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Hitch-22

Allen and Unwin, $35.00

Reviewed by Joshua Maule

26 Jul 2010

11:35am Monday, 26th July 2010

Christopher Hitchens has - in Hitch-22 - produced a 400 page ramble on both the fairly irrelevant and the plain engaging. But (perhaps surprisingly for a memoir) the personal is often neglected; for instance, we never get more than the odd sentence about his family.

As a result large swathes of the memoir will make sense only to those in British intellectual circles. And let's face it, that's not many of us. Mr Hitchens is kind enough to keep one eye half squinting on the average reader who isn't in the know. But honestly, it makes the memoir an excruciating read for chapters at a time.

That being said, there are also some great patches of description in Hitch-22 - not a few that are incredibly moving. At points the author's ability to paint his feelings with words left me reeling. I only wished he'd done it more.

This included the passages about his mother and the shaping force she was on his life. The memoir opens with a chapter on the woman, Yvonne, and her desire for Christopher to have a high quality English education, even when there wasn't much money. Later, when he was in his early 20s, Mr Hitchens describes how his mother killed herself alongside her new lover - an event that left him heartbroken and - due to her numerous failed attempts to call his phone number before she departed - often wondering how things might have been different.

Another heart wrenching passage outlines Mr Hitchens' discovery that a young US soldier killed in Iraq had been "deeply influenced" by his writings on the war". On learning he played a part in the man's decision to enlist, Mr Hitchens writes: "I don't exaggerate by much when I say that I froze. I certainly felt a very deep pang of cold dismay."

The written word is always a thing of power. In the case of the young soldier who was killed, Mr Hitchens is chilled by the power of his own words. Elsewhere he interprets aspects of life through the lens of classic literature, recognising the influence even fiction has on societies. And shockingly, the obstreperous "anti-theist" even recognises the power of the Bible. A passage written by the Apostle Paul, which he read out at his father's funeral - "Finally, bretheren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just... think on these things" - was chosen for its "high moral character" and, in the King James Version, its literary quality.

As such, Hitch-22 is a memoir of contradictions, introducing a man of contradictions. On the one hand he sees the moral value of the aforementioned passage of scripture only to, pages later, rub mud into the eyes of anyone who believes "sinister fairy-tales" about God. He's a man with "historical obsessions" who loves the written word yet glibly passes Christianity off as "moral blackmail". And further he seems to want the world to be a place of peace and love yet mentions his wife for the first time on page 241 - and even then only in passing.

Mr Hitchens told Fran Kelly on Radio National, "When I'm writing about myself, I'm not really making a case or an argument." He said the memoir was not intended as an autobiography but an "account", "explanation", or "description". Yet, that doesn't wash. In constructing his memoir, he has made a case. By choosing which things to omit and which to reveal, Mr Hitchens has showed what really matters to him. And on the whole, it seems, he desperately wants us to know he is clever and influential and a master of literature and a high-minded individual changing the world, one feature article at a time. But what about the disappointments? What about the regular experiences? The mundane days? How did Mr Hitchens deal with those?

Recently he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. I'll be praying for him. Not only that the illness might subside, but that his love of words might transform into a love for the Word. As John 1:14 says, in the King James version: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."