Letters to a Young Contrarian: a book review
I am currently just about finished Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring) by Christopher Hitchens and I want to recommend it to you if youre at all interested in looking at your writing in a slightly different way (as in making a difference with it).
Hitchens died recently and I may be one of the few writer in the known universe who never met him, didnt know anybody who knew him or even met him, and certainly doesnt have a story to tell about his life-to-the-metal approach to breathing.
Hitchens has been described as one of the great literary critics of the past 50 years. An all-encompassing intellectual curiousity, a searing wit, well-educated and well-read in only the way the British private schools system can accomplish and something, which to the average American, is something from another planet. For example, he was such a fierce critic of Mother Theresa the Vatican asked him to be the Devils Advocate at her canonization process. No target too big and no lack of scathing words to illuminate it were his literary trademarks.
Letters to a Young Contrarian is a dense read of advice on how to write and position yourself as an effective critic. He describes the inner issues and focus as one launches out at a target or not. There is only one argument for doing something; the rest are arguments for doing nothing he writes as he introduces the two principles of The Wedge and the Dangerous Precedent both principles writers should have engraved on their consciousness from this written Theatre of the Absurd takeoff because these are the arguments being used against all writers who focus on the state of the world in an honest manner. For example, the targets of critical writers will present the Principle of Unripe Time which states (according to Hitchens) The Principle of unripe time is that people should not do at the present moment what they think is right at that moment, because the moment at which they think it right has not yet arrived. And what writer hasnt put off writing something for some reason? Hitchens skewers every reason you might imagine and more.
This books shows you as much as it tells you. And it will have you reading with an open dictionary and Wikipedia on a nearby screen in the background. This is a book for the odd person out there who wants their writing to make a difference and who doesnt mind the struggle to make that happen.
It is not light bedtime reading, no matter its brevity, as youll have to stretch your wits to focus on this one.There are no easy lessons in point form for the short form computer literate and you had better enjoy working through scattered literary allusions to fully understand the text.
Short. Tough. Dense. Powerful.
Im reading it, you might want to.
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