Charlie Rose: "Is it -- are there -- what is the common theme that connects the things that you feel are powerful enough to write about? Your two great friends -- Ian McEwan and Martin Amis -- are NOVELISTS."

(Rose holds his hands in the air, saying: COME ON!)

Christopher Hitchens: "Well, I'm not able to write fiction. I don't have the gift for it, or a thing remotely like it. By the way, I think I know what separates fiction from non-fiction writers, by the way."

Charlie Rose: (Skeptically; interrupting him) "Which is?"

Christopher Hitchens: "I THINK that people I know who write fiction usually have a good understanding of music, and I don't really."

(Deep and pregnant pause)

"It's true of a lot of my non-fiction friends: we're not musical. I think that may be the crucial faculty for poets and novelists as opposed to essayists like myself."

Christopher Hitchens has children, ladies and gentlemen, and I remember reading in his review of the "Deathly Hallows" that he likes to read Philip Pullman's novels to his little girl before bedtime instead of the sanctimonious Rowling. Can you imagine Christopher Hitchens being your dad, reading you terrifying stories of mind rape, bears, and deicide every night, and then turning out the light, his sharp, whiskey smile the last thing you see flashing in the darkness?

"You KNOW there's no life after death, darling. You KNOW that, lovely. Goodnight, princess."





Posted by miracle on Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:22:19 -0500 -- permanent link