Christopher Hitchens may not be 'the nearest thing to a one-man band since I.F. Stone laid down his pen', but he comes close. For the Sake of Argument records a life of action, of being in the right place at the right time. Thomas Mann could never find the revolution: Hitchens cannot help tripping over it. This is, no doubt, the privilege of the foreign correspondent, but some are clearly more privileged than others. He turns up in Central America, in Central Europe, in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, always at the crucial historical moment; he can extract from these moments a tragic episode or a comic anecdote which illuminates the whole. He really has heard - as most of us would like to hear - a neo-conservative speaker say (in English) 'that it was no accident that the Russian language contained no word for détente.' The life of action can also he used to subvert discreetly the academic couch-potato - the sort of person who might be expected to review this book. Of a visit to Prague in the last days of Communism, a visit which ended in his arrest, he writes that he has 'seldom been arrested by such pitiable people'. It's the 'seldom' that makes it so good.

LRB 24 February 1994 | PDF Download