Like any lengthy anthology, I think the first thing one must do is accept that they may not read everything within. Well, I suppose I’ll just say that that is what I must do. Having done that, and read through some of The Portable Atheist (Christopher Hitchens, et. al.), I can say that this may be a bit overwhelming for fledgling non-believers (Note: All of these images contain links to their respective page on amazon, or other such relevant place).
It’s also not portable by any means. It’s a large book, at nearly 500 pages and with a large-format perfect-bound size, this thing is quite the opposite to say, Mao’s little red book. Hitchens’ intro essay is all over the place. This is at once his greatest gift as a writer of essays (he covers multiple points of interest, thus engaging a long list of topics) and his greatest failure (I hate to say it, but in his introduction here he does come off a bit like a raving alcoholic, thumping points he’s already tread in his own book God Is Not GREAT, and only casually mentioning other points). Also, he misclassifies Sagan as someone finding religion and the faithful a bunch of idiots. (Alas, if Hitchens had read Shermer’s Sagan Tribute issue of SKEPTIC! he would learn that Sagan was celebrated among scientists as an agnostic-sympathizer (if not somewhat of a “There could be a god but not this one”-er. Watch Jodie Foster in Contact for more on this- I know my reading of the novel would better benefit my understanding of Sagan’s supernaturalism in the form of alien speculation–something that kind of led me away from Sagan for a while–but I have never professed to be an expert, an expert like some of those featured in the pages within the volume in question.)
But I sympathize with Hitchens, as he has taken on the ambitious task of identifying atheists, skeptics, scientists who know better, and other nonbeliever-types from the birth of philosophical materialism on to my contemporaries (yes…I said it; my contemporaries).
I received a review copy of this book (which means it was free), but I can gladly say that it is available at Amazon at around $11– a manageable price for such an unmanageable volume, despite its elegant ordering and presentation.
I have always shunned things that say “Reader” or “Portable” in their title. Why? Well, they are big, unwieldy, and by definition a sampling of a large group of texts– as opposed to a comprehensive representation of only a few. As a completionist both aesthetically and in regards to my own auto-didactic-ism, I’m often left feeling a bit guilty: “Okay, I finished this short piece of one of Russell’s speeches- but am I really, you know…finished with Russell?”
Well, of course not. Nobel Prize-winning Russell wrote volumes and volumes on philosophy, language, math…he’s also got a great Playboy interview floating around somewhere in which he predicts a nuclear apocalypse…hey, can’t always be right, right? But on, religion, the question stands firm.
When reading Russell on religion, read Russell’s this first:
But Hitchens does a good job (sometimes) at preparing us for these pieces by wittily contextualizing them in his pithy voice. Can I recommend this to you? Well, some of the writers collected within have writings excerpted from longer works that I think worth reading in their entirety. Sagan’s The Varieties of Scientific Experience recently saw a re-print. It contains his Gifford Lecture, “The God Hypothesis” as well as many other great lectures: I saw a photo of Kirsten Dunst reading this pretty this one on the beach. Go figure.
Sam Harris is here in force. Like Sagan, this selection is a relatively recent book: The End of Faith.
Faith contains some dubious wanderings into buddhistic supernaturalism (he even says something or other about their being evidence for reincarnation), but it is one of the seminal texts of the last decade to speak about religion, and goes highly suggested in my Atheist reading. The section within The Portable is one of his stronger pieces in The End of Faith, so it could be beneficial for someone new to him, but not so much to someone hoping for a new essay.
By the way, this is the stronger of Harris’ two books:
Refined, far more elegant, and more focused. Harris is a necessary addition to the atheist cannon. Why? His criticism of moderate tolerance as part of the problem is sensational and spot-on.
Ditto Dick Dawkins his essay in The Portable. Read The God Delusion before you pick up the The Portable.
But there are some other essays of his in there that I like, which I hadn’t read before (”Atheists for Jesus,” “Gerrin Oil”).
So, and this is how such things go re: readers/portables, there is a trade-off. Just as these are exhuastive in the ground they cover, they are also often place-holders, buoys amid the vast ocean of atheist texts.
I wonder what the effect of an anthology like this has on the market. It is clear that atheists are buying these books: publishers rarely produce that which is not marketable. From a writer’s background I can say this without hesitance. And still, I think that such books do not necessarily reach their target audience- believers. Fine: this book presents itself as a book directed at and for atheists. It tells me that I am its target audience. In his introductory notes, Hitchens applauds the proliferation of science dvds, books, and teachings as a means of infiltrating idiotic systems of irrationality and unreason. This book probably won’t do that. It will excite us few (or many depending on who we’re talking to) to find such a Big Book in print (albeit, most likely, briefly), and yet it will probably not penetrate the dormitories, shanties, hovels, wig-wams, trailers, mansions, and apartments in which believers (some the inculcated, some the inculcators) who may delight in its wicked, intelligent attacks on religion and the existence of god.
Be careful, ye who may find pleasure in such a book whilst living in a home filled with fundamentalists or “moderates”: you carry with you a giant neon yellow book that says “ATHEIST” on it. Good luck explaining that one to your parents.
As for the rest of us: it couldn’t hurt to have a little more evidence that sanity reigns supreme in a small publishing house somewhere (as well as the god-given right to make money off of contemporary sensational debates). To fulfill another reader/portable cliche: As with any anthology, even one I haven’t read through and through, I’m left coming off a bit mixed and cynical in my thoughts, if you couldn’t tell.
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1 Comment
January 11, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Great post!
Bye,
Davide