Hitch-22 - Some Confessions and Contradictions: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Highly Recommended
One of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century,
Lionel Trilling noted long ago - "Intellectuals have tended to embrace an
'adversary culture’: standing against the state, against the market, against
the establishment, against anything and everything but themselves. Conciliation
and Compromise do not come naturally to them."
Christopher Hitchens exemplifies Lionel Trilling's "adversary culture" to an extreme degree, earning a 10/10 rating who relentlessly critiqued the power structures - British monarchy, U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, Islamic Fatwa on Salman Rushdie, Mother Teresa's piety, Henry Kissinger's realpolitik and post-9/11 "Islamofascism" - often aligning against consensus on both left and right. Who was Christopher Hitchens? Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) was a British American author, public intellectual and journalist known for his sharp polemics on politics, religion and culture.
Hitch-22 stands as an exceptional memoir - topical, incisive, witty, and profoundly revealing - demanding your time and rewarding it richly. His memoir is more than a biography; it's an invitation to dive into the brilliant and controversial mind of Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens reflects upon the intricate tapestry of his life—the friendships forged and alliances fractured, the ideological battles fought and noble causes surrendered, the missteps taken and doubts that shadowed his convictions. The book is eminently readable, with many anecdotal details put in with figures like Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Amis and others, illustrating his life and worldview.
The book opens with his memories of early childhood
moving between locations like Malta, Scotland and later Portsmouth in England
due to his father's career as a Royal Navy commander. The book traces his
stay at the boarding school in Cambridge, where he encountered strict religious
indoctrination that he later associated with authoritarianism and rejected
early on.
Hitchens began his career as a foreign correspondent and
journalist. The book covers Christopher
Hitchens' travels to various global hotspots like Northern Ireland,
Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Portugal, Bosnia, Cuba, Prague
(Czechoslovakia) and Afghanistan. to expose dictatorships and even to Athens (Greece) to claim his
mother's body amid anti-junta demonstrations. These
visits shaped his views on tyranny, exile and resistance.
The memoir clears mark his introduction into
politics at Balliol College, Oxford through the radical left in the 1960s and
1970s, but over time he grew distant with much of the organized left. Hitchens chronicles his gradual break from the
traditional left, starting with the Soviet crackdown in Czechoslovakia, the
Rushdie fatwa in 1989, accelerating over Bosnia and culminating
post-9/11 with Iraq support.
In his memoirs, Christopher Hitchens frames the Satanic
Verses fatwa episode as symbolic of a cultural and political conflict where
parts of the left offered insufficient support against religious
authoritarianism. The left in England was divided about fully championing
Rushdie due to the delicate balance between free speech and respect for
religious identity. In contrast, Hitchens and like-minded defenders emerged as
vocal advocates for literary freedom against the threat of religious fanaticism.
The book details his longstanding support for Kurdish
self-determination and autonomy against Saddam Hussein's regime. He recounts
visits to Kurdish areas in the 1990s, witnessing atrocities like chemical
attacks, which fueled his advocacy and later Iraq War stance.
Hitch-22 was Hitchens' last book, his autobiography, considered the best for those who align with his unapologetic views and his dismissal of faith-based arguments. Shortly after publishing of the book, he left the world due to esophageal
cancer in 2011. But his autobiography, Hitch-22 offers a
revealing glimpse into a turbulent and inspiring life. The
book is testament to his encyclopedic intellect and unorthodox shifts across
political spectrums while championing enlightenment value.
In this era, it is
profoundly troubling that our society has abandoned the celebration of
intellectualism. The right accommodates religious extremism
through appeasement, while the left, paradoxically, has capitulated to unwittingly
ended up pandering to the most regressive elements. For many citizens, the
distinction between genuine intellectual inquiry and demeaning judgements has
become impossibly blurred, making honest discourse increasingly difficult.
We seek
inspiration from a memoir that boldly reflects the journey of a public
intellectual navigating the complex realms of politics, religion, culture and
human nature with courage and honesty. It embraces the fearless questioning of
beliefs and challenges established norms, guided by principles like Hitchens's
razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed
without evidence." This wisdom calls for rigor and skepticisms in our
pursuit of truth and understanding.