Hitch-22
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| Author | Christopher Hitchens |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Biography |
| Publisher | Twelve Books, Atlantic Books (UK) |
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Publication date
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20 May 2010 (UK) June 2, 2010 |
| Media type | Hardcover, paperback, audiobook |
| Pages | 448 (inc 24 pages of photographs) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 464590644 |
| 920.073 | |
| LC Class | CT275.H62575 A3 2010 |
20 May 2010 (UK)
Hitch-22: A Memoir is a memoir written by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens.
The book was published in May 2010 by Atlantic Books in the UK and June 2010 by Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group USA, and was later nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. The planned worldwide tour for the book was cut short later the same month during the American leg so that the author could begin treatment for newly diagnosed esophageal cancer. Through the book's publisher and in the magazine for which he was a regular contributing editor, Vanity Fair, Hitchens announced: 'I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice.'
Hitchens initially found the book hard to write: 'I found it fantastically difficult. Normally, when I'm writing, I'm making an argument, making a case. Also, when I'm writing, I'm trying to see how much I can pack into 5,000 words about a subject. But here's a subject I know too much about.' But he eventually produced a manuscript that was twice the length of the version finally published.
Hitchens used his memoir to discuss several incidents that were later picked up by reviewers and the media as notable for their revelatory nature: as a contemporary at Oxford University of the then-student Bill Clinton (who later became the American President), he knew that Clinton's later avowal that 'I did not inhale' in regard to marijuana was based on Clinton's allergy to smoke; but Hitchens also states that Clinton's consumption was via 'cookies and brownies'; that during the writing of Martin Amis's novel, Money, Hitchens and Amis visited a New York brothel so that Amis could research the experience; that during an encounter at a party with the then British Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher, she proceeded to 'spank Hitchens directly on the buttocks' and call him a 'Naughty boy!'; and that during his time at Oxford university he had had sex with two men who later went on to become ministers in Margaret Thatcher's government.
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