My Dear X,

As you'll surely remember from my last piece of correspondence, I have been spending my lunch hours of late at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble, where--most of the time--no purchase is required should one want to spend an hour perusing the wares. (Oh, occasionally I'll be shamed into ordering the odd brownie, or Italian soda...But I digress.)

This past week, I've been working through the good Dr. Hitchens' latest offering: Letters to a Young Contrarian. Since I know your admiration (and often emulation) of The Hitch is equal to my own, I am writing to you first with my initial impressions.

Allow me, X, to frame my enquiry around a first question, namely, should you buy this book? In true Hitchensian form, I shall eschew respectful pleasantries and offer you the relevant facts instead.

The going rate for "Contrarian" is $22.50 at B&N. At Amazon.com you're talking $15.40 plus tax, shipping and handling. The text itself spans a slim 141 pages. The back cover features a trench coat-clad Hitch, looking formidably bad-ass, trademark cigarette dangling from his lips.

The book arrives as part of Basic Books' new "Art of Mentoring" series, wherein successful people in a given field dispatch advice and edification a lˆ Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet. Incidentally, the series' other title to date is Letters to A Young Lawyer, from Alan Dershowitz. Do they call him "The Dersh," incidentally? We must inquire.

Now slickly packaged tips for young lawyers--this I can understand. Most rookie barristers can doubtless afford the asking price. However, X, as you and I well know, business is not so good these days in the aspiring contrarian racket. It never is, really. Of course, the subject matter is especially ripe at the moment, but the pay continues to stink. That is unless you're capable of reeling in commissions to dispense wisdom, missive style, for a publishing house's mentoring series.

So we must ask: Does Hitchens expect us to shell out for his book of correspondence? And especially at a time when we can barely scrape the postage together to mail out our own most-likely-to-be-trashed-on-the-spot query letters? No, I believe The Hitch understands our financial plight and won't take offense. Besides, he's got his advance. And surely he'll never suffer for royalties as long as The Nation goes on sponsoring cruises. If all those right-thinking, well-tanned advocates for the poor and oppressed can afford a non-exploitative jaunt around the Caribbean, then surely they can afford to buy Contrarian for their beach reading!

That said, X, you no doubt remain curious as to what Hitchens actually says in his letters. Each missive contains a discourse on some point of contrarianhood, and sometimes the discourses spill over from letter to letter. Along the way Hitchens assembles us a rather extensive reading list that is certainly worth delving into. The Hitch also offers us both personal anecdotes and edifying third person accounts of contrarian bad-assery. The best of these center around those whom Hitchens tells us acted "as if" their world was rational and just: Solzhenitsyn acting "as if" he could investigate and publish his country's history without being imprisoned; Rosa Parks sitting down "as if" taking the first available seat at the front of a city bus wasn't a ridiculous taboo; Vaclav Havel staging plays "as if" the censors would not descend and silence him. Hitchens classifies these as essential contrarian acts and notes: "A society which actually insists on forcibly compelling assent can be made to look ridiculous fairly easily."

But first and foremost in this new book, the Hitch would have us "look to the language." Like his beloved Orwell, Hitchens has a keen eye for les mots merde. Throughout the book, the Hitch searches out tautologies, shoddy linguistic constructions and phony political terms with a merciless predator's force. He even devotes an entire missive to damning that pervasive little slogan in the upper left hand corner of The New York Times. "All the News That's Fit to Print. Oh really?" asks the Hitch, guffawing at every word.

This call to "look to the language" reminds me of one of your favorite quotes from the master: "The word "terrorist" is not - like "communist" and "fascist" - being abused; it is itself an abuse. It disguises reality and impoverishes language and makes a banality out of the discussion of war and revolution and politics. It's the perfect instrument for the cheapening of public opinion and for the intimidation of dissent."

This is the Hitch writing in 1986, and he has remained true to his word. Amidst his present denunciation of theocratic fascism, you'll not hear him utter "terrorist," either in print or on the television. Do these letters provide any clues as to how Hitchens' current thinking on world events emerged? Yes, certainly. But judge for yourself, while reading his assessment of the military removal of the Milosevic regime.

You'll also notice throughout the book that the Hitch is not simply indifferent towards religion, he actively despises it--its main sin being a relentless deployment of tautology. The Hitch, in the concluding paragraph of one epistle, proceeds to dish out a merciless pummeling to Christianity, Islam and Judaism in that order. He rails against the "mad and vicious texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional human beings, that each of these three pillars of faith would have you believe are written by the hand of God." Forgive me, X, if that quote is not 100 percent to the letter.

Remember that not actually having purchased the book, I am working from a few scribbled notes and my notoriously unreliable memory. This sort of thing can get a reviewer in trouble, as Martin Amis remembers in his latest essay collection, Visiting Mrs. Nabokov Revisted, er, The War Against ClichŽ.

Come to think of it, X, if you'd like to read a real review of "Contrarian", packaged with some thoughts on Mr. Amis's new one, then I suggest you point your browser to the Village Voice's website and read Joy Press's "The Billigerati." Here's the link: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0144/press.php.

All things being equal X, (Are they ever? Look to the language, indeed!) I'd suggest you read the book where I did: at the Barnes&Noble. A man can accomplish a powerful amount of reading there. True, there's no smoking, no interesting music; raucous disputation is kept to minimum: Not very Hitch in other words. But you can read most all his books there, and if one of the counter help happens to be a budding contrarian like yourself, she will no doubt be happy to refill your Italian soda, gratis.

Most Sincerely,

Diedrick


Brian Diedrick is a member of the La Lutt aEditorial Collective

(c) Copyright 2001 Brian Diedrick