In a couple of weeks, publisher Twelve Books will release A Hitch in Time: Reflections Ready for Reconsideration, a collection of essays by the late journalist Christopher Hitchens . I secured an early copy of the book. Hitchens’s writing is still sparkling and insightful, even though he died in 2011.
Hitchens is still so bracing because, unlike journalists today, he operated in a zone of fearlessness and real freedom. The smog of ” wokeness ” had not yet descended onto the West. And the years Hitchens spent as a reporter and foreign correspondent and his deep education had given him experience that made him more than a pundit.
An atheist, he had emerged from socialist movements in Britain yet expressed doubt about abortion and supported the Iraq War. Hitchens despised religion, harshly mocked Islam, and championed banned writer Salman Rushdie. He never held back an opinion, but he had never arrived at that opinion in a sloppy way. At one symposium, he argued to the other journalists that “no one is controlling your typewriter keys.”
In other words, be fearless. You’re free, so act like it.