“ - All first-rate criticism first defines what
we are confronting, - the late, great
jazz critic Whitney Balliett once wrote. By that measure, the essays of
Christopher Hitchens are in the first tier. For nearly four decades, Hitchens
has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we grapple
with first principles-the principles of reason and tolerance and skepticism
that define and inform the foundations of our civilization-principles that, to
endure, must be defended anew by every generation.
"A short list of the greatest living
conversationalists in English," said The Economist, "would probably
have to include Christopher Hitchens, Sir Patrick Leigh-Fermor, and Sir Tom
Stoppard. Great brilliance, fantastic powers of recall, and quick wit are
clearly valuable in sustaining conversation at these cosmic levels. Charm may
be helpful, too." Hitchens-who staunchly declines all offers of
knighthood-hereby invites you to take a seat at a democratic conversation, to
be engaged, and to be reasoned with. His knowledge is formidable, an
encyclopedic treasure, and yet one has the feeling, reading him, of hearing a
person thinking out loud, following the inexorable logic of his thought,
wherever it might lead, unafraid to expose fraudulence, denounce injustice, and
excoriate hypocrisy. Legions of readers, admirers and detractors alike, have
learned to read Hitchens with something approaching awe at his felicity of
language, the oxygen in every sentence, the enviable wit and his readiness,
even eagerness, to fight a foe or mount the ramparts. Here, he supplies fresh
perceptions of such figures as varied as Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Rebecca
West, George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, and Philip Larkin are matched in brilliance
by his pungent discussions and intrepid observations, gathered from a lifetime
of traveling and reporting from such destinations as Iran,
China, and Pakistan. Hitchens's
directness, elegance, lightly carried erudition, critical and psychological
insight, humor, and sympathy-applied as they are here to a dazzling variety of
subjects-all set a standard for the essayist that has rarely been matched in
our time. What emerges from this indispensable volume is an intellectual
self-portrait of a writer with an exemplary steadiness of purpose and a love
affair with the delights and seductions of the English language, a man anchored
in a profound and humane vision of the human longing for reason and justice..”
