YOU CAN'T PLEASE ALL

Novelist, filmmaker, and firebrand Ali delivers a second volume in his memoir series, following 2018’s Street Fighting Years.

“These memoirs are centered on politics of one sort or another.” That’s an understatement, to be sure. Ali, a stalwart socialist, has never been shy of courting controversy. That’s true of this blend of autobiographical notes and gathered journalism and essays: toward the end of the book, for instance, in an essay on the horrific events of Oct. 7, 2023, he writes, “I don’t agree politically with Hamas.…But I do not and will not criticize them in public for defending Gaza.” Of course, one could dispute that the definition of “defending Gaza” includes the slaughter of peaceful concertgoers, but then one might argue with Ali at many points and still wind up learning a few things. In this, Ali resembles Christopher Hitchens, though even Hitchens might have waited a few days postmortem before lighting into the late Queen Elizabeth II (“The mainstream press of Europe wasting so much paper on the Windsors would do well to remember that the late queen was…a staunch supporter of Brexit, as revealed by Murdoch’s rag the Sun.” Whether Hitchens would take a swing at Ali for revealing that Margaret Thatcher once “affectionately spanked him” is unknowable, but it’s modestly amusing to learn that Ali, now in his 80s, is game to slap someone who gainsays his version of the cause. The doctrinaire stuff can be tiring, as can his dissecting the smallest of disagreements on the part of his fellow Fourth Internationalists. Still, Ali has always kept interesting company—the comedian Peter Cook, the writer Claud Cockburn, the literary scholar Edward Said—and gone after interesting subjects, whether the fiction of Anthony Powell, domestic spying in Britain, or the dictatorial politics of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Pakistan’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Vintage Ali: literate rabble-rousing mixed with entertaining sniping, smart aperçus, and endless provocations.