Review | 'Hitch-22': The two faces of Christopher Hitchens

The title of Christopher Hitchens' memoir is an obvious allusion to Joseph Heller's great antiwar novel. Heller knew Hitchens; a generous blurb from him is given pride of place at the back of the book jacket. But one wonders what Heller, who died in 1999, would have thought of Hitchens' post-9/11 warmongering, especially his defiant defense of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, a tragic morass engendered by the sort of bureaucratic arrogance and stupidity Catch-22 condemns.