I didn’t see hatred as worthy emotion to write about until I read William Hazlitt’s 1826 essay, “On the Pleasure of Hating,” which takes on hatreds large and small and gives full vent to his spleen. Most of my hatreds are petty, more annoyances than full-blown hatreds. People who place their own desires and beliefs above others cause most of the things I despise, large and small. I rarely write about those larger hatreds because, well, they’re too large, and either you share what I hate or you don’t and then we’re either yelling at one another or nodding our bobbleheads in impotent but agreeable anger. On religion and patriotism Hazlitt writes:
The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others. What have the different sects, creeds, doctrines in religion been but so many pretexts set up for men to wrangle, to quarrel, to tear one another in pieces about, like a target as a mark to shoot at?
Hazlitt’s essay is as much if not more about the cruelty and meanness of the world than hatred as such. He begins with the image of a spider crawling across the floor of his room, and he wonders about his desire to kill it, though it has done him no harm. Instead, he gives is safe passage, but the spider triggers a larger meditation on the venom of the world. Why is it, he wonders, that we take pleasure in mean thoughts and actions? Such meanness only returns to us ten-fold in self-loathing. “We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves.” This is what I loved most about Hazlitt’s essay when I first read it, his unapologetic tackling of a subject we often try to bury, deny, or rationalize. He doesn’t go into detail about his own shortcomings (this is not a confessional essay), and in fact, there’s a certain brutal fervor to his denouncements of others. There’s power in this venting because of the heightened intensity of his prose, but still, I didn’t see the last line coming, in which he sidesteps self-indictment deftly. Or at least, he enlarges the notion when he asks if he doesn’t have reason enough to despise and to hate himself. “Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.”
This inspired me to write my own essay on hatred, an indirect response to Hazlitt. Almost two centuries separate us, but I have long thought of essaying as an ongoing discussion between different times. In writing my essay, I was less interested in Hazlitt’s grand hatreds than petty ones. The best hatreds to write about as far as I’m concerned are not self-righteous but self-indicting. My essay, titled, “No Pleasure but Meanness” was published first by Ninth Letter and is appearing in my forthcoming essay collection, HOW TO CHANGE HISTORY, under the title, “In the Storeroom of Petty Hatreds.” As writing catharsis goes, this was up there, but the venting of my hatreds was more in line with a controlled release than an explosion. Heavy on the irony, some sarcasm, and a healthy dose of self-implication. In general, I think that I come across as a pretty nice guy in person, but not so in my essay. The guy who wrote this essay is a facet of me that I usually keep well-hidden, thankfully. It begins:
I have a mean bone in my body. In fact, I think I have more than one mean bone. For instance, I hate people who smile all the time. It feels good to say that word, “hate,” doesn’t it? Would you like to try it? Say: “I hate people who ask rhetorical questions that can’t possibly be answered.” Or form your own. Start a sentence with “I hate people who…” or even take out the qualifier and just say “I hate people. I wish them all ill.” It releases something, though there is always more hate to take its place. Actually, I smile all the time, and that’s one of the things I hate about myself, though this is not an essay about self-loathing. Not really. It’s just that I’m not above hating myself, and I want you to know that.
Because I know you care.
Very different from Hazlitt’s essay, as it should be. But what amazed me after it was published was that my friend, Patrick Madden (one of our best contemporary essayists), recognized it immediately as an essayistic response to Hazlitt.
Around the same time that I first read Hazlitt, I also read Sei Shoangon’s list of “Hateful Things” from her Pillow Book. Sei Shonagon was a lady-in-waiting in the royal court of Japan over a thousand years ago, and she wrote her musings in assorted notebooks with such powerful wit and candor that she seems to me more of a kindred spirit than Hazlitt. There’s no possible world in which she and I could have been friends except for the world of the essay. We even share some of the same hatreds.
A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.
One has gone to bed and is about to doze off when a mosquito appears, announcing himself in a reedy voice. One can actually feel the wind made by his wings, and, slight though it is, one finds it hateful in the extreme.
Even when Sei Shonagon’s hatreds are moored to her particular time and place in the Japanese royal court, they are related with such intelligence and charm, that I feel in complete sympathy with her. For me, this is the central goal in writing the bilious (or hateful) essay – not only to vent, but to allow the reader to recognize in your hatreds their own.
For Paid Subscribers:
Join me in a special “Hateful Things” Workshop on Saturday, April 7th at 3pm Eastern. We will discuss Hazlitt and Shonagon and begin our own essays on the pleasures of hating. This workshop is included in your annual subscription. The workshop will run 90 minutes on Zoom and will be recorded. If you are interested, please send an email to Robinhemley@gmail.com. The workshop will be limited to 12 paid subscribers.