Excerpt: Christopher Hitchens' Hitch-22, A Memoir

The English are famous drunks, or drinkers, if you prefer to use a euphemism.

Many an English author have (and still do, I suspect) written whilst under the influence, and some have even boldly gone to write about the Influence (Kingsley Amis's Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis comes to mind first, though I'm sure there are many other cases. If you want to know more about the history of the affliction, I suggest you read this book). 

Christopher Hitchens is no exception to this malediction. 

English-American author, journalist, social and political commentator (and hence, almost by default, a Historian of our times), essayist and public intellectual, he has bravely held his drinking fort impenetrable for more than four decades whilst publishing more than 15 books, appearing in around 40 documentary/films and contributing to top-tier journals and newspapers such as at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry - making him a solid pillar for all those young writers and aspirers who would like to follow in his footsteps (in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule", and yet he's still around, but only for so long - more on the issue of mortality to follow..).

Last June Hitchens published Hitch-22, A Memoir, a coming-to-terms autobiography for a public figure looking to close a circle and enter into another one: Turning into his seventh decade, Hitchens conducts a soul search of sorts, as befits a man reaching his second midlife-crisis (isn't sixty the new forty? The previous crisis had been in 1989, when Hitchens was 41, the year communism gave out its final cry and Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwā calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie, following the latter's publication of The Satanic Verses). 

The book conquered the top of International non-fiction best-selling charts within a few days of its publication. 

In defense of Drinking

In the first excerpt, A short footnote on the grape and the grain, Hitchens delivers a statement of defense of sorts, the old Why I drink and why you shouldn't prep-talk. The author's stand is a little didactic, as befits a man of his age and social stature, but it doesn't by any mean lack a good deal of self-reproach and critique (Hitchens even goes far enough as to refer to himself as a "piss-artist," fully aware that the drink is "the professional deformation of many writers, and has ruined not a few," though not enough to fully quit it as "making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic"...) 

All this is naturally wittily-equilibrated with not a little bit of self-esteem and grandiosity: "Publicity means that actions are judged by reputations and not the other way about: I never wonder how it happens that mythical figures in religious history come to have fantastic rumors credited to their names." 

In defense of Martin

The second excerpt, Martin, Maggie, and Me, recounts the author's 1970's frenzy with fellow celebrated writers Martin Amis and James Fenton, alongside chance encounters with Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Thomas Pynchon and even the first lady, Margaret Thatcher.

The excerpt is mostly concerned with Martin Amis though, and the friendship the latter and the author of Hitch-22 have held since the early 1970's. 

This close friendship ("a love whose month is ever May" according to Amis; "the most heterosexual relationship that one young man could conceivably have with another", according to Hitchens), is announced right away as a strong and mutual bond between two literary giants (though Hitchens rather modestly testifies: "I would love to be able to give the impression that it was a relationship between equals but, if represented in cartoon form, the true picture would be closer to one of those great white sharks that evolution has fitted out with an accompanying but rather smaller fish.") 

This excerpt quickly becomes an argument of sorts, wherein Hitchens does his best to defend and glorify his friend and author, Martin Amis. Hitchens admiration for Amis can be a trifle embarrassing at times, with its oftern suggesting tone, but for the most it does sound deserving...

Besides the habitual 'Martin is great, he's so fab' soliloquy, Hitchens also shares a few amusing notes from his past with the reader: First an odd visit to a New York brothel with Amis, whilst the latter was 'researching' for his soon-to-be-published-most-known-novel, Money; Second a brief relaying of the circumstances that brought about the unison of a second Bloomsbury literary brat pack, "a sort of end-of-the-week clearinghouse for gossip and jokes" where poets, writers, illustrators, critics (almost all literary editors, and almost all men: "There were no women, or no regular ones, and nothing was ever said, or explicitly resolved, about this fact") would meet once a week and form the "nightmare of a conspiratorial London literary establishment."

This little Bohemia, though united in profession, vocation and ideology (mostly opposing the up and coming Iron Lady, whose strength and influence rose by the day during the 1980's), nevertheless experienced a "deep divide between left and, if not exactly right, yet increasingly anti-left" (as is often the case in intellectual circles). Good thing they had some fatherly figures around, to put some order in their youthful spirits, first in the form and flesh of Kingsley Amis, then in the presence of Philip Larkin, for whom almost all shared a "common admiration [...] as a poet if not as a man".

But what a brat pack it is. Philip Larkin, Clive James, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and of course Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens.. An extraordinary group of talented and colorful individuals who continue to roam our planet to this day and infest it with their newspaper columns and publications (well, most of them)

And then there was Maggie

The second excerpt from Hitch-22 ends with an amusing little story (hard to believe its true, but Hitchens testifies: "I had and have eyewitnesses to this."

Invited by a friend to the House of Lords, for a cocktail celebrating the publication of "a crusty old book by a crusty old peer named Lord Butler," and aware that Lady Thatcher might make an appearance in this event, Hitchens finds himself face to face with 'the Milk Snatcher'.  

Long story short, Hitchens inevitably gets himself into an argument with the First Lady and, after teasingly being asked by her to bow down lower and lower (the Iron Lady is well known of her fondness of submissive subjects.    

The life thereafter


A few weeks after the publication of Hitch-22, Hitchens collapsed in his New York hotel, in the very midst of his book-selling tour. He was shortly diagnosed with  cancer of the esophagus. In a recent 'confession' published in Vanity Fair he relates the abruptness of this discovery: "The previous evening, I had been launching my latest book at a successful event in New Haven. The night of the terrible morning, I was supposed to go on The DailyShow with Jon Stewart and then appear at a sold-out event at the 92nd Street Y, on the Upper East Side, in conversation with Salman Rushdie. My very short-lived campaign of denial took this form: I would not cancel these appearances or let down my friends or miss the chance of selling a stack of books [...] My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have every abruptly become a finalist." 

This 'warning sign' life has given Hitchens, an individual that (like so many power-people) often seems like an unstoppable force, does not come with too ill a spirit, as he avows: "In one way, I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. Rage would be beside the point for the same reason [...] To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?" 

But even the strongest of wills succumbs to a note of self-pity: "I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it [...] would it be less poignant to get cancer on the day that my memoirs were remaindered as a box-office turkey?"

Ironic or not, Hitchens' Hitch-22 is an interesting read from a prominent second-half-of-the-20th-century figure. At times a trifle gossipy but mostly unapologetic, it is without a doubt a very recommended Excerpt Reader read..

VERDICT: BUY IT (because a lifetime of experience doesn't often come at such a feeble price)

Excerpt: Dave Eggers' What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng

If pressed upon to tell The Truth and nothing but the Truth, The Excerpt Reader will avow, like most Western readers I guess, to a strong abstention from any non-western literature. 


That will include the odd African, Eastern or at times even North American novel that might make it through the cultural barrier separating between this world and the Other.


This, even when taking into account that, if pried upon a little, The Excerpt Reader's lineage would burst with Baltic and Oriental remnants upon the slightest touch. 


Thus, even if a novel like Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart or Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger were to miraculously land on my book-shelf (I actually received the latter as a birthday present some two years ago); Even if Zadie Smith's White Teeth were to be televised and screened on my TV (it actually was, but I didn't make it through the first chapter of the British series; What's more, I actually bought the book myself, in free will and good mind, about 10 years ago in Heathrow airport at a bargain price, along with some 2-3 other paperbacks); Even then I am ashamed to say I would be reluctant to pick any of these books up and actually give them the reading they deserve.


It would have to take a "miracle", hence, something like incidentally stumbling upon an odd remark from a fellow Facebook  user, claiming: "Reading Vernon God Little in the car and What Is The What at home. Some contrast!" to make The Excerpt Reader pop out of its shell and give this 'African' novel's excerpt a good rummaging-through before giving it its just verdict.


True, you might justly claim that Dave Eggers' What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng is not a 'proper' African novel, in that it was written by an American writer and not by Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee, as the oxymoronic title suggests (was 'Biography' not enough? Are we to believe that Eggers embodies Achak-Deng so thoroughly in this narrative that he can claim to be speaking as/for him?!), but the book is after all based on the real life story of Achak-Deng, so there is some 'justice' in Eggers' endeavors here, as well as in my reading it, i guess (If it weren't for the Western transcription of the 'African' events and emotions described here, I sadly confess I most likely would not have been tempted enough to read the excerpt at all).

The first excerpt is taken from the book's first chapter. Chronologically speaking, we're starting from the 'end', when Sudanese refugee ValenDeng is living in the US, after over ten years of wondering from one country to the other, seeking shelter.


The US is no haven, as we are quickly led to understand: shortly after settling in, Deng is mugged by two african-americans, probably junkies, who take his money and beat him up, while repeatedly referring to him as 'Africa', or 'Nigerian' ("In America I have been called Nigerian before-it must be the most familiar of African countries", write Eggers/Deng, as if protecting the readers from the other 'truth', or prejudice: that all black people look the same..).


Thus, even in the midst of the 'white' world; amidst all the wealth and opportunity, Deng is confronted with the same type of cruelty, the same type of ignorance he has fled from in his motherland: " I have the fortune of having seen more suffering than I have suffered myself [...] I suppose there is little in the way of violence that I have not seen in Sudan, in Kenya," making the suffering he has had to endure in Sudan relatively bearable, as cruel as that sounds: "[...] Strewn across the couch and my hand is wet with blood, I find myself missing all of Africa. I miss Sudan, I miss the howling grey desert of northwest Kenya. I miss the yellow nothing of Ethiopia."


Deng's conclusion is inevitable, even if somewhat 'softened' by Eggers, who still owes his American identity its due defense: "I am tired of this country. I am thankful for it, yes, I have cherished many aspects of it for the three years I have been here, but I am tired of the promises."

The second excerpt is finds us a little bit further up the road (or down the road, if you prefer, as it is set a few years before the first chapter). 

Thirteen years old Achak Deng (known simply as Achak at this point) is on the road, together with some 80,000 other Sudanese refugees, on the look for a permanent resting place.


Again, Achak is confronted with existential thoughts: "After my walk to Kenya, when Maria found me on the road wanting to be lifted back to God, I spent many months thinking about why I should have been born at all."

Intentionally or un-, Eggers seems to transcribe Achak-Deng's narrative into a simple and 'childish' stream, either because Deng was a still child at the time of the told events, or in order to make the events described 'simpler' and more easily accessible to the western mind. 

But there's nothing 'simple' or easily comprehended about the life Achak-Deng has had to endure: "[...] I grew up in refugee camps. I lived in Pinyudo for almost three years, Golkur for almost one year, and Kakuma for ten. In Kakuma, a small community of tents grew to a vast patchwork of shanties and buildings constructed from poles and sisal bags and mud, and this is where we lived and worked and went to school from 1992 to 2001. It is not the worst place on the continent of Africa, but it is among them."

Living on one meal a day (a concept almost unfathomable to the average western citizen, living amidst all the plenty), Achak-Deng (or is it Eggers?) strives to display 'normality' nevertheless: "we ate and talked and laughed and grew. Goods were traded, men married women, babies were born, the sick were healed and, just as often, went to Zone Eight and then to the sweet hereafter. We young people went to school" but the refugee camp and the life of want is threatening to become a permanent solution for the sea of refugees inhabiting it: "we came to accept that Kakuma would exist forever, and that we might always live within its borders."

All this is delivered unto the reader as in retribution, either for 'our' inability to understand or for our lack of basic care for fellow human beings and the conditions they have to endure: "There is a perception in the West that refugee camps are temporary. When images of the earthquakes in Pakistan are shown, and the survivors seen in their vast cities of shale-colored tents, waiting for food or rescue before the coming of winter, most Westerners believe that these refugees will soon be returned to their homes, that the camps will be dismantled inside of six months, perhaps a year."

There is no escape from the truth, which is repeated in various forms, a few hundred times no-doubt, throughout this 'Autobiography': "Kakuma was a terrible place for people to live, for children to grow."

All this retribution, I am led to understand, is coming in much too late. 

The events described in Achak-Deng's narrative passed some ten to twenty years ago, as the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation makes very clear: "Between May 16, 1983 and January 9, 2005 over two and one-half million people died of war and war-related causes in Sudan, over four million people were internally displaced in southern Sudan and nearly two million southern Sudanese took refuge in foreign countries."

Transcribed by Eggers and published in 2006 to great critical and public acclaim, What is the What is a perfect example of the western flirtation with dementia. Catastrophes only become 'relevant' once they're gift-wrapped, neatly packaged and delivered to our doorsteps (wasn't the erection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993 a similar western 'gesture' towards a significant event of human suffering, coming in some 50 years too late?! Aren't the Vanity Fair pieces about the Haiti earthquake's aftermath, beautifully laid out with Sean Penn and Bill Clinton photo shoots, coming in about 6 months too late?!)

Blessedly ignorant and willingly blindfolded we wrap our western guilt with paperbacks and magazine prints.


VERDICT: BUT IT (If only to subdue that western conscience of yours)

Excerpt: DBC Pierre's Lights Out in Wonderland

I've read both of DBC Pierre's novel to date, first Vernon God Little, which won Pierre the 2003 Booker winner as well as the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award winner - a light and amusing read (not sure it deserved the prestigious prizes, though), and then in 2006, Ludmila's Broken English, which was less fun to read, being multi-focal, boring most of the time and downright tedious the rest of the time...

Lights Out in Wonderland is Pierre's third novel to date (he's published a short story for children, entitled Suddenly Doctor Cox in 2009) and it is due to be published next month by Faber & Faber.

It tells the story of one man's odyssey through the world's grand metropolises (taking in London, Tokyo, Berlin and the even the Galapagos Islands). 

This man is twenty-something Gabriel Brockwell ("A microwave chef. A writer of pamphlets. A product of our time. A failed student. A faulty man. A bad poet. An activist in two minds. A drinker of chocolate milk, and when there’s no chocolate, of strawberry").

Brockwell wonders these places in search of his 'Wonderland', his redemption.

The title of Pierre's novel suggests, naturally, apocalypse and decay, but also "fun times" and decadence, as befits an "end times" sort of novel. 


And, lo and behold, right-smack in the novel's first sentence we are declared that our main protagonist is about to kill himself, but not right away... "Because nothing matters anymore", and also, possibly, because someone needs to fill in those 336 pages before we do actually get to the END. 

The reason for all this morbidity coming from a twenty-something year old ? Quite vague... "Everyone regrets leaving a party early, hearing laughter from a salon behind them. Death must feel that way. But I don’t feel it at all; because this party’s over. "


Morbidity aside, what we're left with is a never-ending monologue delivered in the first person (why do authors continue to write in first person? So few of them actually get away with it..), a half-witty, stream-of-consciousness type of narrative, which makes it very hard to flap from one page to the other without stifling a serious yawn or avoiding a faint roll of the eyelids (and to top it all we're also over-burdened with multiple footnotes on almost every page of the novel).

In short, not a very recommended read.. 


VERDICT: DON'T BUY (Because Ludmila's Broken English was bad enough..)

Excerpt: Adam Haslett's Union Atlantic

Adam Haslett's literary debut was a short story collection entitled You are not a stranger here (2003).

Considering this was a collection of stories which deals mostly with the 'mentally ill, closeted homosexuals, boys discovering their sexuality, and men who have never come to terms with it' (no doubt Haslett has read his share of Denis Cooper short stories), saying it was a success is saying a lot (the book was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award and the 2003 Pulitzer Prize and spent some time on The New York Times Best Seller list. It was also named one of the five best books of the year by Time, and to top it off Haslett was declared New York Magazine's writer of the year).


So much for institutional reception and public acclaim.


Haslett has used the time since 2003, the year he graduated from Yale Law school, to write Union Atlantic, released earlier this year, a "fictionalised retrospective of the economic climate in 2002", post 9/11 (The Twin towers), pre september 2008 (The economic fall)...


For the average excerpt reader, Haslett's vantage point as a short story writer can only be beneficial: writers who know their short stories usually excel in the way they build the chapters of their novels; and indeed, Haslett provides very readable and plot-wholesome excerpts (if you're too lazy to read the excerpts, you can always watch the Amazon trailer here, though i don't really see how a 2 minute video is going to make you read a 300 page book you're reluctant to go through...)


The first excerpt, July 1988, is set in Iraq, during the first Gulf War, where Doug Fanning is in charge of air defense on the Vincennes, one of the US navy's most important guide missiles cruisers, a ship which was involved in the shooting-down of an Iranian commercial air-flight, killing all 290 civilian passengers on board. 


Doug is a part of the 'erroneous' team of soldiers who sent the innocent Iranians to their death, but he is also, in a way, described as a bystander, a sort of ghost, a commentator on all things occurring around him as well as, reluctantly, a part of them. 


More than anything he is anxious for his 3 year period of duty to end, and is mentally preparing himself for the life-to-come, back in the States, "figuring in his head how long it would take for the letters he'd mailed in Manila to make their way into the offices of the brokerages and the banks." 


This excerpt is taken from the book's epilogue which, read outside the book's super-structure (single-chapters form), could be read as a sort of 'warning'; an explanation for 'the fall', as financial analysts and cultural critics will call the September 2008 stocks chute.


Life doesn't wait too long to move on and we're quickly in excerpt two, taken from the second chapter of Union Atlantic, circa 2002 in Finden, Massachusetts, where Fanning's neighbor, Charlotte Graves (an homage to Tom Wolfe's Charlotte Simmons? More on the similarities between Haslett's and Wolfe's characters and plots in my other blog, Hebrew readers invited..), an 'anti-modernist' in essence (if modernism be SUV's, mansion houses and shopping malls), is scheming to bring Fanning's monstrosity of a house down (Fanning built his 'Greek Revival château' on top of a hill laden with trees Graves's grandfather had donated to the town).


The two foes, Graves and Fanning, can be described as specimens of the 'old' and 'new' America. The 'old' being hard working, family values, high moral and opposition to change, and the new - opportunism, self indulgence, individuality and hedonistic self-pleasuring). 


It doesn't look like these two ends are going to meet.


But to make sure I'm right you're going to have to read the whole book..


VERDICT: BUY IT (I know I already did...)