“If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” ~Winston Churchill
Whatever you may think of Christopher Hitchens—and I have my doubts about certain of his politics—there isn’t much question the man has both of the characteristics Sir Winston so revered. From 60’s Cuba to communist Czechoslovakia and Poland, Afghanistan, Iraq, and dictatorial Argentina, Hitchens’ life has been an investigation of the nature of justice, human rights, and the struggle for liberty. If that’s not heart, well, I’m not sure what is. And as far as a brain goes his memoir Hitch-22 is at much a tribute to the life of the mind—in one sense it’s a long-form bibliography proving that one who absorbs genius is bound, at least to some degree, to achieve it—as it is the story of his life.
From the introductory pages, Hitchens reveals his love of books, ably citing great writers to support the stories of his own experience. D.H. Lawrence, his friends James Fenton and Martin Amis, Joyce, Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Kafka, are just a few listed. I found myself underlining the names of books or authors I hadn’t read so I could rebuild the dwindling stack of new material on my nightstand. The man has read everything. In a simple and wonderfully revelatory moment, Hitchens laments his inability to write literature, but as the man’s mind is a vault for so many wonderful writers—and his passion is bent so powerfully toward human rights—it’s almost no wonder he’s never been able to sit down, ignore the world at-large and write a fiction of his own.
As a virginal bibliophile entering Oxford, young Hitch finds his footing the world of words, and it’s hardly a leap to the more substantial and—only sometimes—more vivid universe of ideas. He attributes his interest in politics and human rights to a number of influences, including his parents, but his equation with old English Prep School “totalitarianism” is by far the most glowing.
The conventional word that is employed to describe tyranny is “systemic.” The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. (The only rule of thumb was: whatever is not compulsory is forbidden.) Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong. The ability to run such a “system” is among the greatest pleasures of arbitrary authority, and I count myself lucky, if that’s the word, to have worked this out by the time I was ten.
It’s the heady mix of such over and under statement that makes the book a loving and engrossing work. Hitchens makes only the smallest offering to his ego as he relays, early on, his relative inexperience in dealing with international politicians and revolutionaries, personal mistakes and misjudgments, while humbly attributing that circumstance was his greatest ally. He makes himself seem—and may actually feel—fortunate for having encountered the people he’s met in his life, but makes no mention of his own intelligence, charisma, or ambition as he does so. It’s quite a feat, and leaves the reader appreciative of the man’s intellectual development and a greater understanding of his gradual slide from one side of the political spectrum to the other.
This, the constant evolution of his political mind, is the enduring thread of Hitch-22.
Hitchens was at one time an all-out leftist, a card-carrying Labour member and socialist who before twenty visited Communist Cuba, where his hosts graciously secured his passport for the duration of his stay and refused to let him hike alone through their utopian paradise. On the Oxford campus he was regular at protests against the Vietnam War, the Tory leadership at home, Western Imperialism—as he understood it, and any of the myriad humanitarian crises boiling in the 1960’s. He took part in political debates and reveled in his young career as a “pamphleteer,” a leftist journalist.
But when one all but declares Reason as his weapon of choice (eat your heart out, Kant), and takes pains to track his changes of mind, the effort will sometimes fails to express the passions of some very harrowing and historical moments. There are—admitted as much by the author—rationalizations around shaking the hands of dignitaries known to be subjugating, murdering, or torturing their people. His personal reactions at such moments, the “if you were in my shoes you would have felt” statements are hardly offered. This may be his own way of expressing some kind of humility, but it leaves something to be desired, whereas his praise of lifelong friends and compatriots delivers the goods in spades. So much reason, it seems, no matter how sharply it cuts in an essay for Vanity Fair or The New Statesman, leaves Hitchens somewhat aloof when applied to negative personal experience. And as this is not a book about “the times” as much as it is about one man’s efforts, however grand or small, to shape the advancement of it, it’s in these places when I would have wanted more. How does a man feel, shaking the hand of a tyrant? In brief: disgusted. The book could have used a bit more color there.
Time rolls forward and Hitchens slides gradually from left to right, or as he puts it, the left slipped away from him. He explains that the ideals of those revolutionary days were gradually co-opted by parties or politics, diluted by interests too petty to matter to anyone else. He implies, rightly I think, that battle for ideas must at some point become a battle, and it’s here where I believe Hitchens finally made his shift to the right. For all the great ideas he grew up loving on the Left, there was none that ever won enough people over to begin the revolution he felt the world needed. It was only when the more selfish interests of the Right became involved that a country could galvanize into a real movement, a real effort for change, and for Christopher Hitchens the issue of Iraq was the fulcrum upon which his mind shifted.
I’ll spare you the details and his justifications—as American politics is not where I’d want to end a recap of such a fine book. Instead I’ll focus on Hitchens’ one loving, paternal effort, a brief paragraph he offers to sum up a section titled “A Short Footnote on the Grape and the Grain,” the final words of the chapter “Something of Myself.”
Don’t drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don’t drink if you have the blues: it’s a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It’s not true that you shouldn’t drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can’t properly remember last night. (If you really don’t remember, that’s an even worse sign.) Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed—as are the grape and the grain—to enliven company. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won’t be easily available. Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It’s much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don’t know quite why this is true but it just is. Don’t ever be responsible for it.