Book Review

I just finished Christopher Hitchens’s autobiography Hitch 22 and I am pretty disappointed.  Perhaps he was too committed to the journalistic essay to come up with the decent long form book?  But he did write several books during his life, so that is a weak excuse.  I think what struck me as the most problematic element was the damn sexism.  The first half of the book only mentions women with the formula of: name, wife of….  In the second half of the book he only writes of about four women without this formula.  And those typically get described in pretty lean terms about appearance.  In his defense, he does describe the appearances of two of his friends (Edward Said and Martin Amis) but dozens of other men in the book are left physically undescribed.  And the only woman with whom he outlines a sexual experience (having not described those with the two women who bore him children, one of whom remains unnamed [and ignoring the experience with the hooker that his claims was unconsummated]) he describes mainly with regard to her relationship as the sister of his male friend who is clearly the more important element in the story.  Oh, and she is dead at the time of publication.

I think, given his willingness to argue almost anything for the sake of argument, he would have been a very tiresome dinner guest.  The Marxism alone is just so dated.  Ugh.  Sorry Hitch, not your best effort.  And now you are dead too.