Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring (Paperback))

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H]e makes entertaining mincemeat of self-satisfied politicians and shreds received ideas and media-spun consensus with a fearlessness that is invaluable in our mealymouthed punditocracy. But what made me personally allergic, each roseate dawn, was the large sign posted at the point where footwear had to be discarded. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it's as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse.

Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will suply plenty of time for silence. And these same people, who would not surrender the principles that attracted them to the struggle in the first place, were obliterated and defamed as mere posturing “individuals” who furthermore dared to oppose themselves to “history. What is shameful though, is holding a minority viewpoint and conceding to your detractors on that basis. As the great Eugene Debs used to tell his socialist voters in the 1912 election campaign, he would not lead them into a Promised Land even if he could, because if they were trusting enough to be led in, they would be trusting enough to be led out again.Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn't change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that "humanity" (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, in this way. Part revolutionist, part court jester, he is possessed of a wickedly effective prose style and sense of moral purpose. Regarding the second approach, here is where the one weakness of Hitchens' writing starts to glare through.

Go too far outside "the box", of course, and you will encounter a vernacular that is much less "tolerant".Question everything, don't let fear set up blockades, be informed––all these pieces of essentially valid advice are hedged by mountains of irrelevant and often times cloudy discussions of foreign affairs and quasi-history/philosophy. Zola could be the pattern for any serious and humanistic radical, because he not only asserted the inalienable rights of the individual, but generalised his assault to encompass the vile roles played by clericalism, racial hatred, militarism and the fetishisation of "the nation".

Every once in awhile one's brain gets a kick-start and sometimes the resulting vibration opens a stubbornly closed door. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. More to the point at hand is the inauspicious concept of Nirvana; sheer nothingness, or mindless ‘bliss’, which renders discovery and thought useless, or at the very least unnecessary. Inspired by his students in New York, and by hundreds of others on campuses where he spoke and lectured, Letters to a Young Contrarian reads like a commencement address to a graduating class at Berkley or NYU.

Like every Hitchens book I've ever read (this is my fifth), it is loaded with little pearls of worldly wisdom. The word antitheism smacks of a shaking-ones-fist-at-the-sky quality and Hitchens’ detractors are quick to point this out. Nobody in the supposedly affluent and disillusioned 50s had seen any of this coming; I am quite certain that there will be future opportunities for people of high ideals, or of any ideals at all.

This kind of withering put-down was one of his strengths, and the Internet abounds with clips of Hitch on various chat shows, doing his thing, from Anderson Cooper, to Bill Maher, The Jon Stewart show, Sean Hannity and on University Campuses across the West.The day of his death, I heard more about his being known for his assailment of Mother Teresa than anything else in his distinguished career from the major cable news networks. In Letters to a Young Contrarian, bestselling author and world-class provocateur Christopher Hitchens inspires the radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, and angry young (wo)men of tomorrow. In this short work the author takes up the subject of what it means to devote oneself to a life of opposition to the status quo by responding to many of the questions he has received on the subject throughout the years.