Columnist’s Departure Talk of the Nation

The left’s propensity to treat changes in opinion as apostasy always has lent its fallings-out more than a whiff of rancor.

Thus, while both Christopher Hitchens--who this week abruptly quit as the Nation’s Washington columnist--and the magazine’s New York-based editors are at pains to paint their parting as civilized, if not amicable, the sudden split has left both sides bruised.

According to Nation staff members, who asked not to be named, the magazine’s editors were particularly upset that they first learned of Hitchens’ resignation when they read the “Minority Report” column he submitted for the forthcoming issue.

In that piece, which will be published in the Nation being mailed to subscribers this week, Hitchens writes that it would be “false to continue the association” and concludes, “When I began work for the Nation over two decades ago, Victor Navasky [then editor, now publisher] described the magazine as a debating ground between liberals and radicals, which was, I thought, well judged. In the past few weeks, though, I have come to realize that the magazine itself takes a side in the argument, and is becoming the voice and echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden.”

Hitchens, who was traveling and unavailable for comment, has been increasingly at odds with the Nation and its readers since Sept. 11. The English-born columnist has taken a hard line in support of the Bush administration’s war on terror and repeatedly has written about the Saudi-supported Wahabi sect’s role in fostering Islamic fundamentalism throughout the world. He has argued unequivocally that militant Islam is a totalitarian creed that must be opposed intellectually and militarily wherever it exists. In recent months, Hitchens also has supported the administration’s indictment of Saddam Hussein’s malevolence, though he remains cautious about military action.

Those positions have put him intellectually and emotionally at odds with his Nation colleagues, who have been deeply skeptical of the Bush administration’s initiatives on all fronts and, particularly, about their implications for domestic civil liberties. Though he, too, is a firm civil libertarian, Hitchens’ close associates said this week that he had become “deeply dispirited” about the hostility to his columns expressed by readers in the Nation’s letters columns.

“Hitch is exhausted,” said one person with whom he discussed his decision. “He’s got other places to publish here in the United States--Vanity Fair, the New York Review of Books and the Atlantic. It all got to be too much and, since the Nation had become such a source of grief, he just said, ‘Who needs it?’ ”

Navasky, too, was unavailable for comment, but colleagues with whom he spoke said he was wounded by Hitchens’ decision. It was Navasky who invited the writer to the United States more than two decades ago and who suggested that the young Englishman become the Nation’s first Washington-based columnist since I.F. Stone. Hitchens and his wife, Carol Blue, were married in the living room of Navasky’s apartment.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, the Nation’s editor, said she regretted Hitchens’ resignation. “We have enjoyed publishing someone who has always had the freedom to write what they wanted and to challenge many of our readers’ assumptions,” she said.

Others at the Nation feel that Hitchens’ columns had become not just a challenge but an affront to the magazine’s views. According to staff members, suspicion of what they viewed as the writer’s rightward drift began some years ago, when he first expressed reservations about abortion. His relentless rhetorical pursuit of Bill Clinton--whose impeachment he supported--raised further doubts, which grew exponentially after Sept. 11. Those staff members were said to be relieved that Hitchens no longer would be identified as a Nation columnist during his frequent appearances on television.

Suffice it to say, the last word on this split has yet to be heard.

Booker Prize Short List

Though it is only open to writers from Commonwealth nations, Britain’s Booker Prize is avidly followed by readers of serious fiction throughout the world. In part, that’s because of its sizable cash component--a little more than $75,000 for this year’s winner--and in part, because the BBC’s live broadcast of its award gives the ceremony something of the Oscars’ cachet.

“Most Booker winners already have American publishers,” said one prominent New York agent, “but winning usually gets a book a bigger U.S. printing. Where it really helps is with the film sales. Studios seem to like Brit writers almost as much as English actors. It’s the class factor.”

Oddly enough, though, the one thing this year’s “short list” of Booker finalists lacks is an English author. The final six, culled from a long list of 20 selected from 130 entries, include three immigrants to Canada--Yann Martel, Rohinton Mistry and Carol Shields--the Irish-born William Trevor, Australian Tim Winton and Welsh-born Sarah Waters.

This year’s favorite is Martel’s “Life of Pi,” the story of a boy brought up in an Indian zoo. When his father decides to move the family and its animals to Canada, a shipwreck ensues and the boy, Pi, is cast adrift in a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a tiger. The author, who now lives in Montreal, was born in Spain.

Mistry, who has lived in Canada since 1975, was nominated for “Family Matters,” which is set in his native Bombay. Shields, who was born and raised in Chicago but has lived in Canada since 1957, was nominated for “Unless,” which deals with the relationship between mothers and daughters. Shields, the mother of five, won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for fiction with “The Stone Diaries.”

Trevor, who has been short-listed twice, was nominated for “The Story of Lucy Gault.” Waters’ nominated novel, “Fingersmith,” is the story of a 19th century orphan; Winton’s “Dirt Music” is set in an Australian fishing port.

“I think it’s a perfectly good list,” said Giles Foden, deputy literary editor of the Guardian, which publishes one of Britain’s most comprehensive book supplements. “The Canadian thing is quite interesting and can be explained, I think, by Canada’s extremely fruitful history of immigration over the past 50 years. Young writers have come there from all over the world and found a massive canvas of the imagination not yet loaded with other people’s images.

“Martel is certainly the favorite, since he’s much favored by our chattering classes. I think the best and most interesting choice is Sarah Waters because she is such a good writer,” Foden said.

Work in Progress

Poe Ballantine is the pseudonym of Kevin Hughes, who writes and cooks professionally in Chadron, Neb. His collection of personal travel narratives, “Things I Like About America,” will be published next month by Hawthorne Books:

“I’m finishing up a novel called ‘God Clobbers Us All,’ which is set in a San Diego convalescent hospital. My editors like it but think it’s too short, so I’m rewriting four new chapters for them. I hope this does the trick.

“The plot and setting are a composite of my actual experience as a very young nurse’s aide in hospitals around San Diego. I grew up there and took a course on being a hospital attendant while I was going to Patrick Henry High in 1973. I was 18 when I went to work, and it was a powerful experience that transformed me. I got a good look at where most of America ends up. Seeing death and debilitation close up at 18 has made me a live-for-today kind of fellow ever since. My characters are all nurse’s aides. One of the primary characters is a Blackfoot lesbian, ostracized by her family and desperate to have some fun. The other ends up damaged, bewildered and lost at the end of the book. All the characters are the sort of working people who appear close knit on the job, but dissolve very easily. They all get clobbered too--by fate, I suppose.”