The memoir of essayist and polemicist Christopher Hitchens, tracing his English boyhood, his years as a Trotskyist journalist, his famous friendships and public feuds, and his ideological journey from the socialist left to a fierce, contrarian internationalism.
Books mentioned in Hitch-22 (68)
The Crisis by Thomas Paine: “He took a bag of books with him to Iraq, which included Thomas Paine's The Crisis, War and Peace, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (so, nobody's perfect), Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, John McCain's Why Courage Matters, and George Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four.”
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: “He took a bag of books with him to Iraq, which included Thomas Paine's The Crisis, War and Peace, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged...”
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: “Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (so, nobody's perfect), from the bag of books taken to Iraq.”
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking: “Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, from the bag of books taken to Iraq.”
Why Courage Matters by John McCain: “John McCain's Why Courage Matters, from the bag of books taken to Iraq.”
Animal Farm by George Orwell: “...and George Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four.”
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell: “...and George Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four.”
Covenant with Death by John Harris: “as well as All Quiet on the Western Front and an anti-war British novel of the trenches called Covenant with Death, by John Harris, the neglect of which I would still define as a huge injustice.”
Orientalism by Edward Said: “It's impossible to think of Paul Wolfowitz curling up for the evening with Edward Said's Orientalism, or the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, or The Seven Pillars of Wisdom...”
A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell: “I had chanced on Orwell's "social" novels first, and had consumed Keep the Aspidistra Flying and A Clergyman's Daughter as well as Coming Up for Air.”
Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey: “the plummy-voiced reactionary Barker called me to his headmaster's library and handed me (1) a copy of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians and (2) a copy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto.”
In Flanders Fields by Leon Wolff: “I became consumed with the subject and got hold of a revisionist history of the First World War, In Flanders Fields, by Leon Wolff”
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh: “Writing my own introduction to the Penguin edition of Scoop, I said of Waugh's Fleet Street masterpiece that it perfectly evoked both the fugitive glamour of the business...”
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence: “or the letters of Gertrude Bell, or the recently published, knotty, opaque but useful book by Lawrence Rosen... The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, or the letters of Gertrude Bell”
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell: “I felt I knew the Ramblas from Orwell's Homage to Catalonia: in Algiers after returning from an expedition with the Polisario guerrillas...”
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: “"All right, Salman: Hamlet by Ludlum!" At once—and I mean with as much preparation as I have given you—"The Elsinore Vacillation." Fluke?”
History of the Conquest of Mexico by William H. Prescott: “Emboldened by the sheer bulk of the thing, I swerved into Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico.”
Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: “Rowse, who had only recently unburdened himself of a new gay theory of the origin and dedication of Shakespeare's Sonnets...”
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck: “At the wild Saturnalia that climaxes John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, the charismatic Danny manages to lay so many women...”
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: “Even more of one was the decision by the two main American bookstore chains to stop displaying or selling The Satanic Verses.”
A German Requiem by James Fenton: “I was very stirred to find, when I opened it, that he had placed on his epigraph page the opening lines of James Fenton's poem "A German Requiem": It is not what they built.”
Money by Martin Amis: “you must read here of the Penguin edition of Money, where John Self tries to get laid for pay... There are many, many reasons why Money is the Great English Novel of the 1980s.”
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn: “Thus I have to be honest and say that the single book that most altered my life was How Green Was My Valley.”
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi: “thanked by name in the acknowledgments of Azar Nafisi's brave, beautiful book Reading Lolita in Tehran: a study of the relations between literature, sexuality, and power under Muslim theocracy...”
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis: “It was the impossibility of following this directive that hit me first, even before the realization that the whole thing was borrowed from what Christians called "The Imitation of Christ."”
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: “outside a patisserie that seems to be quite close to the Rue Mouffetard, praise for which appears on the first page of A Moveable Feast.”
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster: “"Only," said the author of A Passage to India, "if it could be against compulsory games."”
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque: “as well as All Quiet on the Western Front and an anti-war British novel of the trenches called Covenant with Death, by John Harris”
Cato by Joseph Addison: “I strongly suspect, and have written, that the line comes from Addison's play Cato, which was vastly popular with American audiences at the time of the Revolution.”
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “I couldn't sleep for two nights after first reading Crime and Punishment.”
First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan: “"everyone" had been mesmerized by Ian's early collections of short stories, First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets.”
In Between the Sheets by Ian McEwan: “"everyone" had been mesmerized by Ian's early collections of short stories, First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets.”
Henry V by William Shakespeare: “when I later had to take an examination on Henry V, I was able to make a comparison between King Henry the night before Agincourt and Pierre Bezukhov before Borodino”
Look Younger, Live Longer by Gayelord Hauser: “it was Gayelord Hauser's "Look Younger, Live Longer" regimen: a smirking charmer's catch-penny diet-book that enthralled about half the lower-middle-class women we knew.”
On the Beach by Nevil Shute: “then Nevil Shute's stories about Australia, Malaya, engineering, and—with his masterpiece On the Beach—the foretaste of nuclear anxiety.”
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: “When I myself first read The Bell Jar, the phrase of hers that most arrested me was the one with which she described her father's hometown.”
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov: “I saw a production of The Cherry Orchard from the wings—a good point of vantage for a Chekhov play, incidentally”
The Crucible by Arthur Miller: “That this kind of thing should be said, and by the author of The Crucible, was, to an infinite extent and degree, lowering to the spirit.”
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: “He had, indeed, given the young Auden his first copy of The Waste Land, and joined him in reading it aloud.”
Karl Marx: His Life and Environment by Isaiah Berlin: “I acted as host to Isaiah Berlin, our guest as an invited speaker on the subject of his very first published book, the life and thought of Karl Marx.”
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh: “The fictions and cartoons of Nigel Molesworth, of Paul Pennyfeather in Waugh's Decline and Fall, and numberless other chapters of English literary folklore...”
Language and Silence by George Steiner: “In his copy of Steiner's Language and Silence, though, I found a thumbed-over dog-eared page that fell open at an essay titled "Trotsky and the Tragic Imagination"”
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: “handed me (1) a copy of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians and (2) a copy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto.”
David Blaize by E. F. Benson: “you would be given a copy of David Blaize or one of the Jeremy novels and asked if you'd care to read it "in your free time."”
The Golden Treasury by Francis Turner Palgrave: “she had two books of finely bound poetry apart from the MacNeice (Rupert Brooke, and Palgrave's Golden Treasury)”
The Rise of the Novel by Ian Watt: “this dry, wry, and donnish figure, the world's expert on Joseph Conrad and the author of The Rise of the Novel.”
Judgment of Paris by Gore Vidal: “I winced with recognition when I first read the expression "British teeth" in Gore Vidal's Judgment of Paris”
The Monument by Kanan Makiya: “Possibly the most penetrating of his many books about Saddam and Saddamism is called The Monument. It is an intense, illustrated study of the vast parade ground and double arch in central Baghdad.”
The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat: “I saw Jack Hawkins with his binoculars on the icy bridge in The Cruel Sea: the movie version of a heart-stopping novel about the Battle of the Atlantic by Nicholas Monsarrat that by then I knew almost by heart.”
Watership Down by Richard Adams: “Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs...”
A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell: “his complex, majestic, rhythmical twelve-volume novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time... Anthony Powell's narrator catches sight of a blue-clad person, crossing a playing field in his direction.”
September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden: “Auden's suggestive line in one of his greatest poems [“1 September 1939”]: And helpless governors wake / To resume their compulsory game…”
On the Circuit by W. H. Auden: “I now believe that that evening I was privileged to hear the first public rendering of "On the Circuit," of which that is the last line.”
Man and the Echo by W. B. Yeats: “He tried to cope with the disturbing idea in his poem "Man and the Echo": Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot?”
Lament for the Makers by William Dunbar: “the great Scottish bard William Dunbar wrote his "Lament for the Makers" in the early sixteenth century, and ended each stave of bereavement with the words Timor Mortis conturbat me.”
This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin: “It was his use of that phrase—"They fuck you up, your mum and dad," as the opening line of his masterly "This Be the Verse"”
Harp Song of the Dane Women by Rudyard Kipling: “I most remember his request for Kipling's "Harp Song of the Dane Women," a poem that employs mainly Anglo-Saxon and Norse words”
Signs and Symbols by Vladimir Nabokov: “Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story "Signs and Symbols," which is about angst and misery in general...”
Memory of War by James Fenton: “The resulting poems—collected as Children in Exile—comprise an essential complement to their predecessors in Memory of War. One of the latter is titled “Prison Island.””
Children in Exile by James Fenton: “The resulting poems—collected as Children in Exile—comprise an essential complement to their predecessors in Memory of War.”
Terminal Moraine by James Fenton: “When James's first collection of published poems, Terminal Moraine, came out in 1972, I have just noticed to my irritation, it was inscribed "To Chris, from the author, with lot[s of love]..."”
Our Western Furniture by James Fenton: “He had already demonstrated extreme precocity in winning the Newdigate poetry prize for a sonnet sequence titled Our Western Furniture, about Commodore Perry's historic "opening" of the closed island society of Japan.”
Fielding Gray by Simon Raven: “His family had some connection with the louche Simon Raven, whose "Fielding Gray" novels of schoolboy infatuation and later versions of decadence furnished, for me at any rate, a sort of cheap-rate anteroom to the grander sequences of Anthony Powell.”
The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer: “you are liable to undergo an abrupt shift of perspective that qualifies any nostalgia for Norman Mailer's "Armies of the Night" or Allen Ginsberg's quixotic attempt to levitate the building.”
Bleak House by Charles Dickens: “A passage about Sir Leicester Dedlock and gout from Bleak House; a spine-tingling rendition of Humbert Humbert's last verbal duel with Quilty...”
The Protestant Establishment by E. Digby Baltzell: “Digby Baltzell in his book The Protestant Establishment, the term stood for "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant."”
I and Thou by Martin Buber: “How was I to know that this pious old hypocrite, the author of I and Thou, had after 1948 moved into the Jerusalem house from which the family of my one-day-to-be friend Edward [Said]...”