Hiking with Hitch

Who were the women Hitchens married and how did his marriages go? His memoir doesnt tell you. Is that because the wives dont fit into the Hitchens the activist/ polemicist narrative,unlike,say,some of the women and men he slept with when he was younger? Or,is it something else? But lets take the first possibility. If thats the case,its fine; there is no guarantee at all that ones spouses is are the most interesting or impactful people one has a relationship with. But the absence of Mrs Hitchenses perhaps tells us something else that Mr Hitchens,while looking back on his life,may have found that what makes him most interesting to us his words; words as a weapon,as he tells us is also what makes him most interesting to himself.

So,in part,Hitch-22 is a funny kind of a memoir. On Hitch getting hitched nothing. On Portugal shifting from being a nasty dictatorship to an interesting democracy pages of good writing. If Hitchens had written a my life in engaging with politics kind of a book rather than a memoir,it may have been a truer book,and perhaps a better one.

Last question: why Hitch-22? The title bugs me. A play on Catch-22,we get that bit. The publisher quotes Joseph Hellers fulsome praise of Hitchens on the back cover. Hitchens refers to Catch-22 in a footnote. But all that doesnt explain Hitch-22. Hitchens cheerfully confesses to his meretricious,want-it-both-ways side and his fondness for the Janus-faced mode of life. These can be interesting,sometimes positive attributes in some people,Hitchens being one of them. But this jolly confession doesnt explain Hitch-22 either.

The phrase Catch-22,just to remind ourselves,means a double bind,it is a shorthand for a situation where the illogicality of rules renders a rational outcome impossible,or a situation in which the fact that you are trying to get out makes getting out impossible8230;. One can go on. The point is,to repeat,why Hitch-22?

Towards the end of his book Hitchens argues that intellectuals must not only combat sloganeering and argue for complexity but,sometimes,they must also recognise some things are simple. When thats the case and sometimes thats indeed the case Hitchens says intellectuals must not obfuscate. But even this Hitchensian definition of an intellectuals mutually conflicting obligations doesnt justify Hitch-22. Nothing in the book does. The title therefore is lazy and cheesy,two things you can almost never say about Hitchens writing.

However,as all of us,intellectuals or not,know we have to sometimes be thankful for small mercies. Hitchens tells us that a word-substitution-in-titles game was a favourite during boozy London lunches with his smart friends. You take,say,titles with man in them,Batman,for example,and substitute man with c. Funny? Each to his own,I suppose. However,more worryingly,you wonder whether the people who titled this book were playing a variant of that game: looking for well-known titles containing the word Catch,so that they could replace it with Hitch. In that case,heres the small mercy at least the book isnt called Hitch Me If You Can,or Hitcher in the Rye.

Now,the book. Theres fine writing throughout. This is Hitchens,after all. Had he been employed as Saddam Husseins press secretary and thus tasked with defending the beastly dictators policy on dissidents,with Saddam declaring that words of more than two syllables cant be employed,Hitchens would have still produced good writing. Thats a joke,of course,meant to convey that this is one of those books that are pleasurably well-written.

The books best bit,and where it is truly a memoir,is at the beginning. Hitchens on his childhood,his somewhat plain,not-too-successful British Naval officer father,the stylish and stylishly named Yvonne and clearly interesting woman who was his mother,his short and sharp observations,in the context of his family,on the English social class system this Mrs Hitchens,written about at length,wanted his son to have an education that would make him a member of the upper classes all of it passes the test of a good memoir. Well-remembered. Well-written. Without affectation.

These qualities are most evident when Hitchens talks about his mothers death. Heres a beautifully written,terribly honest portrait of a woman whose personal was not defined only by her maternal and whose tragedy she and the man she went away with committed suicide and the way it affects Hitchens affect the reader.

Hitchens never quite achieves this level of autobiographical acuity in the rest of the book. That would have been okay,indeed perfectly understandable,had it not been for some Hitchensian observations that leave the reader wondering why such a smart guy should sound so precious. Talking about his early youthful days when he was a left-wing radical and an elite university Oxford student who lived it up this,by the way,was and is far more common than Hitchens seems to suggest he says he slept with two young men who later became members of Margaret Thatchers government. The sex,Hitchens says,was mildly enjoyable. This and some other cool,self-deprecatory observations on his early sex life are terribly lacking in the warmth that comes from genuine autobiographical writing. Hitchens,it seems,wants to tell us how cool he is,that he can write like this. We know hes cool. But we dont get to know how he was.

This represents a larger weakness in the book: the author rarely fundamentally questions anything he did. Take the time when he was a Trot and posh. With the advantage of hindsight,does it seem that all those demos and sit-ins,all that 1968 stuff,were not as gravely substantive as it had seemed to young Hitchens? We dont know,because older Hitchens doesnt ask.

Hitchens in America,post-9/11/pre-Iraq war,the famous switch from Left to Right: does he really confront the fact that WMDs were largely a fiction? No,indeed he almost seems to suggest,they were there,no one found them. You dont have to be a Bush-baiter the reviewer is not to find this strange. You could have found,as this reviewer did,the Iraq war less condemnable than the majority opinion did,and still find Hitchens account of his stand remarkably devoid of self-criticism. Hitchens does a robust job of explaining his larger pro-war stand,but he ignores the smaller but vital questions. Not cricket,Hitch an expression particularly apt because Hitchens says he hates sports,and makes a fair to-do about it.

If a reader is hazily acquainted with an episode in Hitchens life when he was unflatteringly nicknamed Snitchens,and he wants to know more,he should Google. Hitchens doesnt talk about Snitchens,not one word thats really typical of this books big flaw.

One big strength: Hitchens recounting the Rushdie-fatwa episode. The writing is sometimes incandescent,his anger at censorship and fear-mongering genuine,his excoriation of mealymouthed intellectuals on the Left and Right who abandoned Rushdie,exhilarating. Hitchens doesnt abandon his friends,he is saying,and we believe him.

But when he falls out with friends,must he make nasty cracks,including about their sex lives? Gore Vidal and Hitchens fell out over Iraq. Hitchens informs us Vidal would boast he has8230; never intentionally gratified any of his partners. What should we say? Oh,Hitch,what a penetrating observation.

And sometimes theres almost a determined effort to wreck writing that feels true. A young American enlisted because he had read Hitchens on Iraq. The soldier was killed in action. Hitchens account of the story feels marvellously genuine. But then,talking about the books the young soldier carried with him to war,and noting that an Ayn Rand book figured in them,Hitchens parenthetically observes,so,nobodys perfect. Ah,of course,Hitch doesnt like Ayn Rand.

Was that funny? Super-sophisticated irony? Something deeper,almost indescribable? No. Just plain bad taste,and a somewhat infantile habit of reminding everyone,all the time what Hitchens doesnt like.

Well,nobodys perfect,Hitchens included.