Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring (Paperback))

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The protagonist Jimmy Porter is going through one of his self-regarding soliloquies when he exclaims, rather tellingly for once, that there are "no more good, brave causes left". These case studies, as I interpreted them to being, provide valuable evidence for the need of people who might turn from the popular "consensus" in an effort to discern the truth, or at least uncover the untruth they deem to be polluting a particular narrative.

The epistolary style is wonderful as it inspires and links to the reader's own desire for individual thought. I am not sure if I would ever wholly embrace any ‘words to live by’, but if I did, the words above wouldn’t be a poor choice.Put simply, finding the point in many chapter-letters is like finding a piece of glitter on the beach.

I imitate these and many other lines in my best terrible British accent with as much seemingly effortless acumen as I can muster for an audience of my two dogs (both of whom are now atheists and contrarians as well). First, there's reading it as an inspirational tract on living a life of contrariness and dissent and all the baggage that comes with such a life. The problem is that, much different than rebellion for its own sake, Hitchens backs it all up with historical (and anecdotal) proof. You may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. In this short work the author takes up the subject of what it means to devote oneself to a life of opposition to the status quo by responding to many of the questions he has received on the subject throughout the years.Force them to say what they really mean, and deflate false gradations with the art of “simple… elementary principles”. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Despite its short length (141 pages) I found myself constantly going back over passages (this book has a ton of great quotes). Regarding the second approach, here is where the one weakness of Hitchens' writing starts to glare through.

I find it odd because I’ve not fallen in love with any of the books I’ve read so far but still find him so compelling. This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. So, like Hitchens, whose face apparently forms an unintended sneer, I don’t fit the old description of a gentleman: one who is never rude except on purpose. Herein, Hitchens composes a series of 'letters' to those of us who would seek his advice and counsel.So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. When he died suddenly of Cancer in 2011 after a bohemian lifestyle of smoking and drinking eventually caught up to him, much of the Intelligentsia mourned the loss of this great literary critic and pamphleteer who had become such an unexpected viral sensation after years of relative anonymity. It can be understood from them that society, like a benign family, tolerates and even admires eccentricity.