Rumpled Brilliance

 Hitch 22, by Christopher Hitchens; Allen & Unwin, 2010, 352 pages, $35.

I came late to the strange charms of Christopher Hitchens, being drawn to his performance in the lead-up to the second Iraq War as curmudgeon-in-chief, sourly defending the importance of taking military action. He was learned, persuasive, and revelled in his persona as pantomime villain on mostly late-night television debate. In this role, Hitchens would prove to be, next to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, probably the most persuasive force in support of the conflict, at a time when it appeared far from inevitable.

Hitchens had, of course, by this stage completed his transformation from petition-waving Trotskyite student to neo-conservative warrior of the Right. The story of this evolution is the spine that runs through Hitchens’s autobiography Hitch 22. The book has been keenly awaited, not least because of the raging culture war that has arisen over Hitchens himself. This debate, reminiscent of Australia’s own concerning Malcolm Fraser, is about just who, or what, has changed. Has the Left moved away from Hitchens or has Hitchens moved from the Left? More critically, what is the place of the Left in the post-Cold War world, particularly in the face of the threat posed by radical Islam? Hitchens himself embodies these debates and contradictions and, true to form, clearly revels in being placed at the centre of it all.

The critical event in Hitch 22 is September 11, 2001, described by Hitchens as if “Charles Manson was made God for a day”. At this point, Hitchens was cleaved clean from his former politics and became a new standard bearer for what might loosely be described as the interventionist Right.

From September 12, Hitchens describes a creeping, and subsequently confirmed, fear that his fellow intellectuals would take the opportunity to blame the victim, and engage in an exercise of shady moral equivalence. He describes with naked venom how contemporaries such as Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer departed from “the fortitude the rest of society was manifesting” and decided instead to peddle lazy tropes about American imperialism. In a striking passage, Hitchens describes a debate with Noam Chomsky, during which he came to realise that he was facing arguments that necessarily rested on the premise that “the United States of America was not such a good idea to begin with”. Hitchens demurs that “it most certainly was”, and he began to part ways with his former comrades as he felt himself “less and less shy about saying so”.

One senses in Hitchens a burning anger that in the aftermath of September 11 it was the Left that buckled from the defence of liberal democracy. This point has been well argued elsewhere by others such as Nick Cohen in What’s Left? It is, further, perhaps the defining image in Andrew Rawnsley’s gripping story of the decline of New Labour, The End of the Party, where Tony Blair is described telling anti-Iraq War protestors that the Left used to be about the removal of dictatorships. In Hitchens this issue takes on a personal form, making great fodder for autobiography.

It is certainly arguable that it is the passion of the convert, rather than consistency, which is the fire that gives light to much of Hitchens’s work. This is also the source of the contradictions that bedevil most of his intellectual positions and threaten to cripple his role as a serious thinker. Notably, Hitchens still regards himself as of the economic Left, without recognising that his passion for individual liberty is practically irreconcilable with the state appropriation of private property (a trait he shares with his hero George Orwell). Similarly, his fevered atheism, like that of his ally the often vile Richard Dawkins, betrays a single-mindedness that would be common with the most steely-eyed religious fundamentalist.

It is revealing that the most tortured passage in Hitch 22 is a seemingly aimless recollection of Middle Eastern politics that gives up its raison d’être when Hitchens describes his opposition to the first Gulf War and attempts to reconcile this with his passionate support for the sequel. Still, Hitchens deals with most of his contradictions in the manner of a successful politician, disregarding them and moving on to win the next argument. It is a measure of his erudition that more often than not he is impossible to resist.

To describe only the political aspect to Hitchens’s work would, however, be to miss a large part of his appeal. His success rests upon his skill as a writer: his eye for the crippling metaphor and the well-placed allusion. Indeed, Hitchens’s writing positively revels in the possibilities of the English language, not least of which is its capacity to be just plain fun. At one point, Hitchens writes of such an intense love for literature that one could not bear to live without it. In a lesser writer it might be a sign of cloying grandiosity, but with Hitchens it feels heartfelt.

Indeed the best part of the book is broadly apolitical, capturing Hitchens’s journey from 1960s England to the United States, and his then continuing path towards US citizenship. Many have felt the swoon of possibility on a sunny morning in Manhattan, yet few have captured it as well as Hitchens, who describes “a tensile excitement in the air” and its intoxicating influence, such that “time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted”. These pages are a joy, and an invigorating paean to youth and its possibility. Since reading Don Watson’s hugely overrated American Journeys I had promised myself that I would never again look at anything that peddled a tiresome description of that country as a land of contradictions (it has intelligent and not so intelligent citizens!). After de Tocqueville, America seems to have bested any author who seeks to wring from themselves any more than a clichéd response. Somehow, however, Hitchens captures the spirit of “at once the most conservative and commercial AND … most revolutionary society on Earth”.

Hitch 22 is, however, far from flawless, though these defects, like those of their author, are obvious and provide a small part of its charm. Foremost, the book is a victim of an occupational hazard of autobiography: inconsistent pacing. Further, it betrays no evidence of editing. Reminiscences about the word-play of his 1980s lunch mates such as Martin Amis and Clive James (for example, inserting the word dick in place of heart into well-known titles or sayings), are grating and allowed to take up a staggering amount of text. Remember, these are recollections of mildly amusing conversations from decades ago. In a similar vein is Hitchens’s detailed description of Kingsley Amis’s talent as a mimic. Intriguingly, a defensive footnote explains to the reader that he understands that “perhaps you had to be there”, but insists that such recollections are nonetheless worthwhile to include. An effective editor would have insisted that they were not. Still, the passages do capture something of the boozing, smoking, rumpled journalist which is the enduring popular image of Hitchens. Later, his sense of humour returns when during a discussion of the Bureau of Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco, we are wryly informed that it is “the only department of state I had ever hoped to command”.

So what of the title: Hitch 22? The reason for the choice is not revealed until the closing paragraphs, so I won’t give it away. But there is something telling about Hitchens’s appropriation of Joseph Heller’s memorable satire for his own life story; the playful use of allusion, the whiff of war, and the sheer audacity of linking himself with one of the great books of the twentieth century. Thankfully, he succeeds in bringing this spirit to the text, and ultimately Hitchens’s autobiography reflects the flaws and brilliance of its author. In this sense, the book is a wonderful success. Who, after all, could ask any more of its genre?

Ben Jellis is currently writing a history of the High Court during the prime ministership of John Howard.