Essay Club: Fragments From an Education by Christopher Hitchens

"The strange thing, or so I now think, was the way in which it didn’t feel all that strange..."

Welcome, one and all! Essay Club, for those who don’t know, is a fortnightly chat hosted by myself here at Mind & Mythos. The focus, of course, is essays—one great essay per post. I typically begin by introducing the author, and then provide a summary of the essay before opening the chat up for questions.

Last time we discussed John Michael Greer’s Myth, History, and Pagan Origins, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Today we’ll be discussing an essay by Christopher Hitchens called Fragments From an Education. It’s a relatively short one—it only takes about 12 minutes to read—so I encourage you to read Hitchens’ essay first, and then return here to join the discussion.

A young Christopher Hitchens (1974).

Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949-2011) was a journalist, writer, and polemicist, perhaps best known as one of the ‘four horsemen’ of New Atheism. He was born in England, but moved to the US in the 1980s to write for The Nation and later Vanity Fair. Hitchens published numerous books and essays on a wide range of topics, including literature and culture, religion, education, war and contemporary politics, and biographies, as well as personal reflections on his own life and health.

Hitchens was a skilled debater, and cultivated an identity as a radical and contrarian. Whether or not his views were truly at odds with the establishment is, I think, an interesting question; but when he took a position he defended it fiercely, always with his characteristic charm and wit. In Fragments From an Education we see the same Hitchens—witty, uncompromising—but with a more personal slant. Let’s jump into it.