A fantastic interview with Christopher Hitchens, who I admit to having a little crush on. I realize he is a drunkard, and I know he can be nuts and writes VICIOUS obituaries for people he hates, but dammit, I still love him.
There are some great stories in the interview (how some poor editor tried to get Hitchens to remove the word “Promethean” from one of his pieces with predictable results) – but I was especially touched by the story he told about Solzhenitsyn. Actually, there are a couple of stories. I had heard the Kissinger one, but not the Nabokov one.
Hitchens tells of a “missed meeting” between Solzhenitsyn and Nabokov, confessing that he has a fascination for “missed meetings”:
I collect meetings that never occurred, but should have.
Wow. For some reason, that has opened up a whole vista of associations in my mind. What a marvelous concept, what a cool fascination to have. It’s so mysterious, so evocative. Stuff like that is why I love Hitchens.
Great little interview.
Strangely, I’d heard the Nabokov story before but not the Solzhenitsyn one.. That sounds like a hell of an interview though.. real ‘want to be a fly on the wall’ stuff.
“No, I won’t change it. Fuck you. And I don’t mean to publish in your magazine, either, for that matter.
Heh heh.
Stop Smiling? US distribution only?
Hmm, I’m not sure – although it looks like. Here’s their contact page.
I thought his comment on “19th century Russian writer Tolstoy” was so spot ON.
Hmm.. I may just order online and get it shipped over.. unfortunately the excerpt says the full interview is in issue 20.. while the back issue page says issue 19.. ah well.. it’ll make the cost worthwhile..
and completely agree with the “19th century Russian writer Tolstoy” comment – Homer’s Iliad, based on Homer’s The Iliad.
I too love Hitch for very similar reasons – he’s like one of those loony geniuses that don’t quite fit in – although I’m not sure he’s a genius, just pretty smart. I often don’t agree with him, but sometimes I do, and his arguments are almost always substantive and not easily dismissed.
Just want to second CW’s thoughts. Hitchens makes it impossible not to take him seriously, even(and especially)when you disagree with him. He is someone who, when he is arguing the “other” side of an issue from my own view, I listen carefully and reevaluate the stability of my stance. Sometimes I find his ideas completely crackpot, and other times he gives me a new and enlightened perspective. Plus, would it not be a blast to pass a night of wine, music, conversation, argument, and humor with him. He definitely fits my model for a great dinner-party guest.
Use a dictionary people
After a recent presentation someone approached me to tell me how glad she was that I used the word “orient”…
In view of Christopher Hitchens’s battle for word economy, isn’t it ironic that he would string two entirely redundant sentences next to each other?
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I’ll cut it out if you give me another synonym for it. You give the words that would stand in for it and I’ll change it.
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And shouldn’t that simply be “a synonym” rather than “another synonym”?
Also puzzling is the remark:
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You either know what “Promethean” means or you don’t. If you do, it saves you about 50 words. And if you don’t, then you can look it up!
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On looking it up I find much fewer than 50 words.
uriel:
You are aware that that is a live interview I linked to, and not a written article? Do you speak in perfect grammatical sentences when you speak? Or do you sometimes unnecessarily repeat yourself, or try to re-phrase something? This is a SPOKEN interview, let me repeat, and not an edited essay.
Well yes, ok, true, fair point.
But I’m still a bit peeved that he can afford to tell editors to fuck themselves over such a dispensable word as “Promethean.” If a mag was interested in my stuff, I’d gladly strike a dozen Prometheans.
Uriel:
Well – er – you’re not Hitchens. As far as I know, you’re an unknown writer. So yeah, it would probably be wise to compromise at the start of your career – just so you can get published. Perfectly understandable.
But at his level of success? Nuh-uh. He’s a hugely successful writer. He has multiple feckin’ BOOKS out. It’s condescending. It’s condescending to ask someone like him tone down his vocabulary, and I think he was totally right to tell them to fuck off.
I’m a huge Hitchens fan and I read him BECAUSE he says stuff like “Promethean”. I’m an elitist, what can I say.
>Well – er – you’re not Hitchens
That thought had struck me too.
I was chewing on this and I think maybe I can claim to effectively have told the entire publishing world to fuck off. So I can write things that actually are perfectly sensible, reasonable, even obvious, but that virtually no published writer seems to be saying, maybe because it would jar both publishers and readers too much. E.g.: Reflecting on the Iraq war suggests that elements of the mainstream press and the administration are guilty of treason: Mistaken War.