Friends & Enemies of ‘The Hitch’: Christopher Hitchens’ memoir
Journalistic firebrand Christoper Hitchens, whose memoirs were published recently, is a man who has not been afraid to make enemies over the course of a long and distinguished career. Richard T. Kelly argues that’s a good thing indeed.
Can you name the author of the following expert dagger-thrust?
When I had finished digesting The White House Years, I was so replete with its mendacity and conceit that I took a vow. I swore that I would never read another work by Henry Kissinger until the publication of his prison letters. But the old prayer “O Lord, Let Mine Enemy Write a Book” has proved too strong not to be answered once again…
If you are shooting your cuffs confidently, thinking, ‘Why, Christopher Hitchens, of course’, then probably, like me, you’ve been a lover of the great man’s writings since first acquaintance with them. The lines above come from a review of another wretched Kissinger tome in Hitchens’ debut collection of essays, Prepared for the Worst (Chatto, 1989) – the book that got me hooked. Since then I’ve had little but pleasure from one of the few writers on politics and culture whose love of language and mastery of ideas makes him indispensable.
One must confess that few things give more delight than when Hitchen puts the boot in. Who else could have nailed Tom Wolfe’s ‘small, foppish, white-suited, vicarious admiration for violence’, or identified Michael Moore as ‘one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture’? Hitchens has always stayed true to the moral obligation of making the right enemies in life. He is the only man I’ve ever seen actively confronting the resentments of the BBC Question Time audience (01:47 is where it gets good). His ability to argue on the spot with both force and finesse is utterly enviable. His admirers and imitators are numerous, co-thinking newspaper columnists such as Oliver Kamm or Johann Hari ever-keen to stress their closeness to ‘The Hitch.’
Hitchens’ fan club has swelled steadily over the last 20 years, and in 2008 he enjoyed a bona fide bestseller with God is Not Great. But he’s shed a fair few admirers in that time too, most conspicuously as a result of his advocacy of regime change in Iraq and consequent ‘break’ with the ‘Not in Our Name’ portion of the Left. Now he has published a memoir, Hitch-22, in which he rather painstakingly anatomises the long development and refinement of his political thinking, and how the living-out of certain principles made the loss of certain old friends quite inevitable.
To wit: on the backboard of Hitch-22 are some radiant tributes from other literary fellows (including, naturally, Joseph Heller) but one has been conspicuously printed and yet scribbled out and initialled ‘CH’, in the facsimile of a deletion made at a book jacket’s proofing stage. The tribute is by Gore Vidal, essentially naming Hitchens as his successor to the mantle of Great American Public Intellectual, and Hitchens is so publicly repudiating it because he and Vidal’s relations are now in the state described by Jessica Mitford as ‘absolutely non-speakers’. This break, too, was over a differing view of the United States and its enemies in the years since September 11 2001, and Hitchens has put his side in a piece for Vanity Fair.
Should things have to come to such a low and bitter ebb between two men of such obvious literary brilliance? Well, yes, they surely should. Writers ought to have many friends – one in every occupation, ideally – but they should also steer clear of clubs and cliques. Sodalities, yes – and Hitchens has belonged to a few glittering examples of same – but not chummy, self-regarding societies. The cost of entry is liable to be a tax on speaking one’s mind, and a writer has no other weapon of any note. That Left faction which now considers Hitchens a disgrace and a sell-out has been unable to contain its disappointment that his talents are lost to them. Even the self-styled showman George Galloway, during his skin-crawling attempts to debate Hitchens over Iraq, couldn’t help but reminisce enviously about the zinging one-liners Hitchens used to deploy for The Cause. But Hitchens has had a long, hard think, and moved on.
To hold a line in life can be a marvellous and inspiring thing, and in the memoir Hitchens hails one exemplar in this field, the late campaigning journalist Paul Foot, whom he describes as:
perhaps the person with whom it was hardest to identify the difference between the way he thought and felt and the principled manner in which he lived and behaved. (When he later became gravely ill and was asked if he would like his hospital bed moved into a private room, he was incapable of speech but fully able to make an easy-to-recognise digital gesture.)
But – to annex one of The Hitch’s favourite references to Shakespeare – mark the sequel: Hitchens makes a footnote to the effect that his videotaped eulogy for Foot’s memorial was rejected by the organisers on grounds of political disapproval. When writers of forceful opinions are thought to have recanted them, there is a backlash, especially when the perceived shift is from Left to Right. (To be honest, very rarely does the traffic flow contra.) I seem to remember Hitchens describing Tony Blair for The Nation c. 1996 as ‘unbearably lite.’ By 2005, post-Iraq, he felt able to write for Slate.com that Blair ‘took a bold stand against the establishment and against a sullen public opinion and did so on a major issue of principle.’
Whatever you think of Hitchens, be assured he addresses the issue of his changed mind at great length in his memoir, enlisting the bold self-defence of Keynes: ‘When the facts change then my opinion changes: and you, sir?” If you’ll permit me a far less reputable reference, i.e. to my own work: the fictional New Labour MP Martin Pallister in my novel Crusaders echoes Keynes: ‘See if you find yourself changing your mind on things – is that ’cos you’re a slippery sod? Or is it ’cos you’ve kept your eyes open? Seen how the world changes?’ To me this is a more than adequate defence; and Hitchens has seen more of the world than most. Still, he goes a bit further: at times Hitch-22 could remind the reader of the confessional mode of the Gothic novel (which I wrote about a few months back). In certain moments Hitchens sounds for all the world like Henry Jekyll making his case for ‘the thorough and primitive duality of man.’ Those who refuse to recognise the shade of Mr Hyde anywhere in their own reflection will no doubt persist in thinking Hitchens a lost soul, or a class traitor, or whatever. But to my mind Hitch-22 should be required reading for anyone with an interest or stake in the inspiring yet demanding concepts of solidarity and, yes, socialism.
You can also read a review if Hitch-22 by Simon Parker on our sister site, Bookgeeks.co.uk.
