something about "A Drinking Life" by Pete Hamill

A Drinking Life is a memoir by Pete Hamill, a New York-based columnist, journalist, and author featured in publications like the New York Post and The New York Daily News. I expected a deep-dive into alcoholism, but Hamill was never your bottoming-out alcoholic. Drinking, it appears, was something he did while killing time socializing in bars; it was not a preoccupation. This memoir, published in 1995, was born 20 years after his last drink. Hamill came to view alcohol as destructive and decided to quit. His sobriety does not sound like much of a struggle, which explains why addiction and destruction do not seem to be central themes in the arguably mis-titled A Drinking Life. Hamill's life, as relayed by the author, sounds mostly fine—so I found this a little dull and want to say only that there are far more interesting and compelling memoirs out there.

Something about Christopher Hitchens

For me he fell into that category of people who are impressive but not necessarily admirable. Although I generally disliked the piece as a whole, my favorite passage of his comes from the second installment of "On the Limits of Self-Improvement", his chronicling of a makeover. Here he describes getting a Brazilian wax:

Here’s what happens. You have to spread your knees as far apart as they will go, while keeping your feet together. In this “wide stance” position, which is disconcertingly like waiting to have your Pampers changed, you are painted with hot wax, to which strips are successively attached and then torn away. Not once, but many, many times. I had no idea it would be so excruciating. The combined effect was like being tortured for information that you do not possess, with intervals for a (incidentally very costly) sandpaper handjob. The thing is that, in order to rip, you have to grip. A point of leverage is required: a place that can be firmly gripped and pulled while the skin is tautened. Ms. Turlington doesn’t have this problem. The businesslike Senhora Padilha daubed away, took a purchase on the only available handhold, and then wrenched and wrenched again. The impression of being a huge baby was enhanced by the blizzards of talcum powder that followed each searing application. I swear that several times she soothingly said that I was being a brave little boy … Meanwhile, everything in the general area was fighting to retract itself inside my body.

That's laugh-out-loud funny to me.

Now he's dead so a lot of praise is being thrown his way--not necesarrily at him, but at his talent, wit, and powers of consumption. The best piece written about him ever, though, is this book review called "‘No Bullshit’ Bullshit". It isn't complimentary.

Notes:

I take issue with one point in Stefan Collini's review; he parenthetically writes,

It is interesting to note that Hitchens, loyal to aspects of the Trotskyism he has for the most part abandoned, always says Stalinism where most people would say Communism.

I'm not so sure Hitchens avoided the term "communism" because he had some affinity for it still. Rather, I like to think he recognized that we have never known a pure Communist system that wasn't just a front for a totalitarian government, and so he used (as many pundits do) the name of the fascist who ran the place.