain as well as the US. Fiction has traditionally been an alternative container for such ideas, sometimes a soapbox, sometimes a sanctuary, but always available and frequently used.
Many have seen the meeting between literature and politics as necessarily fraught. Norman Podhoretz examined the intersection under the rubric THE BLOODY CROSSROADS. Christopher Hitchens, in this sparkling engagement with novels and their authors, pursues a different approach. Taking inspiration from Shelley's description of the poet as an "unacknowledged legislator", he shows that while the encounter between writers and those in power is not always smooth, it generally embodies a dialectic that is well worth pursuit.