SOURCE: Phillips, William. “Hitchens's Trotskyists.” Partisan Review 58, no. 3 (summer 1991): 426–27.

In the following essay, Phillips objects to Hitchens's misrepresentation of Trotskyist New York intellectuals in Hitchens's book review of Critical Crossings by Neil Jumonville.

Christopher Hitchens is not only a slick journalist but also a slick thinker. He should be a valuable contributor to the popular magazines, but, unfortunately, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, and The London Review of Books utilize his talents. He is also a regular columnist for The Nation, where he lends a spark to the old-fashioned radicalism that persists after it has been pronounced dead.

Fortunately for Hitchens, he has a fund of doctrines that he can draw on from the politically correct arena. One of his recent efforts appears in The London Review of Books, where he ostensibly reviews yet another in the long line of books about the New York...