Hitch 22: A Memoir

Editorial Reviews. From Bookmarks Magazine. Christopher Hitchens stands alone among 20th- Hitch A Memoir - Kindle edition by Christopher Hitchens.
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And yet, as elsewhere, he is incapable of admitting he was wrong. You sense that when push comes to shove he is more interested in being controversial than accurate. You not only must know how to write, but you have to be privately, personally, sound at the core. Not sane; but sound. If not, it always shows. Slight smell of cheese in the air, and the work gets a limp, rotting, glazed look. As well, a whole pack of hounds not barking in the night.

But they would miss a book that overflows with good provocative sense. Wrong about the most important issue of our time, he is courageous and right about the Falklands, Portugal, Argentina, Kurdistan. Get the best at Telegraph Puzzles. Hitchens really didn't like Bill Clinton. He had known him while Clinton was in England on a Rhodes Scholarship. For one, he may have known too much about Bill during his college days. The more I hear about Clinton in England the more unsavory the stories become.

Hitchens took a lot of heat from the left for the shots he took at Clinton during the election. One thing everyone needs to understand about Hitchens, and I admire him for it, is that he is his own man and can be as critical of the left as he is the right. Hitchens was summoned to the Vatican to be asked questions about Mother Theresa. I haven't read his writings on her, but from what I understand he thought she was out of her mind.

The Vatican put him in the role of Devil's advocate as they decided on whether she was deserving of a sainthood. Hitchens, the great atheist, summoned to the center of Christian faith to be asked his opinion? He left his mark on the world. He sliced and diced his enemies, which he truly felt were also the enemies of the world and he defended his friends when he agreed with them and vehemently disagreed with them when he had an opposing view.

It must have been lonely at times being Christopher Hitchens. He died, too young, at age 62 from esophageal cancer in December The tone of this volume is jocular at times and very serious at others as he hammered home his views. Whatever your political association you will squirm reading this book.

He was his own man, a man to be admired, but maybe not a man you would want to know too well unless you are someone who likes being challenged on every core principle you hold dear. I will definitely be reading more books by Christopher Hitchens. One warning after reading this book you might find yourself voicing those opinions that normally you would keep silent. He has certainly had that influence on me. You can read my most recent book and movie reviews at http: View all 91 comments. Feb 28, Petra X rated it it was amazing Shelves: Hitchens states that Clinton's famous statement on him not inhaling was correct.

That he knew him at Oxford and that Clinton was allergic to smoke. I know by evidence of my own eyes and testimony from a rather involved participant that Clinton smoked huge joints and looked very happy about doing so! This has somewhat destroyed Hitchens' credibility although maybe increased the enjoyability of the book as I see if I can find any more 'errors'.

Hitchens, however, does mention Clin Hitchens states that Clinton's famous statement on him not inhaling was correct. Hitchens, however, does mention Clinton's lesbian girlfriends, and this bit I know to be absolutely true. This is how I know. Towards the end of Clinton's first term in office she showed me a photograph of the Pres in his Rhodes Scholarship days in bed naked with a huge joint in his mouth and his arms around two naked girls.

One of the two girls was the journalist's much older lesbian lover: He smoked for the same reason a lot of us like a puff at romantic times, really rather enhances it. I said to her that she just had to get the photograph out there, that she would be able to retire on the proceeds, or be famous, or both. But no, she wouldn't. She said she didn't want to hurt him politically. I said that an awful lot of the youth of America don't bother voting and if they saw Bill living the Boy's Own dream - a scholarship to Oxford, in bed with two stunningly beautiful women, one of whom at least was a lezzie, smoking a big joint, they would rush to vote back in a president who they could at least relate to!

And I was probably wrong. Too many right wing fundamentalist killjoys in the US.

Hitch-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens: review

But still I did see the pic and the journalist is going strong, an author now and the photo is still insurance money for her old age. The book - oh, it's very good. Not as good as Hitchens' Arguably: Selected Essays but still an excellent read. He had a very interesting childhood and flitted around with his sexuality somewhat, the dalliances of which he obviously enjoyed recalling.

He also found out that he was Jewish a fact his mother had never mentioned but it didn't temper his extremely left-wing atheism nor his also-famous brother Peter's very traditional right-wing Christianity. As a strongly individualist intellectual, Hitchens never compromised and as a man with brilliant communication skills, he left a very interesting autobiography of his life and times.

Recommended to everyone who is a bit of an iconoclast and enjoys cheering on others of that ilk. Look what I just found! A story in the NYPost about my little anecdote. I like he went out with the lesbian girlfriend of my friend. I don't think he ever knew the truth about Bill and inhaling. View all 72 comments. Petra X Negin wrote: That must have been one of the most entertaining and, hate to use the word, but juiciest. I just happened to have an inside story to it.

Petra X Debbie wrote: Is that a recent update you added? So I corrected them is all. Sep 12, Aug 26, Diane rated it it was amazing Shelves: Now this is a memoir worth reading! We are in the Age of Memoir, but so few deserve the time. Christopher Hitchens lived enough for 10 lives -- he was a revolutionary, journalist, provocateur, vagabond, contrarian, essayist, raconteur, socialist, intellectual, atheist and he loved a good Scotch. Hitch, as his friends called him, started writing his autobiography when he turned The story goes that in he was surprised to see the phrase "the late Christopher Hitchens" beneath a photo of hi Now this is a memoir worth reading!

The story goes that in he was surprised to see the phrase "the late Christopher Hitchens" beneath a photo of him at an art exhibition, and he knew that the description would eventually become true. Best not to wait too long to write my memoirs, he thought. It was fortunate that he wrote quickly because about a year later, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and he died in December Hitch was born in England but had traveled all over the world by the time he was Coming of age in the s, it was the perfect time to be a socialist and a revolutionary.

Hitch emigrated to the United States in the s, and I enjoyed hearing his outsider's perspective on American culture. My favorites were when Martin took Hitch to a whorehouse as "research" for a book, and Salman's gift at word games. Those moments were a tender antidote to the stories of Hitch's contrariness.

I listened to this on audiobook and would highly recommend it to anyone who likes politics, social commentary or a lively conversationalist. Hitch has a lot of opinions, not all of which I agree with, but I loved listening to his stories. View all 11 comments. Dec 16, Paul Bryant marked it as to-read-nonfiction. Stupidity and cruelty in high places can sleep a little easier now that Christopher Hitchens has gone.

He was not so much a writer as a presence. He raised contempt to the level of high art. I may not have agreed with a whole lot of what he said but it gladdened the heart that he said it at all, and inspired the mind in the way that he said it. Complex sentences seemed to appear fully formed in his brain as he spoke.

It was almost frightening. In the end he showed us how the good atheist dies. T Stupidity and cruelty in high places can sleep a little easier now that Christopher Hitchens has gone. The only mitigation I find for him dying at such a paltry age, a less than generous helping, is that in his 62 years he drank more, talked more, argued more, thought more, shagged more, wrote more, disbelieved more, celebrated more and inspired more than other people would have done with twice the time.

He appeared not to be scared of anything. If we have to have egomaniacs, he was the best kind. View all 14 comments. I first heard of Hitchens on the day of his death — in my defence I was still quite new to the UK and was just getting familiar with the intellectual life here insert a self-mocking chuckle here. It was an updated edition which included a heart-felt introduction Hitchens I first heard of Hitchens on the day of his death — in my defence I was still quite new to the UK and was just getting familiar with the intellectual life here insert a self-mocking chuckle here.

It was an updated edition which included a heart-felt introduction Hitchens wrote when he already knew he was dying. It also speaks rather poorly of the foundation of their faith. Maybe not a militant misogynist, but most certainly sexist. The world he presents in his memoir is a world almost completely devoid of women. We will only find an idealised portrait of his glamourous mother and some paragraphs praising Susan Sontag. There are influencers, thinkers, friends, gay-lovers, enemies — all described in painstaking detail, sometimes mind-numbing details like here-is-the-first-time-I-saw-Martin-Amis and here-are-the-first-words-Martin-Amis-said-to-me and they all have dicks.

If there is a passing mention of a woman editor or someone it is always accompanied by a qualifying adjective referring to her looks. His first wife is nowhere to be found in this book, his second wife lurks in the margins. His bromance with Martin Amis gets a lot of air time here.

For example, he insists that his best mate Amis is a linguistic genius but the examples to back it up are of this sort: I have asked many people what they thought of Hitchens and discovered that he was both disliked and respected by both the left and right. He cherry-picked according to his own moral code and thus made enemies everywhere he went. You might disagree with some of his views it would be unlikely for you to disagree with ALL of his views but such a political courage must be admired even if his dogmatism, absolute lack of any self-doubt and occasional pettiness might infuriate.

In his own words: On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. Despite his sexism and some of his views, I will happily admit that I am insanely jealous of his erudition. When I grow up, I will be an intellectual too.

In fact, it was just so full of quotables that despite my previously mentioned reservations, I enjoyed myself tremendously reading this book. Here are some of his clever soundbites. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono.


  1. Hitch A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens?
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  4. Hitch - Wikipedia;
  5. The Fox in the Field.

Hitler was Austrian, Bonaparte Corsican. In postwar Greece and Turkey the two most prominent ultra-right nationalists had both been born in Cyprus. It was a bit much even for Commander Hitchens, who privately thought the islands slightly absurd and probably undefendable.

When the time came when his old Royal Navy was sinking and shattering the Argentine fleet, the cadet school of which was a training camp for torture and rape, I was one of the very few socialists to support Mrs. Thatcher and he was one of the very few Tories to doubt the wisdom of the enterprise.

I can still vaguely remember these sweet Beatrix Potter—type creatures, smaller and prettier and more agile and lacking the rat-like features that disclose themselves when you get close to a gray squirrel. These latter riffraff, once imported from America by some kind of regrettable accident, had escaped from captivity and gradually massacred and driven out the more demure and refined English breed. Whatever the truth of that, the sighting of a native English squirrel was soon to be a rarity, confined to the north of Scotland and the Isle of Wight, and this seemed to be emblematic, for the anxious lower middle class, of a more general massification and degentrification and, well, Americanization of everything.

The only time I really gritted my teeth was when Hitchens talked about Poland. Not because there was anything wrong with what he was saying but because he seemed to follow this outrageous trend that every English book seems to adhere to and that is of always getting the spelling of Polish names of people or places wrong. I used to take photos of all of those misspellings in various books until I had to stop because it was too depressing.

It just strikes me as seriously disrespectful because it takes about 5 seconds to check the correct spelling on Wikipedia. Kolakowski had, like so many of the intellectual leadership of Eastern Europe, been partly deported and partly self-exiled. I think my favourite misspelling would be what Hitchens called the Polish equivalent of The Guardian: I know this review does not really have a flow to it but if I were to try to connect all these scattered thoughts into some cohesive narrative, this already long review would turn gargantuan.

I guess I will take a page from his own book - he talks a lot about the danger of meeting your heroes and of finally realising you can criticise them and continue to admire them. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce.

All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships — gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction.

View all 21 comments. Jun 13, Darwin8u rated it really liked it Shelves: I still remember the day he died and find myself turning to his fiction and nonfiction frequently to sooth the sharp-edges of this mortal coil. Just like Hitchens, I've avoided finishing ALL of his books simply because the IDEA that there are words of his yet unread by me, keeps my heart pumping blood to my cold feet. I once door-knocked into his home in Aspen. One of my biggest regrets is I didn't come back every day and knock again, and again, and again, until he WAS home. After Thompson died I wanted to summon him back with my continual knocking at his door.

While I seldom agreed completely with what he wrote, I admired almost every word he put out into the dark, unorganized Universe. He was an example of a fighter, a thinker, and public intellectual that would take risks. He wrote because he had both passion and an opinion. I admired his ability to quarrel with friends, change his mind, upset sacred apple carts, wake sleeping giants, and push an argument up a hill until the hill, the sky, his rock-hard argument, and reader were all exhausted.

I think intuitively he grasped an order or position? I still cling to: I loved his hatred of meanness and ideology. I loved his passion for language and literature and poetry. I loved his attempts to be fluent rather than glib, quick rather than fast, and pointed rather than sharp. I adore how adorned with tabs and flags his books become after I've read them.

I loved his gratitude for good friends, good books, good food and wine and spirits , and a good fight. I loved his love for Martin Amis. It is unabashed, and while not unique among men, his ability to occupy a zone of love that feels closer to Abraham Lincoln's or Augustus Caesar's day.

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This points at just how unique and iconoclastic he was. I consider him a friend and a teacher and an many ways an ideal. He certainly wasn't perfect, but God he WAS interesting. View all 12 comments. Most who have observed Christopher Hitchens over the years would agree that he possesses a ferocious intellect and is unafraid to tackle the most contentious subjects. Now 60, English-born and American by adoption; all atheist and partly Jewish; bohemian even listing "drinking" along with "dis Description: Now 60, English-born and American by adoption; all atheist and partly Jewish; bohemian even listing "drinking" along with "disputation" as "hobbies" in "Who's Who" , he has held to a consistent thread of principle whether opposing war in Vietnam or supporting intervention in Iraq.

As a foreign correspondent in some of the world's nastiest places, a lecturer and teacher and an esteemed literary critic, Hitchens manifests a style that is at once ironic, witty, and tough-minded. A legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for literature, he has sometimes ridiculed those who claim that the personal is political, though he has often seemed to illustrate that very idea. Readers will find that his own many opposites attract, as do his many sketches of friendship and ex-friendship, from Martin Amis to Noam Chomsky.

Condemned to be able to see both sides of any argument, Christopher Hitchens has contradictions that contain their own multitudes. Both Clive James and Christopher Hitchens are helping me maintain the headology required to battle through chemo, so whilst I mark this as read, cherry-picking re-read chapters is the way forward. View all 19 comments. Nov 17, Abubakar Mehdi rated it it was amazing. This is how I was introduced to Christopher Hitchens.

Born in Portsmouth, son of a naval officer and his beautiful young wife, Hitchens studied at Cambridge and Oxford before becoming a journalist and fulltime contributor to various magazines. Charming, eloquent, witty and very well read, Hitchens called himself a product of A time of great intellectual and political tumult.

Hitchens was the public intellectual for a generation that missed the horrors of the World Wars as well as much of the Cold war, only to witness a world that is rotting and corrupting like a festering wound. It was quite early, in his Oxford days to be precise, that Hitchens was attracted to the politics and ideology of the left. He later read Trotsky and became a part of the international socialist movement as a consequence. Even later in life, when he had left behind his previous ideological convictions, he still considered himself a Marxist and a Trotskyist in more then one ways.

But what always stayed with him, was his contempt for Totalitarianism in all its forms.

This one ideology espoused by him early in life will become an integral part of his career as a writer and a journalist. He despised bigotry, abuse of the poor, moral corruption and absolutism. He wrote pamphlet style books against Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger, condemning them for their hypocrisy, abuse of power and moral destitute. And also wrote biographies of his heroes Orwell, Jefferson and Paine.

Hitchens emigrated to America in early 80s and started living in Washington, where he stayed permanently for the rest of his life. He wrote books and articles at a prodigious rate publishing in leading magazines. But the greatest turn in his career is marked by his two stands that changed the way he was perceived by the general public. Namely, his support for Iraq war and his anti-theism. While you may disagree with him on many points, yet it is impossible to ignore Hitchens. He is the God of arguments. He always delivers his points in an articulate and convincing way, and you cannot help but be impressed by him even in your disagreement.

As eloquent on the podium as he was on page, Hitchens never shied from a debate and craved to discard his opponents with a wit and intelligence that made it all too easy for him to do so. A formidable opponent and a strong advocate of scepticism and reason, he spearheaded the new atheist movement alongside Dawkins, Harris and Dennett. Another of Hitchens astonishing feature was his friendship with the brightest minds of his age.

The book contains innumerable literary references, something a bibliophile like himself could hardly control. He discusses his early childhood and his relationship with his mother and father in detail. He talks about the people and the books that influenced him and also, about the various positions he took on many issues.

I am quite sure that Hitchens will remain relevant and important for many generations to come, because the issues that he talks about will remain an integral part of the socio-political discourse. View all 4 comments. Oct 17, E rated it liked it Shelves: I didn't interrupt you. If that sort of disrespectful self-regard makes you seethe, you're unlikely to enjoy less than one page of it.

I adore him for his wit and his relentless expounding on the value of dissidence. But I've known many a dissident who's half in it for the ego boost, and Hitchens has yet to convince me he's not one of them. He openly admits to being a Trotskyist who cannot divorce himself from the joys of the gentleman's lifestyle books, booze and name-dropping. At times I find myself enamored of the intricacies of such a union, and other times enraged by the inherent contradictions.

He could be a little less Eurocentric in his predilections. And his insistence that work trumps experience either ignores or defends the short-sighted arrogance of many intellectuals. But his passion for a life spent arguing oneself an identity is absolutely infectious. I do hope he's around long enough to offer us more of his thoughts. Will there ever be a time when I review a book of Hitchens' as a horrible piece of literature, or even a mediocre one, or even at middle-class level?

Never say never, but I publicly reserve my doubts. By this point in my journey through his writing, he frightens me. It should be impossible for one to be so cunning, so witty, so ironic, so inteligent, so cultured and so literate, all in the same aprox. But, alas, here comes this giant of public intelect Will there ever be a time when I review a book of Hitchens' as a horrible piece of literature, or even a mediocre one, or even at middle-class level? But, alas, here comes this giant of public intelectualism, showing us all how it should be done. In his memoir, brilliantly named as it is, Hitchens takes the reader through the highs and lows of his life, through the thick and thin.

However much he seems to be a self-centered ass which I, not even secretly, love to bits about men who can back it up , this book is He has put into words what made him who he is, and I find that to be a very great achievement, in and by itself. Give the chance, I encourage everyone to give this book ago. In fact, make this the first book you read by him; a lot of people might need an introduction to why he is who he is, and then work backwards through his religious and political essays, in order to accept his demanding tone and his cockiness. Honestly, I aspire to be this man.

I aspire to have had such a hand at creating the world, I aspire to understand how much he did about it. He would absolutely loathe my idolatry, however much he'd love the compliments, but I can't stop believing that this what a humanist should be like. Mar 24, Nick Black rated it really liked it Recommended to Nick by: View all 10 comments.

Jan 02, A.

Hitch A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens – review | Books | The Guardian

Howard rated it it was amazing Shelves: The first time I read Christopher Hitchens I thought he was completely full of shit. I don't remember the exact specifics, but I have a decent enough recall of the circumstances. My metaphorical cherry was popped by his "Fighting Words" column on Slate, and I can all but guarantee that that the topic was Iraq.

This must have been at some point in the months immediately following the invasion, after the initial toppling-of-statues glow of liberation was beginning to wain. Actually, since the tone of his Iraq articles displayed such a venom to the anti-war left, which I considered myself a member of, a rather ardent Republican ideologue. And so to the title, which still strikes me as bizarre. It is, I think, an allusion to the double life that Hitchens has led since Oxford: He pauses at one point to illustrate his moderation, but I vividly remember an occasion when he joined an after-party party in my kitchen some time in the late 90s.

We did not stint. At about six in the morning he said he was sorry to leave us, but he had to appear on what I seem to remember was Breakfast with Frost. The rest of us staggered to the TV to watch what we feared might be some kind of disaster. To our astonishment, it was David Frost who looked and sounded as though he'd been on an all-night bender. Hitchens couldn't have been more lucid and - not exactly the right word, but you know what I mean - sober.

The title also acknowledges his political shift, his central paradox. The late discovery of his Jewishness made him look again at his life; and he notes that his grandfather thought there was something "axiomatically subversive about Jewishness".