Good Atheist Reads – A Review of Hitch-22 by Samuel Mack-Poole

                                   

                                Good Atheist Reads – A Review of Hitch-22

                                                    by Samuel Mack-Poole

“You’re a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay.” – Galloway on Hitchens.

“Eloquent, witty, literate, intelligent, knowledgeable, brave, erudite, hard-working, honest (who could foget his skewering of Mother Teresa’s hypocrisy), arguably the most formidable debater alive today yet at the same time the most gentlemanly, Christopher Hitchens is a giant of the mind and a model of courage.” – Richard Dawkins, one year before Hitchens’ death, writing in The Guardian in 2010.

Although Hitch-22 is not his seminal piece, Hitchens’ memoirs are, quite simply, a must read for any atheist worth his or her salt. I must confess that Christopher Hitchens is my favourite of the four horsemen, so any objectivity regarding this piece shall be impossible to achieve. He is a master of the written word, and his predilection for all things literary necessitates that I have a greater commonality with his style of thinking than the other three esteemed members of the non-apocalypse.

Moving towards the work, rather than the man, I found Hitch-22 to be ruthlessly honest in some ways (he is extremely up front about his homosexual experiences in his youth during his time at private school, some which were with senior members of the Conservative Party) whilst he is positively avoidant about others (his failed marriages aren’t mentioned in any detail, if at all). It is this contradiction which best epitomises Christopher Hitchens, and this is by his own admission; this is very much the major theme of his memoirs, and it had an obvious influence on his title, too.

Whilst he doesn’t write about his children or wives, Hitchens does delve into his mother’s suicide in delicate detail. I don’t doubt that the impact of a parental suicide would be extremely crushing, and Hitchens’ doting love for his mother, whom he calls ‘Yvonne’ throughout his memoirs, is obvious.  The sheer detail of information on Hicthens’ formative years is of pronounced interest to me. All the way through the earlier chapters of Hitch-22, I could imagine a handsome young chap, precocious of intellect, challenging his teachers and peers, courting controversy in a world which was remarkably different to that we live in now¹.

What was most challenging for me to read was Hicthen’s pro-war rhetoric. Personally, at the tender age of 18, I was aghast at (what I then thought to be) an imperial war. Prior to reading Hitch-22, I had watched a video on YouTube called The Mother Of All Debates, between ‘gorgeous’ George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens, and after viewing it,  the title seemed just.  What is most interesting is that Hitchens’ position is that of an anti-totalitarian socialist, and thus he supported regime change in Iraq. His arguments aren’t inspired by anything like what his detractors like to accuse him of (in essence, supporting a neo-conservative agenda).

Having visited Iraq numerous times, Hitchens was extremely coloured by his experiences in Saddam’s dictatorship. Having seen the eradication of human rights first hand, he creates an uncomfortable case for war which, whilst not leaving me absolutely convinced, certainly has led to me re-evaluating my once staunch stance on the topic.

The unavoidable topic of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is another major theme of his memoirs, and he writes glowingly of the most vilified writer in the Islamic world. Whilst this can come as no surprise, as Hitchens was a titanic advocate for free speech, again it is his personal experience with the fatwa which makes his arguments against its vile attack on western values all the more convincing².  Given recent events, one should heed his ominous warnings on the subject of free speech, and it is a matter which I find myself in complete agreement with old Hitch.

Furthermore, his criticism of western leaders to stand by Salman Rushdie resonated with me to a great degree. When the fiasco occurred, I was but a young boy. Although I too was somewhat precocious, and I can remember watching Rushdie on Have I Got News For You on video link, and being told by my father that he had written something offensive to a religion. I was too young to fully cognise the situation, but I do remember thinking that those who had threatened him were basically simple and barbaric. My opinion, whilst now more informed, hasn’t changed at all.

On the topic of Islamic threats to western existence, Hicthens’ experience of 9/11 is also very intimate. Although he was an international reporter for much of his life, he had an uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time when it came to events of great consequence.  However, it was this event, more than any other, which cemented Hitchens’ thought that it was Islam, not Christianity, which was the dominant and major threat to Western free-thought. Consequently, Hitchens has no time for Western Islamic apologists, and he writes most scathingly of Chomsky on this matter.

If you watch Hitchens in many of his debates, he is never violently angry. I have watched him debate many great orators, and I have not seen him lose his cool once. Nevertheless, whilst reading Hitch-22, one can really feel his genuine rancour for the events which led to the deaths of 3000 innocent people in New York.  At risk of repeating myself, this isn’t altogether surprising. He knew people who died on that ill fated day. He lived in New York. This must have had an impact on his thought, and this really defines Hitchens as a writer, a philosopher and a human being; whilst he wasn’t always objective, he was always damned convincing.

I will conclude by stating that he wrote much of Hitch-22 whilst suffering from oesophageal cancer.  Although he was staring into the abyss, he carried on, whilst not quite as normal, but bravely and authentically. As such, I recommend this book whole-heartedly; it is touching and stimulating, emotional and logical, political and philosophical, polemical and balanced.  Whilst that last sentence seems to be very contradictory, it encapsulates the mind of a man who was a genius. What is more, much like the man, Hitch-22 is dripping in enigma. Will you take a tumble down the rabbit hole, too?

¹Just  think that when he was born, in 1949, Hitchens was to grow up a world where Britain was about to relinquish its power on the world stage, where mobile phones wouldn’t exist for another forty years, and where homosexuality was still illegal under UK law.

²I can imagine if Hitchens was still alive, he would be sipping a brandy and smoking cigarettes whilst delivering acerbic attacks on the religion of peace, and feeling completely vindicated in doing so.