Current Reading

I have been reading Christopher Hitchins' memoir Hitch-22.

As you might expect, this book is an exposition of the dilemma Hitchins finds himself in after a lifetime of fighting for "progressive" causes and writing for left-wing publications.

He illustrates the dilemma, among others, by reference to the Falklands War. As a journalist he had visited Argentina, contacted left-wing associates, and found out something of the atrocities being carried out by the ruling junta, some of which have never been satisfactorily resolved.

At the same time, he was fiercely opposed to Mrs Thatcher and her policies, and could never have imagined himself siding with her government, but that is where he found himself over the proposal to go to war over the Falklands.

Reduced to the simplest terms, the dilemma is that a war to bring about regime change in Argentina (or, later, Iraq) was the lesser of two evils.

When I started reading this book, Hitchins struck me as a bit of a name-dropper. I soon found some of his writing really came alive, when  he was describing some incident he had been involved in.

He analyses in some detail the process by which he came to the conclusion I outlined above, the Damascus experience he calls it.

I found many parallels with my own process of development and change in my own life. A perceptive and revealing account of one man's careful self-analysis.