In the book that he was born to write, provocateur and
best-selling author Christopher Hitchens inspires future
generations of radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, angry young
women, and dissidents. Who better to speak to that person who
finds him or herself in a contrarian position than Hitchens, who
has made a career of disagreeing in profound and entertaining ways.
This book explores the entire range of "contrary positions"-from
noble dissident to gratuitous pain in the butt. In an age of overly
polite debate bending over backward to reach a happy consensus
within an increasingly centrist political dialogue, Hitchens
pointedly pitches himself in contrast. He bemoans the loss of the
skills of dialectical thinking evident in contemporary society. He
understands the importance of disagreement-to personal integrity,
to informed discussion, to true progress-heck, to democracy itself.
Epigrammatic, spunky, witty, in your face, timeless and timely,
this book is everything you would expect from a mentoring
contrarian. Ranging broadly in subject matter, these brief,
intellectual primers to life are a stimulating read for anyone who
wants to experience the insights, wisdom and advice of today''s
leading minds. Now available for the first time in handsome and
affordable new paperback editions.
Chapter One My dear X, ??? So then—you rather tend to flatter
and embarrass me, when you inquire my advice as to how a radical or
"contrarian" life may be lived. The flattery is in your suggestion
that I might be anybody''s "model," when almost by definition a
single existence cannot furnish any pattern and, if it is lived in
dissent, should not anyway be supposed to be emulated. The
embarrassment lies in the very title that you propose. It is a
strange thing, but it remains true that our language and culture
contain no proper word for your aspiration. The noble title of
"dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes
sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement, and it has been
consecrated by many exemplary and courageous men and women.
"Radical" is a useful and honorable term—in many ways it''s my
preferred one—but it comes with various health warnings that I''ll
discuss with you in a later missive. Our remaining
expressions—"maverick," "loose cannon," "rebel," "angry young man,"
"gadfly"—are all slightly affectionate and diminutive and are,
perhaps for that reason, somewhat condescending. It can be
understood from them that society, like a benign family, tolerates
and even admires eccentricity. Even the term "Iconoclast" is seldom
used negatively, but rather to suggest that the breaking of images
is a harmless discharge of energy. There even exist official
phrases of approbation for this tendency, of which the latest is
the supposedly praiseworthy ability to "thinkoutside the box." I
myself hope to live long enough to graduate, from being a "bad
boy"—which I once was—to becoming "a curmudgeon." And then "the
enormous condescension of posterity"—a rather suggestive phrase
minted by E.P. Thompson, a heretic who was a veteran when I was but
a lad—may cover my bones. ??? Go too far outside "the box," of
course, and you will encounter a vernacular that is much less
"tolerant." Here, the key words are "fanatic," "troublemaker,"
"misfit" or "malcontent." In between we can find numberless
self-congratulatory memoirs, with generic titles such as Against
the Stream, or Against the Current. Harold Rosenberg, writing
about his fellow "New York intellectuals," once gave this school
the collective name of "the herd of independent minds." ???
Meanwhile, the ceaseless requirements of the entertainment industry
also threaten to deprive us of other forms of critical style, and
of the means of appreciating them. To be called "satirical" or
"ironic" is now to be patronised in a different way; the satirist
is the fast-talking cynic and the ironist merely sarcastic or
self-conscious and wised-up. When a precious and irreplaceable word
like "irony" has become a lazy synonym for "anomie," there is scant
room for originality. ??? However, let us not repine. It''s too much
to expect to live in an age that is actually propitious for
dissent. And most people, most of the time, prefer to seek approval
or security. Nor should this surprise us and nor, incidentally,
are those desires contemptible in themselves. Nonetheless, there
are in all periods people who feel themselves in some fashion to be
apart. And it is not too much to say that humanity is very much in
debt to such people, whether it chooses to acknowledge the debt or
not. Don''t expect to be thanked, by the way. The life of an
oppositionist is supposed to be difficult. ??? I nearly hit upon
the word "dissenter" just now, which might do as a definition if it
were not for certain religious and sectarian connotations. The same
problem arises with "freethinker." But the latter term is probably
the superior one, since it makes an essential point about thinking
for oneself. The essence of the independent mind lies not in what
it thinks, but in how it thinks. The term "intellectual" was
originally coined by those in France who believed in the guilt of
Captain Alfred Dreyfus. They thought that they were defending an
organic, harmonious and ordered society against nihilism, and they
deployed this contemptuous word against those they regarded as the
diseased, the introspective, the disloyal
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