Hitch-22A Memoir

The next best thing to raising a glass or two with the famous gadfly himself
The word “memoir” has come to signify coming of age stories fraught with problems, issues, or quirks. Some of these books are, of course, wonderful, but the genre of late has often rolled towards TMI. Readers looking for a more old-fashioned and less solipsistic personal narrative will thank god for Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch 22 (the deity’s name is lower case, of course, in tribute to the author’s previous bestseller god is Not Great). Instead of discourses on eating disorders or funny family Christmases, Hitchens provides anecdotes on Trotskyite dogma, and word games with famous novelists.

Hitch 22 is more political and cultural bildungsroman than prototypical autobiography. Beginning with his English country childhood, in the embarrassingly named hamlet of Crapstone, Hitchens lays out his path from bourgeois beginnings to intellectual infamy. When his mother sent him to boarding school so he would reach the upper class, he guzzled books as if they were soda, and began a lifetime of in-print and in-person rabble-rousing. By 1969, Hitchens was an Oxford luminary, as infamous for his arrests for various left-wing causes as for his crystalline debate skills and ability to put away bottles of top-shelf alcohol. His next stop was London. Writing for various newspapers and journals, Hitchens became friends with fellow hippie-intellectuals including the then-budding novelists Martin Amis and pre-Satanic Verses fatwa Salman Rushdie.

Most Americans know Hitchens in his next incarnation. As Brit-in-America columnist for The Nation and Vanity Fair, he’s reported from war-torn Yugoslavia, gotten water boarded on camera, and — infamously — backed the Gulf War. It is on this last item that a bit more confession would have been appreciated; one of the great questioners of our time does not stop to exhume his own political missteps. As a frequent traveler to Iraq, Hitchens was privy to some of the worst and bloodiest of Saddam Hussein’s crimes. Understandable passion for the dictator’s overthrow caused Hitchens to atypically disregard the banner under which he marched: the Bush Doctrine and the disregard and lies it encompassed.

But still. This man stood literally side by side with Rushdie when few other so-called radicals would even publish his name for fear of violent retribution. Who, at the scene of his beloved mother’s death, still managed to think about the revolutionary greater struggles in the world — and so puts that loss into the context of the rest of his life. Whose friendships not only have lasted longer than his marriages, but who also has the dignity not to delve into personal-life details that would hurt or anger those still alive.

In the end, and especially for a book that so frequently uses the term “Trotskyite,” Hitch 22 is riveting. Or at least the next best thing to raising a glass or two and smoking a pack with the gadfly himself.