Book Review: "Hitch-22: A Memoir" by Christopher Hitchens

When I read a memoir, there are certain things I am looking for in order to not only be entertained, but to gain more insight into the person's life than I had before. I am really looking for someone to tell me a good story about how they came to be the way they were. Books such as Just Kids by Patti Smith, Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford, and even the farce that was Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey allow the reader to become immersed in the life of the person they are reading about and gain this feeling of really getting to know the person that wrote said memoir. Then problems arise when they are written badly, when they are written badly the first problem is normally that the reader gets angry with the author and this disallows the reader to become more immersed in the life of the figure writing.

When it comes to Christopher Hitchens, I had already read his other books and criticisms a few years back and honestly, the arguments wore a little thin and I didn't think too much of it. With this book, entitled Hitch-22 a fun, but seemingly pointless pun on the Joseph Heller novel Catch-22 - I had even more difficulty thinking much of it as I felt it more of an advert for a human being rather than an insightful story.

A lot of the book felt very forced, definitely in places where he discusses his friendships with other people. People like Bill Clinton and Magaret Thatcher are name-dropped into the story as if this is someone trying to sell themselves to the reader instead of someone trying to tell the compelling story of their life and ideas. I feel like these, plus other non-stories were things that did not needed to be included as they added nothing of value to the memoir. The only thing they achieved was boosting the writer's own ego in having connections to powerful people.

One thing I did enjoy about the book was the contextual writing. There is always a historical or political backdrop that the reader gets to imagine with vivid importance to the story. However little of the man's actual development we get is made metaphor by using historical and political upheavals as having changed him growing up. Apart from this though, I found it wholeheartedly difficult to get into this book.

Hitchens' criticism of the beliefs of others seems to not stop in his other works and instead of giving us the how and where of his ideas and stopping there, he takes time to put his critical eye into full throttle. This would be something that someone reading the memoirs of Christopher Hitchens would already know about and therefore, it is losing its importance the more he talks about it.

As for wit, Hitchens is known for his critical wit but a lot of it can come off as rather annoying to a person who views Hitchens' work with much disdain. The wit is actually sometimes pretty well written, there is just too much of it and the memoir of a man who seeks to get you to understand his critical analysis on modern society slowly becomes the butt of his own joke by lessening his seriousness on the topic. I guess if you can't do it in a memoir, where can you do it?

All in all, there is a lot of stuff in this memoir that really does not need to be there, and a lot of stuff that I felt was left out. However, it is somewhat well written. I am on the fence about this book and yet, I move towards negativity. Not many books leave me as unchanged as this.