Wodehouse, and a row of titles by a special Hitchens hero, George Orwell. Renovations are planned, so much of the furniture around the apartment has been put away, except for the books, as indispensable as running water, arranged on built-in-shelves and stacked in towers like CDs. The 61-year-old Hitchens is seated at a small, wooden table in the dining area, his gray-sandy colored hair brushed back and semi-combed, blue shirt unbuttoned just enough for comfort, his voice a handsome baritone which has been likened to Richard Burton’s. “I even went back to Greece and I went to the graveyard while I was writing the book and decided not to write about it. “It was painful to write about my mother, but not very because long ago I internally managed all that,” he says. The finished book is a “highly selective” and dry-eyed 400-page account that includes reflections on sex (he’s for it), class, his “purse-lipped and silent” military father Eric, and tragically romantic mother, Yvonne, who killed herself during an extramarital rendezvous in Greece. Hitchens submitted some sample chapters, was asked to continue and turned in a manuscript twice as long as requested and as eventually released. Urged by his then-publisher, Jonathan Karp of Twelve, Mr. Hitchens’ opinions about others might want to learn his views of himself. After more than a dozen previous books, it was a sign that readers engaged by Mr. The equally polished and varnished British author, essayist and columnist enjoyed surprising commercial success three years ago with “God Is Not Great,” a direct attack on religion that countered a recent trend of spiritual works. But here’s a subject I know too much about.” Also, when I’m writing, I’m trying to see how much I can pack into 5,000 words about a subject. “Normally, when I’m writing, I’m making an argument, making a case. “I found it fantastically difficult,” he says. On a sunny afternoon at his apartment near Dupont Circle, Christopher Hitchens holds up a Marlboro Light between cigar-shaped fingers and discusses the hitch of writing his memoir, “Hitch-22.” WASHINGTON (AP) - The coffee is strong, the wine a dry red poured from a tall, swanlike beaker.

Hitchens memoir