# Reading > Write a Book Review >  "Hitch 22"

## Sarabande

I’ve just finished reading the memoirs of Christopher Hitchens. Not only did this experience exponentially increase my vocabulary, it provided an invaluable and rewarding glimpse into the intellectual life. In a sense "Hitch 22" is a companion piece to the "Biography of Martin Amis", since it's populated with many of the same characters, situations and settings. 

Hitchens makes an admission: in his lifetime he has kept “two sets of books” and these could be inscribed metaphorically as either Christopher or Chris (hence the titular reference to Joseph Heller). The “two sets of books” kept by Hitchens also included bisexuality, which I had long suspected with the Martin Amis relationship but which, ironically, was not actually a feature of that friendship. Bisexuality was an element of Oxford dormitory life and Hitchens speaks frankly about those experiences. He says about Martin, "I find now that I can more or less acquit myself on any charge of having desired Martin carnally"(157). 

There’s a sharp duality here right from the start; on the one hand a conservative Catholic upbringing juxtaposed with an Oxford education which provided an entree to some exceptional thinkers, poets, writers and activists. Hitchens adopted the radical path of left-wing political activism in Communist countries (he was then an avowed Trotskyite) and his exploits in some of the less savoury tourist haunts, such as Havana, showed me the extent of his naivete, his singular desire to change the world and the trouble this attracted. I’m afraid this was the rebarbative Hitchens; the man for whom everything could be filtered through the prism of hostile dissent. It was easy to skim through these chapters. And I didn’t like many of his fellow travellers.

Keeping ‘two sets of books’ also meant Hitchens could be both serious and frivolous, and his puerile word-games with Amis and others – and the fact that he actually chose to document these - show the extent of his sometime immaturity and self-destructive drinking ("the demon I carry around with me")!! He candidly admits his “insecurities”, using this excuse to justify some dubious behaviours.

But something happened to Hitchens: he fell in love - with the United States!! His prose about looking towards Manhatten from Long Island absolutely glows in the dark. Hitchens’s American project becomes the driving force in his life. This is the eloquent, funny and passionate Hitchens – when he’s not being an ideologue. (And many observations about American politics show the reader that he held a deep antipathy – no, an actual hatred – towards Nixon, Reagan, Kissinger and Clinton. The benefits of keeping “two sets of books”?) 

September 11 foments Hitchens’s understanding, in his chapter headed “Changing Sides”, of the extent of hatred and antipathy directed towards the USA. One glowing passage about anti-Americanism and extremist cant reads:

“Here was an unexampled case of seeing all one’s worst enemies in plain view; the clerical freaks and bigots of all persuasions and the old Charles Lindbergh isolationist Right, the latter sometimes masquerading as a corny and folksy version of a Grassy Knoll conspiracist “Left”. I took it upon myself to defend my adopted homeland from this kind of insult and calumny, the spittle of which was being gigglingly prepared even as the funerals and commemorations were going calmly forward”.(249)

And this kind of hatred also ensued from articulate American citizens: Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal. These angry men had to be set adrift from Hitchens so that he could fulfil his parturition as American paladin and, frankly, re-orient his antipathies and grievances towards religion and its "superstitions". It appears to have little affected the man that he was sometimes the object of international obloquy and contempt for his verbal chicanery.

Christopher Hitchens is at his most powerful and eloquent when describing Islamofascism: “It took me a long time to separate and classify the 3 now-distinctive elements of the new and grievance-privileged Islamist mentality, which are self-righteousness, self-pity and self-hatred”.(271)

Hitchens's grasp of language is phenomenal and he uses it as a weapon. Hubris in abundance. Also language is a distancing device - as though he's standing quite far from the experience and recounting as an impartial observer. However, when he speaks about his mother - about whom he always refers by name (except when he lets slip that she was occasionally still "mummy) - there's real affection and loss which is tinged with guilt. (Yvonne committed suicide in Athens in a bizarre pact with a mentally unhinged male companion when Hitchens was 24.) 

In spite of this, there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, particularly when Hitchens recalls Yvonne's attempts at sex education. But the book does suffer the same fate as much autobiography; it's always the adult perspective, no matter how the author might want to evoke childhood experience. In the case of Christopher Hitchens the cynical athiest and raconteur is everywhere in evidence and it's almost a case of suspending belief to learn that he was ever a child!! Then there is the embellishment of the creative writer. He'll use expressions like "or so I'm told" when discussing a particularly prodigious trait, which I always think is somewhat disingenuous. Sometimes I feel he's trying to convince the reader of something which he barely believes himself! 

One thing leaps out of the pages of "Hitch 22" and that is the incredible gift for friendship that Christopher Hitchens possessed. He says the same thing about Martin Amis, who seemed to carry the dominant role in that relationship. Hitchens quotes in the chapter heading"Martin" the words of Martin Amis himself:

"My friendship with the Hitch has always been perfectly cloudless. It is a love whose month is ever May". It is refreshing to hear one man speak about his friendship with another in such direct terms.

Notwithstanding a life of cerebral endeavour and intellectual stimulation and adventure, I developed an instinctive conviction that what Christopher Hitchens really sought was to belong – to a tribe or a family – and that, for many complex reasons, this was poorly understood by him and never fully realized.

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## Pompey Bum

> But something happened to Hitchens: he fell in love - with the United States!! His prose about looking towards Manhatten from Long Island absolutely glows in the dark. Hitchens’s American project becomes the driving force in his life. This is the eloquent, funny and passionate Hitchens – when he’s not being an ideologue. (And many observations about American politics show the reader that he held a deep antipathy – no, an actual hatred – towards Nixon, Reagan, Kissinger and Clinton.


Yes, that St. Paul syndrome will get you every time. Hate something enough and it must have some kind of hold on you. Or in the immortal words of Walt Kelly, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

In any case, thank you for this insightful and intelligently written essay. Please don't misunderstand me, but it saves me from the bother of ever having to read the book. No, that does sound harsh, and it's not really what I meant. I've always had such contempt for intellectual (or vernacular) Yank hatred ("Those ignorant Americans, what a bunch of bigots!") that I guess I never really thought about the hubris. It just seemed (and still seems) like such a self-negating and self-satisfied pile of detritus that I never took that "family" (as you nicely put it) very seriously. I suppose it was supposed to sting or something, but it never did.

That made "Hitch" (who possibly should have called his book [Sw]itch) something of an enigma to me. But no more, and thank you for that. Apparently 9/11 brought an awareness to some that the Cold War really was over, and that now was the time for all good lemmings to seek new cliffs. And it turned out that the Americans were not the problem after all. It was the Muslims. _ Of course_. It all makes sense now.

Please don't consider my Philistine petulance to be directed at you, Sarabande. Your essay was outstanding, and it answered my questions about Christopher Hitchins. There is never enough time for all the books. But you have given me a little bit more. Thank you.

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## Poetaster

Good piece of writing! I can only agree with it too, having read the book myself. Actually, in some areas you have summed up my feelings about the book in words better than I could pick in some places.

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## kev67

If Hitch loved America, America seemed to Love Hitch. I have not read any of his books, I am just basing this observations on YouTube videos I have watched. He could defend his position, interestingly, for however long anyone had patience to listen to. I liked the guy. He followed his logic through to its unsavoury conclusions. I can see how he and Martin Amis got on. He was rather abrasive though. I am not sure he was always right either.

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## Sarabande

Thanks so much, people, for your kind comments on my book review. Kev67 I'm sure Christopher ("Don't call me Chris") Hitchens wasn't always right but it was interesting to listen to/read somebody who was generally fearless in making an opinion. It's the same with Germaine Greer - I disagree quite a lot with her but I sure do admire her fearlessness and ferocious intellect. She's possibly one of the most interesting people on the planet, though she can be wacky at times.

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## Iain Sparrow

> Yes, that St. Paul syndrome will get you every time. Hate something enough and it must have some kind of hold on you. Or in the immortal words of Walt Kelly, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
> 
> In any case, thank you for this insightful and intelligently written essay. Please don't misunderstand me, but it saves me from the bother of ever having to read the book. No, that does sound harsh, and it's not really what I meant. I've always had such contempt for intellectual (or vernacular) Yank hatred ("Those ignorant Americans, what a bunch of bigots!") that I guess I never really thought about the hubris. It just seemed (and still seems) like such a self-negating and self-satisfied pile of detritus that I never took that "family" (as you nicely put it) very seriously. I suppose it was supposed to sting or something, but it never did.
> 
> That made "Hitch" (who possibly should have called his book [Sw]itch) something of an enigma to me. But no more, and thank you for that. Apparently 9/11 brought an awareness to some that the Cold War really was over, and that now was the time for all good lemmings to seek new cliffs. And it turned out that the Americans were not the problem after all. It was the Muslims. _ Of course_. It all makes sense now.
> 
> Please don't consider my Philistine petulance to be directed at you, Sarabande. Your essay was outstanding, and it answered my questions about Christopher Hitchins. There is never enough time for all the books. But you have given me a little bit more. Thank you.


I am a fan of Hitchens, loved reading his essays when I was young... young, naive and impressionable. But alas I'm not so young and not nearly so naive, and somewhere along the way, Hitch had lost some of his luster with me.

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## Sarabande

I hear what you're saying Iain; one can grow tired of the pontifications of the elite - be they Left or Right. I admire the writing style of Hitchens and his particular way of assessing a situation and getting to its essential elements. He developed a very strong understanding of human behaviour in all its complexity and this comes across loud and clear in the autobiography. I can do without the religious polemics, to be sure. These bored me, but when I drilled down to a greater understanding of the man through his readings it became apparent that there was much more to him than his public utterances.

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## Iain Sparrow

> I hear what you're saying Iain; one can grow tired of the pontifications of the elite - be they Left or Right. I admire the writing style of Hitchens and his particular way of assessing a situation and getting to its essential elements. He developed a very strong understanding of human behaviour in all its complexity and this comes across loud and clear in the autobiography. I can do without the religious polemics, to be sure. These bored me, but when I drilled down to a greater understanding of the man through his readings it became apparent that there was much more to him than his public utterances.


I think the problem I had with him, reading Hitchens and catching him on tv interviews over many years, was his automatic condemnation of anything that contradicts Science and Reason. I'm an atheist, and as such I'll keep an open mind, even when the discussion turns to God & Religion.
I think Hitchens appealed to me more when I was an angry (crusading) atheist, and had my nose in the air... though I do recall reading those essays of his and remarking to myself, "god damn can this guy ever write".

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## Poetaster

Iain, I've largely found the same. I went though a period of being an angry atheist, where I would read his books and watch his YouTube debates on religion religiously, ironically. Since I stopped being so ... insufferable I've fallen out of love with 'The Hitch'. I still like his literature essays, I still like his political essays, and even his anti-religious stuff, I just don't have the same level of passion for him or his work.

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## Clopin

I actually like both the Hitchens because they both seem to possess intellectual honesty. And even though I find the zealous atheist to be very annoying (and of course I was one myself ten years ago) and think that some of Peters ideas, for example on drug laws, somewhat draconian; really intellectual honesty is the most important thing for a journalist. Intellect helps of course, and they both had intellect.

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## Sarabande

> I actually like both the Hitchens because they both seem to possess intellectual honesty. And even though I find the zealous atheist to be very annoying (and of course I was one myself ten years ago) and think that some of Peters ideas, for example on drug laws, somewhat draconian; really intellectual honesty is the most important thing for a journalist. Intellect helps of course, and they both had intellect.


Great comments! Can you explain what you mean by "draconian" drug laws? Haven't we got such an explosive social problem now that SOMETHING radical is called for? People are dying and/or killing others; it's 'war'!!

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## Clopin

> Great comments! Can you explain what you mean by "draconian" drug laws? Haven't we got such an explosive social problem now that SOMETHING radical is called for? People are dying and/or killing others; it's 'war'!!


I believe Portugal has had some success with completely decriminalizing drugs, and I'm usually pro choice on issues such as this. I don't really think the government has the right to enslave someone for non violent drug use.

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## Clopin

Oh I should add that I actually believe drugs can be very beneficial to people, I think marijuanna is an effective antidepressant and I've had good experiences with psychadelic hallucinogens like LSD and mushrooms. I find the self righteous hippie who will talk to you for half an hour about how drugs 'expand your mind' as annoying as anyone else does, so it's unfortunate that actually I have to agree with them. I have found psychadelics to be entirely beneficial in my life and mushrooms especially have forced me to look at myself and life in general from very different points of view. I can honestly say that I don't think I would be the same person without having had these experiences and that I have no plans to ever stop taking them (I probably do so once a year, if that).

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