Letters to a Young Contrarian

Letters to a Young Contrarian is Christopher Hitchens' contribution, released in 2001, to the Art of Mentoring series published by Basic Books.

Inspired by his students at

—as a series of missives exploring a range of "contrarian," radical, independent or "dissident" positions, and advocating the attitudes best suited to cultivating and to holding them. Hitchens touches on his own ideological development, the nature of debate and humour, the ways in which language is slyly manipulated in apology for offensive and ridiculous positions, and how to see through this and recognise it whenever it arises in oneself.

Throughout, Hitchens makes reference to those dissenters who have inspired him over the years, including

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

.

Reception

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In The New York Times Book Review, which compared Hitchens's efforts favourably with those of Alan Dershowitz (whose Letters to a Young Lawyer opened the series alongside them), Alexander Star offered a generally friendly critique. "At his best," he wrote, "Hitchens exhibits precisely the combination of indignation and intellect that he recommends to others."^[3] That said,

An idea's unpopularity does not make it true. Nor is it necessarily admirable or courageous to break with one's allies. Hitchens's endorsement of

Kenneth Starr may have been boldly heterodox in his own circle, but it was heartily applauded in others. In the end, the romance of marginality can easily exceed its reasons. There is something awry when a well-rewarded columnist for Vanity Fair speaks of being "an exile or outcast on a remote shore." Ovid did not have an expense account.^[3]

Letters shows Hitchens's best and worst sides. A born contrarian, he 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 there are times when that innate oppositional streak seems purely knee-jerk [...]. Hitchens's stridency and certainty will always be politically potent, but Amis's willingness to commit his vulnerability and confusion to the page ultimately makes him the more subtle and resonant writer. Letters is a primer on How to Be Christopher Hitchens. The War Against Cliché is a motley heap of literary judgments that nevertheless offers us a peek at the evolution of Martin Amis.[4]

"Hitchens," noted The Progressive,

published his usual stack of important books during the course of 2001. Most noted was

radicalism of William Morris and his circle). Above all, Letters to a Young Contrarian is necessary for its exploration of the role of the dissenter in a time of too much politeness. "Seek out argument and disputation for its own sake," Hitchens urges. "The grave will provide plenty of time for silence."^[5]