Unapologetically Opinionated: Christopher Hitchens

Although Hitch was opinionated, he never allowed himself to be intellectually frozen. Before he died in 2011, he changed his mind as the world evolved and he saw fit. But that’s not why I find him worthy of reading and rereading. I turn to him for his informative, inviting prose and command of the English language.

Hitch was a British-born, Oxford-educated raconteur, debater, and lecturer who became an American citizen and lived almost half his life in Washington D.C. Numerous critics regard him as one of the finest English-language essayists of the last fifty years. He wrote extensively, but not exclusively, on politics, particularly American politics and the international Left. He also penned essays on history, literature, and language, to name a few of his wide-ranging topics. While some of his pieces aren’t in my wheelhouse, and I don’t endorse all of his opinions, I continue to admire his candid style.

Three recommendations: Hitch-22, A Memoir; And Yet … (Essays); Arguably (Essays).

A few Hitch excerpts:

On tyranny: “The conventional word that is employed to describe tyranny is ‘systematic.’ The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not it’s regularity but it’s unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax.”

On patriotism: “Tribal feelings belong to the squalling childhood of the human race, and become no more charming in their senescence …. But ironies of history may yet save us. English language and literature, oft-celebrated as one of the glories of ‘Western’ and even ‘Christian’ civilization, turn out to have even higher faculties than used to be claimed for them. In my country of birth the great new fictional practitioners have in their front ranks names like Rushdie, Ishiguro, Kureishi, Mo. This attainment on their part makes me oddly proud to be whatever I am, and convinces me that internationalism is the highest form of patriotism.”

For more information, see Christopher Hitchens on Wikipedia.