(2/3) Jennifer Byrne Presents: Christopher Hitchens

the very thing I hope she wouldn't say and she'd left it just fractionally too late she was a bit older than she should have been for a second lover and was had been very beautiful as all the pictures in my book will share I was I think in terrible dread of losing her looks and becoming old and and it didn't really work out and so she seems to have decided from what I can reconstruct that she didn't want to go on living anymore she wouldn't get another chance and and the boyfriend was a bit unstable I think probably a bit bipolar and I have a feeling he talked her into it but at any rate they made a suicide pact they flew to Athens and and made an end of themselves if it was I read about in the newspapers as a murder when I went to see my mother's body what I went to see was a crime scene but I found out by investigation that it wasn't he hadn't killed her they they had made an agreement to die together and very very tough for my father you said you found that she had put a number of phone calls to you that night before it happened over the course of the day she was there yes she she the switchboard of the hotel showed so attempted calls it was hard to do international calling in those days so there was a record of they can you place this call it was to my number and I was a young person then living in London hadn't been there long wasn't at home a lot wasn't there and I've always thought that if I picked up the phone but yes you should have had a handhold of some kind and then maybe that's why she was calling I mean I just don't know which is what makes it but a game not to seem more Koosh but the the thought I had all the time my head was how am I gonna tell my father this he's such a private guy he's so reticent he's so committed to the decencies he knows that his wife is living off the time of another guy but none of their friends know they kept on appearances now everyone's going to find out everything about him and through the newspapers did you find it hard to write about yeah I certainly did you have many admirers that many enemies also did you worry that writing about yourself at great length honestly it seems you know would open a flank to those who would take you down well I think that every time I put pen to paper or write an article it's field day possibly for those who don't like me you're always putting yourself out there any time you write a book you're doing that even if it's not about yourself people didn't like you can find a way so that's all right and I have quite a thick skin and quite a broad back and also I quite often make criticisms of other people yes you do I would vote if I didn't if I didn't look a fool if I complained about being attacked I'd certainly feel a fool but you didn't have to write a memoir what made you want to do it now the book is quite a lot about a group of friends of which I've been parked for a long time and it's not just about me it's a memoir it's not an autobiography it's a memoir and a memoir is about the people who were important to you in the moments that were some of the friends I've had I think they're interesting to other people too it seems to me you were very well served by the way your times in that when you went to Oxford yes you met James Fenton who became usually mean you virtually dated you zero in the clock zeroed and then everything was measured after that but you also were at a time that people like John Berger and and as Aibileen and no Chauncey were there and then you went to float straight a little Bloomsbury period wasn't it and you ran into in McEwan Martin Amis you had lunch together you drank together around around together you dated women together you were lucky once you in your talk very nice and it's become in a way that makes me a bit uneasy the sort of stuff of legend now that the Friday lunch it was actually in Bloomsbury that was pure accident we weren't trying to emulate you can't have a set if you set out to have one more push you can't but it sort of occurred yes conspicuously absent on a regular basis with any women in fact frankly Christopher conspicuously absent through your whole book is a powerful presence of women what he's that was normal you only ever met you men I tell you what I decided at the beginning and I put a cautionary note at the front I only have copyright in myself and if I write about other people it's because I they're already public figures well they've written about me or it's in some way fair game or if they're dead and so right by the influence of women which I do twice by the way in case I mean when I write about my mother I'm saying how I learned about the importance of the female principle and learned about it in a very nice way and the way my mother explained to me things about love and sex within unbelievably powerful but but subtle way should give you a clue and then I say when I talk about my great love Martin nameís that all our discussions were entirely about that doesn't mean I'm not going to say who we were talking about that would you would you'd be criticizing me now for the opposite reason if I'd done that pitch 22 yes ma'am I'm great time great title there was of course a catch-22 which is roughly I think meant it was something like if you were the only way to get out of war is if you pleaded insanity but if you advanced that argument then you say thank ya is there a hitch 22 yes yeah what is it hitch 22 for me is that having been involved in various kinds of quite solid commitment and allegiance throughout a lot of my life I've been through it now the other side that now the only group I'm associated with is a loosely knit collection of people Richard Dawkins is the best known member of them the founding group meeting of this group was held in my house as a photograph it in the book Sam Harris Dan Dennett people who want to defend science and reason and who say that the the main principles are that the only thing you're sure of is uncertainty that the only thing that is certain is doubt that the main thing is the Socratic principle you have to you're already education when you understand how big no you are and so both all assertions of faith or absolutism or complete belief are almost by definition useless and false and that actually that's quite a strong commitment to be making you called to a party of doubt and uncertainty open-mindedness and scriptures and I feel I can spend the rest of my life doing that with a fair degree of conviction and you coined that ideas hitch 22 iteration it's so interesting to you you talk about death rather conceitedly perhaps but I needed a title as well because I would it's also funny if I couldn't mention it because we haven't talked about Salman yet and I know in case we don't one of the word games that we boys used to play yes one of the principal ones was and a veggie by hem was book titles that didn't quite make it I list them in the book for whom the bell rings the big gasping mr. Vargo good expectations of that and we went through a lot of these my portrait of a woman two days in the life of Evander newsa anyway was ready to and I remember thinking I might need that one day as with a lot of things someone is the is the man who comes up with the brilliant encapsulation people don't realize how witty he is they think of him as a rather solemn guy on the run who was glaring into the camera as if he's half a refugee was in trouble and he's mighty and it's all true he's an extremely serious person and a very serious novice but he's probably the the the wishest user of the English language alive it's only the second language you moved to America permanently yes in the early eighties that's a huge step well I used to I say in the book that I really don't believe in the supernatural dimension and in anything like for example precognitive dreams or anything of this sort but I think maybe in the unconscious you sometimes find out what you really do want and when I was in my late teens early years in Oxford I began to have this dream of being in the United States I felt very drawn to it for reasons I couldn't quite understand and run the same time I realized that I didn't want any other career path all the reasons I'd gone to university people said well you have a lawyer you've got me tortured why would I be wanted to do that what would it be I want to be a Russia don't watch me one need to be one and it it's taken me until roughly the time of writing the memoir to find out that those two aspirations sub will send me your unconscious ones were the same that in order to improve as a writer I had to move to America and get out of the slightly warm bath very grayble but still same warm bath of English life an incidental question why do you see

Channel: DailyHitchens22

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Keywords: 2010, Christopher Hitchens, Jennifer Byrne, Hitch-22

Id: 81FcA4PlMus

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2010