![]() ![]() Hitch-22 sets out to trace the growth of his mind, and certain aspects of his life are deemed irrelevant to that. Intellectual history rather than emotional catharsis is the rule here. England/America, left/right, gay/straight, literature/politics, Jewish/atheist/C of E: he's engagingly frank in owning up to all the schisms.įrank, but not confessional. "I contain multitudes," Walt Whitman wrote, and so does Hitchens. ![]() But in reality the doubleness is all his own. It's sometimes said that the author's doppelganger is his brother, Peter. This book tells the story of how that happened. But over time Chris and Christopher formed an alliance, joining forces to become not Christ (perish the thought) but Hitch, one of contemporary culture's great one-offs. Addressing an angry crowd one day, he was embarrassed by the warden of All Souls, John Sparrow, who slyly reminded him, so everyone could hear, of his promise "to look in after dinner tonight". Combining dinner jackets and donkey jackets sometimes proved tricky. ![]() On the other, he was Chris, picketing factories with his Trotskyist comrades and forever being arrested for anti-war protests. On the one hand he was Christopher, hanging out with the gilded Brideshead set, drinking fine wine and eating at posh restaurants. I t was at Oxford that he began to lead a double life. ![]()
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