(This is a sort-of review of the memoir published recently.)

I was a little surprised to see Christopher Hitchens’ memoir, Hitch-22, prominently displayed in an airport newsstand. Usually, books targeted for air travelers have less promise of literary quality, are good just for passing the time while waiting. But there it was, so, having forgotten to bring a book along, I decided to splurge on it (rarely buying a hardcover book for myself). We could try to analyze the means by which the book came to be shown at the airport newsstand; I mean the combination of factors that has let Hitchens attain an appeal broad enough to set him on a shelf before the generally bored and complacent eyes of the average American in transit. Has atheism gone mainstream in fact? Has an apparent visibility campaign by Hitchens gotten his name recognized by internet and cable TV viewers? Could it be that his conversion to the neoconservative view on foreign policy has made him acceptable to the majority occupying the right and middle? Might his unabashed American patriotism have won him the respect even of those who hate his views on religion? Whatever the case, he has arrived as perhaps our most prominent public intellectual.

I had returned home and had read most of the book before hearing, from a fellow booktalk member, about Hitchens’ diagnosis of esophageal cancer. Immediately I flashed on the first chapter of Hitch-22, “Prologue With Premonitions,” where he spins off a meditation on mortality from his experience of reading of his own death. A museum magazine showed his picture with a caption identifying him as “the late Christopher Hitchens.” This error was unsettling initially, but he soon reflected that it was only an apt reminder that we are all “dead men on leave” after all; and as for the question of whether it was too soon, at age 62, for him to write a memoir, well, that was answered too. Yet the “premonitions” in his chapter title does not intentionally refer to his now-known cancer sentence. It was after publication of the book that Hitchens learned of his illness. We can always speculate, though, about what the mind knows but isn’t announcing to its conscious part.

Readers of Hitchens’ break-out book, God Is Not Great, who are expecting some of the same, will not get much of it from Hitch-22. Hitchens’ atheism is mostly incidental to his career as an activist on the left (and later, some would say, on the right) and as a journalist. He doesn’t present his battle with religion as the central one of his life. Rather, his battle has always been for human rights. He cheerfully declares himself a hack and a pamphleteer, taking an early literary hero, Daniel Defoe, as his model. His most lasting influence, and the fact about him that tends for me to disarm criticism, has been literature. I admire both the intensity of his love of literature and the depth of his reading, neither of which I can match. Literature, he says, is superior to religion when it comes to tutoring us on ethics and morality, one of the truest things I've heard lately. I’d like to get a recommended reading list from him.

It’s always difficult to predict what will interest a reader. This might be especially true of a memoir. If the writer’s experience doesn't closely parallel the reader’s, or if the material is not already somewhat familiar to the reader, the writer has the tricky job of making his memories significant and interesting. For a good part of Hitch-22, the author details two major involvements: as an idealist in leftist political causes and as a member of an intellectual and literary circle that he compares to Bloomsbury. He probably makes a valuable original contribution to history on both these fronts, but unfortunately I have not paid close attention to either scene and so didn't feel that welcome sense of having inside things revealed to me about familiar matters. The desire to skim became strong, especially when my energy was already low. A good recommendation might be to read in this 420-page memoir, but not necessarily straight through it.

Read the early few chapters about his childhood, his mismatched parents, and his mother’s sordid death in a suicide pact with a deranged lover. Read about his later childhood and schooling. I found his description of taking on an American identity (leading to citizenship in 2007) to be worth following. He had the rather jolting experience of learning only at the age of around 40 of his mother’s Jewishness, and this is the subject of a good later chapter. Read also the long postscript to “Mesopotamia From Both Sides” concerning a young soldier whose journals reveal that he was inspired to enlist because of Hitchens’ writings. Hitchens becomes a close friend of Mark Daily's family after Daily is killed in action. He ends the book with a strong chapter on his arrival in the neoconservative fold (not a term he likes at all). This is titled “Decline, Mutation, or Metamorphosis?”

This book has a lot to say about friendship, for which Hitchens appears to have a talent. So there are separate chapters on Martin Amis, James Fenton, Salman Rusdie, and Edward Said (the one problematic friendship that ended in acrimony). To be frank, Hitchens also shows considerable hate, for Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger, for example.

Let me give you a further idea of the cast of main characters in his circle of friends and acquaintances. On the literary side are included the poets James Fenton, Robert Conquest, and Clive James; the novelists Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis (pere), Ian McEwan, Salman Rusdie, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Julian Barnes. On the political side are Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and Susan Sontag. Although not of course an acquaintance, no list of his literary influences would be complete without mention of George Orwell.

Hitch-22 is nothing if not a self-portrait of a complex man.

DWill
Thank you for this excellent summary. You make a very good point about reading the chapters on their own. I think Hitchen's talent as an essayist definitely shows in that this book didn't flow like a novel or autobiography, for me anyway. I hoped that he would give more attention to his marriage and family life and how it worked, or didn't, with his career. But, then I think it was Hitchens who said that "women are boring".

I did make note of his list of authors and am now reading The Moors Last Sigh by Rushdie. I recommend it highly for its sense of humor and insight into the Indian culture. It is lighter reading than some of Rushdie's other works and very enjoyable. Hitchens noted that Rushdie was very good with word play and it shows in the Moor.

I thought the book somehow seemed disjointed, too, more like a set of chapters having something to do with his life. I was curious about his personal life as well, but he didn't talk very much about it. I can can imagine Hitchens saying it's nobody's bloody business about his wife and kids, though he did make one confession about his shortcomings as a father. He is ever the journalist, wanting to tell the larger story rather than one about himself.

Thanks for the Rushdie recommendation. Among the many books I've skipped over are ones by Rushdie. Can't imagine why I didn't read The Satanic Verses when it came out amidst so much controversy. I do remember that the reaction was not in general in strong defense of Rushdie, just as Hitchens says and deplores.

What does he say about (the invasion of) Iraq?

He stresses Sadam's past WMD capability as lending credence to his then-current possession of WMD; the fact that almost everyone (not just U. S.) thought he had them; and Sadam as the bad guy posing the greatest threat of any in the world. His support of the invasion is of course well known.

Interesting. bah. So I'm guessing then that as far as he's concerned he was right all along. He hasn't changed his view to any significant degree?humbug.

Saddam wasn't half the threat that the USA was at the time, and I believe, continues to be; speaking of which, to the degree that "almost everyone" thought Saddam had WMD it was based on cherry-picked intel presented by the USA. The Gulf of Tonkin... Allende, the Shah... yeah Saddam was such a huge threat to world stability. I can still see Powell at the UN with the Medal of Freedom dude beside him ... and lest this admittedly tired rant on W and his people get out of hand, they weren't exceptions to American government, but merely one of the most extreme groups of a bad lot. Look at our current Nobel Peace Prize winner... than God (I guess that would be "Allah") in his case that he's nowhere near as dangerous conducting his wars as Saddam was with his.

But "Hitch" can make me laugh. His trailing comment when on a show disussing the recent passing of Jerry Falwell - If you gave him an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.