Christopher Hitchens Hitch 22 Interview at NY Public Library

good evening my name is Paul Holden Graber and I'm the director of public programs at the New York Public Library known as live from the New York Public Library as most of you I think by now know my goal here at the library apart from providing us cognitive theater is simply to make the lion's roar to make this great institution levitate to help us achieve this goal we have tonight Christopher Hitchens hitch I should have posed their hitch as you will discover he's a times called ask me to be brief not my forte you know the famous line of Pascal if I had had more time I would have made it shorter I will do my best no bio here as we are here to speak precisely about the man himself his memoir hitch 22 but I have to tell you what is coming up briefly on Monday our very first evening in Bryant Park pray that it does not rain I will speak with John waters he loves no one more you will discover if you come then Johnny Mathis on Tuesday the photographer Lenna hair tuck will be here to discuss lost souls her haunting photographs I encourage you all to see her exhibition of lost souls on view now at the International Center for photography our neighbors in mid Manhattan we will end the season with an evening on soccer stay tuned for that one as well as news about our upcoming season fall season which will include conversations with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Edwidge Danticat Antonio Frazier Derek Walcott Nicole crowds with David Grossman Zadie Smith Angela Davis with Toni Morrison and many others libraries as Christopher Hitchens knows very well mattered greatly to our democracy did you know that Keith Richards one of the founding members of The Rolling Stones is writing his memoir you out in October in it he confesses I wonder what hitch will think about this in it he confesses his secret longing to be a librarian when I'm not I'm not wondering what hitch thinks about that I think that he would think that that is a very good thing a noble thing to be but he says this when you were growing up Keith Richards rights to institutional places that affect you most powerfully the church which belongs to God and the public library that belongs to you the public library he says is a great equalizer I can to invite Keith Richards to be on stage indeed I have already invited him to come to discuss among other things the role of libraries I think we have other things to discuss with Keith Richards but I will also talk to him about the role of libraries in our democracy I urge you to become a supporter of the New York Public Library here is my P be it a young lion if you are young enough or feel young enough or a conservator consider becoming part of the President's Council the New York Public Library is in the middle of a campaign don't close the books on libraries a New York Public Library is facing if you didn't know it the harshest cut in its history a proposed city budget right now a reduction of 37 million dollars that could shut down ten branches as of July and slash service to just four days a week you can immediately support the library by immediately I mean now I'm going to show you how you can immediately support the library and its mission with a simple text message so take out your phones now I'll ask you to shut them later and text NY PL to the number 2 7 7 2 2 to give $10 from your mobile phone when prompted reply yes to complete this one-time gift again that is NYPL to 7 7 2 2 don't see many people with phones out a one-time $10 donation will appear on your next mobile bill as a separate line item and is recognized as a tax-deductible donation thank you for your support fliers should indeed be on your chairs if you wish to take care of this later or as probably most of you will do donate several times our wonderful independent bookseller will have h22 available for purchase Christopher has graciously agreed to sign his memoir after our conversation our wonderful bookseller is 192 books it is now finally and this was not all too brief I know Christopher I'm sorry a pleasure to welcome Christopher Hitchens back to the stage last time he debated his last book God is not great with Reverend Al Sharpton they entered the room to Gregorian chant I don't know if you remember that and took to the stage with James Brown you entered tonight to the music mostly of Bob Dylan which hits loves tonight please warmly welcome hitch to the stage to the music of Fats Waller your feets too big we will explain why ladies and gentlemen Christopher Hitchens and Fats Waller like maybe Pam baby elephant pattern that's what I calls it say up in Harlem at our table position ever four was me yo big feet in you from your ankle up I'll say you show us wheat from that down there's just too much feet yes your feets too big don't want to cause your reasons we can't use it because your feets too big I really hate you cuz your feet Suzie Wow it's a shame to talk after that but here we are to do that and um your feets too big I didn't mean that about you but you write about your father the commander he disliked coming to London on principle as ad and had enraged me when I was younger by refusing to take a job as a secretary of Brooks Club I would have been living in London in Mayfair for heaven's sake and when I was a teenager exclamation point but I did once loo your him to the detested City to see a musical about Fats Waller an uncharacteristic favorite of his your feets too big and he once astonished me by asking in the late 1970s if I'd care to come with him to the reunion of old shipmates and on and on and on tell us something about your father and maybe what you remember about that musical when you went with your father give us a portrait of him if you would well the old man who used to call the commander affectionately because it was the highest rank to which he attained in the Royal Navy which he'd served all his life was a rather inward sandy morose man who had the virtues of thrift and honesty and also courage during the course of the Second World War he in which he told me one of his very few confiding remarks said that when he was fighting the Nazis it was the only time in his entire life he felt he knew what he was doing didn't occur to me till later that didn't meant he didn't know what he was doing when say he had a son in 1949 things like that but I would have that would have been it to me a trivial remark was I was brought up entirely on the history of British wartime valour and we used to have a toast every Boxing Day the day after Christmas because on that day in 1943 his ship HMS Jamaica had sent a big Nazi convoy raiding pocket battleship called the Scharnhorst to the bottom of the sea which was better days work as I say in the book than any I've ever done myself and I still have a toast every Boxing Day for that reason but in fact in a funny way he didn't know what he was doing he wasn't under his control to know that because he certainly had not joined his Majesty's Royal Navy in order to be running guns to Joseph Stalin which was what he was in fact doing escorting those convoys over the hump of Scandinavia to the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel and in fact his entire life was lived slightly as someone who has taken advantage off by the establishment to which he was so devoted so I felt sorry for him when I was growing up which is probably not a terrifically good thing to feel for your old man because he'd been so loyal to the crown the Empire the Tory party the Navy and he got nothing out of it and as people used to say he was sorry but nothing to be Tory about he was left on the beach after the war they downsized the Navy and let him go and he was never the same again I hope I'm not going on too much about this but you did ask and it's very formative on me because it strikes me all the time that the ruling class has this permanent reservoir of people who are very loyal to it and get nothing in return and who were in a sense being exploited and that had a very important influence on moving me to them to the left when I was young do you remember us he did have a fondness for how do you spell style jazz he liked his one of his favorite songs was my very good friend the milkman which I still can't hear without emotion and then your feets too big of all things and then when he took me he came to London because he was going to his the last reunion I could tell it was going to be the last of his old shipmates they were gathering in some broken-down old Navy club and we went along and he asked me if I'd come I was amazed I never thought he'd asked me to a thing like that I thought I'd been a disappointment to him but there they all were these old sea dogs gathered for the last time and they all called him hitch which I'd never heard anyone be called before which was what my friends were starting to call me so there was a at the last a slight male bond between me and the commander the commander and me I should say sorry and for some reason this name has stuck with you you make a lot in the book about how important your name was going to be for you oh yeah I mean if you're growing up in a lower middle-class families desperately trying to escape the class below it and your family name is Hitchens and your name is Christopher first name if you'll start calling you Chris to mean matey say it's Chris Hitchens at first but it's Chris Hitchens quite soon the whole aspirate has dropped out of the equation and then you're in danger of being common vulgar my mother wouldn't have any of that I more or less promise to I wouldn't allow it so but people kept doing it they still do because they think it's friendly hi Chris no thank you would you mind I'm against circumcision of all kinds and amputation of children and so I'll stick to this nice name oh good actually I thought I would get more applause but there it should if it wants to sawed off bits of their genitalia they should do it when they've grown up and have made the decision for the kid yeah when it had to come cuz that's part of the family secret - I didn't know my mother was Jewish I thought I was circumcised for the same reason as all other middle class boys and I still sometimes brood on the missing bits that's getting ahead - so so the constant so I write it's also part of the second identity or split personality or divide itself that I write about throughout the book which is the theme of it I nearly called it both sides now I'm glad I didn't um but it would have been a good enough working title I was when I was at the university I was Chris during the working day in other words I was wearing a donkey jacket and giving out leaflets outside the car factories and waving the flag of the Vietcong and other things that I would do again proudly but in the evening thinking life isn't all politics I would be Christopher and I'd put on a general jacket and try and have sort of Brideshead regurgitate it yeah good time I thought I was entitled to after something like 12 years of being stuck in a monastic boys only school so hitch is a perfect solution to the Chris Christopher problem it's ideal though it is a circumcision of Hitchens I will admit actually that thought hadn't occurred to me to list minute down well there you go there is a second addition nothing comes for free um you you you spoke early and early about your the impact your your father had on you a man of few words something one probably wouldn't likely say about you and I think we can we can move quite elegantly from having this father with rather laconic to your own experience of being a father and it's something that doesn't feature very much in your book but when it does it does so quite pungently I think here we learn something about you for the people who didn't know you before under that guys we learned something and I'd like you pitch to read this little passage if you don't mind you you need glasses yes I do but I don't seem to have them hold on oh yes I do you do there's a dog I should have prepared you know you should have done this alright I found them good yes if you don't mind you you told me you wouldn't mind reading and I think in your room in your your own words read by you might be better than by me if you could read from there to there good grief you want to read this yes beginning with my deep I was going to begin right the last layer there I should just prepare you for this by saying that I Childress anaglyphs by my father all of them very terse one of them which I forgot to put it in so I'll tell you now as we know he used to get up very early which I've never been able to know that my mother make himself breakfast turn in the kitchen with the old coal range and baked eggs and strong tea and circle and I thought one morning it might be nice as I went down I happened to be up early for god knows what reason have breakfast with the old man so I put on my corduroy shorts and so on toddle down the stairs when in morning daddy and he looked up and said Jesus Christ we family prayers next from this you may get an impression also if his is also high learned what his Baptist upbringing had probably been like so and I never I don't have ever had breakfast voluntarily ever since actually okay so these new try to think well you won't be like that with your own kids you'll be much more warm supportive you know might even have breakfast wouldn't so this is the bit you want me to read my deep voice the lack of patience had its worst outcome I feel sure in the raising of my children many men feel somewhat useless during the early childhood of their offspring as well as paralyzed with admiration for the way that women seem somehow to know what to do when the babies arrived I don't think I can take refuge in the general weakness of my sex confronted with infancy I was exceptionally no-good anything I don't say here is only intended to spare others not myself like not a few men I set myself to overcompensate by working over harder which I think has its own justification in the biologically essential task of feeding and clothing and educating one's young but I was really marking time till they were old enough to be able to hold a conversation and I have to face the fact that the children of both my marriages are much much more about manhood in nurturing from their grandparents my magnificent in-laws than they did for me that's one of apps and not just a lapse in time that I know I shall not make up for one cannot invent memories for other people and the father figure for my children must be interesting to the best in Sawle quite legend their lives there are days when this gives me inexpressible pain and I know that such days of remorse also lie in my future I distinguish a loss from regret in that remorse is sorrow for what one did do whereas a regret Zuri for one did not do both seem to be involved in this case my only recourse my promise and vow was and is to get a bit better as they get older hence this example which I hope I'll be able to improve upon before they come and screw down the lid or whatever it is and that's where you want me to start wisely yes that's an admission yeah a very strong one yes and it was in case you know I didn't live to see the publication of the book I felt that I were to leave a message in a bottle that kind of thing something for them have you become better you should ask them but yes I think so yeah and I with the young adult I think I'm not bad I mean I know I'm not bad as a teacher I get quite a lot of letters from students if I've had trying to move their progress of the agent at least my older children are now people want to come and visit me always try and I always try and say yes and I even wrote a book which I know had some success it I don't quite know why it worked as well as it did it's called letters to a young contrarian fatuous term but a word has been the celebrity advice to the young anyway chai you you don't like that word contrarian no I don't in fact I did this I was true to the title by denouncing the world contrarian as stupid in the first paragraph the publishers insisted on it I was asked the other day in Los Angeles at a book signing by an older man came up with a copy of the book and asked me to sign it and he said while he waited he said I first bought this book for my son to give it to him in the hope he'd become a contrarian but he refused he said it just like that I said I know what you're going through but that does bring us back to what you were reading I love the way the book begins I really do I love it because in part of the quotations you use the epigrams you use at the beginning and particularly one that comes from Leo Leopold Bloom yes where you say read your own obituary notice they say you live longer gives you second wind new lease of life I see a little smile the area second wind new lease on life yeah well I know you love arbitrary when I was wondering whether to do a memoir at all I got hysterically apologetic a letter from a wonderful man called sounding noun who some of you may have heard of he's the director of the National Portrait Gallery in London and it began Gervais Hitchens we can't apologize enough we don't know what to say to you and went on in this way it turned out that they produced a catalogue for an exhibition of photographs of a group of people young people younger people who offer whom I used to be a set if you like but whom I used to be of which I used to remember actually its title was the Friends of Martin Amis and it was quite a hit with the National Portrait Gallery and they sent out this catalogue in which one of the captions red Martian Amos with the late Christopher Hitchens so let me just tell you something when you read about yourself in the past tense it does concentrate the mind and he flailed on and said the copies would all be pulps most of they've been withdrawn but some of them did get out of subscribers we don't know how I think he thought I was going to sue I'm not late mate and it's professionally damaging to be told you're dead was then people weren't asked you to write books or review your Union so you so so in fact you you didn't sue but you wrote but so that's why we haven't seen hitch around lately and you know it's bad so it's in bold contrast I wrote back and say don't you dare destroy these things I want I want at least six copies now and I've had to see it for myself and there it was then I hope you were in extremely good company with Mark Twain and so many other Mark Twain Alfred Nobel it changed his life when Nobel read his obituaries he read that he'd been a war monger and a dynamite maker so he went straight and endorsed a boring Peace Prize Ernest Hemingway used to read the obituaries every morning with a cocktail to cheer himself up it only worked for about 10 years but free unshipped the shotgun but it did a pretty bought him bought him ten years the Great's the first people Marcus Garvey the founder of the batch of African movement on in bold contrast founder of Harlem nationalism died of an apoplectic fit while reading his obituary it doesn't always strike everyone the same on me it did have a cheering effect though though nonetheless we read a sentence the one day beyond arguably true and well you see the words are powerful both very we once did a program here at at live from the New York Public Library naturally called live from the New York Public Library presents dead from the new Yogi of the gyri because I'm I'm rather interested myself also no mature reason we had in the in the audience I was interviewing the great obituary writer for The Economist and row and in the audience we had half of the New York Times Undertaker's and and they were they were comparing how they did the dead and interestingly enough the New York Times dines out I'm told with some of their future featured people too and some of those futures featured people when they are smart and shrewd realized that they better be good at that lunch dinner because it will reflect leave an epigram in here and there yeah I once met so Steven Runciman who some of you may have read he was the great historian of the Crusades and of Byzantium and he was still alive this was in the late 70s having been at Eden with George Orwell and Cyril Connolly he was the last survivor of that class and I met him at a conference on on Byzantium inside and was amazed to meet one of my heroes and this way and he said I suppose I look very old and crumbling to you to CREP it I just was thinking how true that was I said bye so Steven by no means of course not he said well I'll tell you what one thing I'm not going to die I'm not going to and I say well I'm delighted to hear so see Evan and he said the times at this point the London Times which really invents the obituary so had been locked out by Rupert Murdoch hadn't appeared for a year and a half he said I'm not dying till the times comes back and I get my full dress the bitchery and when the London Times came back from the long lockout the first thing it did was to publish The Times obituary supplement to do justice to all the old buffers who died and not had their column in the paper it was a bit morbid of us to think no not at all okay well to cheer us up I love Bob Hope's line that when he was dying his wife asked him where where he should be buried and he said surprise me but but what would well that's it nice actually in my book as well about people I want the was once a rumour of Bob Hope Stethem for some reason The Associated Press called me often said had I heard the both Hope had died and I just seen him at the British Embassy at a reception in his honor because he had been born in Alphen and little thing two weeks before and I now wish I hadn't said when he looked dead enough when I saw him last II think now that was a low blow for the old Buzzard it I don't think it I don't think the subject of this is particularly morbid but I all their obituaries are necessarily but I would say one thing that haunts me in the very first five pages which I had diligently prepared to read but it would take us I think a little bit too long in the first four or five pages of your memoir one thing that strikes me and maybe you can address this in this company here is a real fear of death and in some way I think that the memoirs written to to hold it at bay to some extent for sure I mean I'm very acutely aware that every day now that I've passed 61 is more and more subtracted out less and less of course and I've always known this is a matter of objectivity that I'm born into a losing struggle we all know that I mean when one has taken a glimpse down the road and I don't know anyone who has come out of this a winner it's not likely to happen now we're beset on all sides by people who promise us release from this consideration or remission from it and dangerous not see people stupid people who I want to be a pain in the ass to you while you're still alive not content to try and torment you after your demise so that keeps one going you want to stay alive if only to combat the the merchants of death who promised falsely promised eternal life has again rather muted I felt Hester has them hasil that's a writing of this memoir well Nadine Gordimer okay I know what I wanted to say once wrote I couldn't I could never find exactly where it is but she told me she had certainly said it I saw that just last weekend inhale and why incredible by the way injuries has produced a collection of her non fictional writing she once wrote and it made a huge effect on me that that one should or said that one should try to write as if posthumously and try and picture yourself writing post-mortem because then you're free of all the inhibitions that can cluster around even the most independent mighty writer as he may think of himself you don't let a care about public opinion now you don't mind about sales you don't care what the critics say you don't even care what your friends your peers your beloved beloved think you're free Jeffers of a liberating thought that's the way I would prefer to think about it and I don't think I write as if I'm scared of it I certainly hope I don't leave that impression I think it's it's quite emancipating to be able to think of it in a in a clear-eyed way I was going to say that it seems also that the maybe the writing of it anyway I hate that I certainly know I was cheered up by reading about my death I know that and I didn't know that that would be my reaction but that you would say was the seed for writing this memoir without question yes so what caused it abortions the old question you get asked all the time isn't it a bit too soon they will can't leave it too late mate yeah that takes care of itself that's done you know writing for posterity reminds me of a memoir that I always loved them I don't know if if it's among the things you love reading which is stand-ins the life of Auggie blog he writes for the happy few for the future reader for the reader who will read him in 70 years from now enjoying the fact that in some way he is as you said not inhibited that's why when Priestley posthumous in some way that's how Winston Smith opens his diary in 1984 palmas in those words probably not by accident it's exactly how it begins so the memoirs written you you quote Paul Cavafy at one moment they're each to scribble yes you have this this urge in some way to write your life and I don't know if no no not just the life just to write in but in this particular case apathy ascribe nd yes dear to the urge to scribble I knew when I was quite young that not that it was what I wanted to do would like to do but you had to do how to do you the auto is this an autobiography in in their form no because in autobiographies is an autobiography in the fact that you in some way come to life through the act of writing it's a memoir and you make a distinction that you think it's noir and it's an attempt to locate myself and make myself more presentable by more presentable yes by scraping acquaintance with charming friends and putting myself in the same company as them finding myself in interesting countries at times of war and crisis and revolution so I always have to have an excuse for writing about myself until I could do the Proust questionnaire towards the end I just say you might want to know a bit about what I'm like all the other things I happen to be in Poland just when the Solidarity movement was beginning you you know I thought I saw it coming I met this guy rated became famous I would still I need a justification of that so then even when I write about the death of my my um my beloved mother it it was a help to me if I if this doesn't sound profane that the week that I had to go and investigate her death was a week when the tanks were in the streets of Athens and there was a counter-revolution and a coup and blood in the streets and people I knew tortured and killed and um and I had to deal with the coroner who is the same corner Indian everyone here I hope remembers close to Gus's films II said the same coroner who had returned the false verdict in the murder of Lambrakis so even even there I felt need to try to locate myself perhaps futilely in modern events I won't say history I don't know if I I'll have you read that passage about your mother stairs but I will read em okay and all events this is how it ends I'm eventually escorted to the hotel suite with all had happened two bodies had had to be removed and their coffins sealed before I could get there this was so dismally sordid reason that the dead couple had taken a while to be discovered the pain this is so piercing and exquisite and the scenery of the two rooms so nasty and so tawdry that I hide my tears and my nausea by pretending to seek some air at the window and there for the first time I receive a shattering full-on view of the Acropolis for a moment and like the Berlin Wall and other celebrated vistas than when glimpsed for the first time it almost resembles some remembered postcard of itself but then it becomes utterly authentic and unique that temper really must be the parcel on and almost near enough to stretch out and touch the room behind me is full of death and darkness and depression but suddenly here again and fully present is a flash and dazzle and brilliance of the green blue and white of the life-giving Mediterranean air and light that lent me my first hope and confidence I only wish I could have been clutching my mother's hand for this too yes thank you it's an extraordinary extraordinary passage rather painful but you immediately go from the scene which you might describe as to what happened to antiquity yes who an area of the world that you're interested in in many different ways and to civilization as opposed to primitive barbaric episodes and it's also as you know it's a coda because I open the chat about my mother remembering my first my first memory recollection actually my first which is of the Mediterranean it's the Grand Harbor of the letter first thing I can remember crossing three when I was three also crossing the Harbor with her on a ferry and seeing this dazzling baroque Renaissance city white coming down to the shore very as your cerulean Mediterranean and then of the different colors of the sky and then the blending of the green and the olefin Semite I've always felt happy and at home and the light seems to suit my eyes in the Mediterranean and that's where it began with her and then appalling ly having turned away from this scene of squalor and death that's how it ended too mushy God much that was my first few gesture to give some context here what I read comes after your discovery that she committed suicide yes well I already said that my father was a an honorable and brave and modest and thrifty man and all of those things he was to a great degree but he was 12 years older than my mother and he rather bought her I have to say it was a horrible realization what was some worth saying she thought would as I do the boredom is the worst thing of all and being boring as the worst crime and she his name was Eve on which I was liked when I was small I thought it's a classier name was like my English out it was rather was generally rather so drab and gray and Yvonne was sounded French one is French she was very beautiful she was interested in fashion beautiful pictures of yes she's lovely she was lovely and my the the wives of my father's brother officers tended to be hope I don't sound snobbish here but they tended to be cool things like Ethel Oh Marjorie or Nancy or so Yvonne my mother was different she was much more he was cut above she looked different and she would have liked to go to the theater and have sharpened fashionable cocktail parties and smart little events indeed she never really got any of this and my father and so when when she could she left him she left her too late and went off with a man who was not boring who could quote poetry and was charming bit of a pseudo actually charmer spoiled priest of the Church of England but amusing but alas unlike my father not thrifty not modest not honest not brave and probably well certainly I think bipolar he needed he needed to die and he wanted to take her with him and they made her they made a suicide pact and carried it out enough she introduced you to him she wanted me to approve yeah did you well yes in a way I mean he was he wasn't he was an appealing chap I thought maybe a bit shallow but not bad it was I couldn't I do think I would have dared say I turned to prove no I I couldn't have done that I wish I had now I could have warned her that he was unstable something a bit shaky about him flaky what's the word the children my daughter's used sketchy very good very deadly word that then people know right away I could have it's one of my regrets I didn't say and another regret was that you were not there to take her phone call yeah well she that's true there was before answering machines and cell phones were common when I went to Athens and once I fought my way through all their staff and that wolf warfare that's going on as well I the hotel know once I've done the forensic investigation and found she hadn't been murdered which is what had first been reported first reported that he'd killed her and then so at least three days I I did think she came running and had to steal the photographs and the friendsgiving this included the hotel switchboard record of her trying to call my number in London repeatedly and not getting I was young in those days and just I just got a job in London and I wasn't at home right think she had reached out to you well she loved me I was everything to her she left to my it was upsetting for my brother and my father because she left a note I finally found two ages it was just to me and that was very awkward as you can imagine to tell my my the remaining males of my family I want to go back to her he was she loved me and she was always on my side it said it's a fantastic themes have a beautiful woman in your corner from early childhood there's no definite verse or I promise you there's nothing that I said who doesn't spoil you loved you lets you go yeah doesn't sporty for other women then she wasn't she wasn't clinging she wasn't over maternal she never tried she was never protective she wanted me to go away because she thought it'd be better if I went to a proper school boarding school she she and your father had quite an argument about yes you overheard it picture if you will the young hitch in his jammies the top of the stairs I suppose we've all done it at some point or another you'll you're you're overhearing a domestic dispute below so you creep out you eavesdrop indeed it was about me so I listen more attend more jet it was a moie discussion and she was saying that we'd have to scrape together the dough to get Christopher to a proper school because none of my family had been to one and eventually to University when my father was saying quite practically and quite squarely the truth which we didn't have the money and she was saying we'll we'll find it from somewhere and this is the bit I remember if there's going to be a ruling class in this country Christopher is going to be part of it so I thought my jammies I so thought yes you did you understand with that did you did you understand what ruling class I did I didn't but it sounded better than any of the other classes I knew okay such as the ruled I really knew enough about them we were of that class already thanks all the same so so the project was that CH would become an English gentleman so you be the judge about how that will that worked out because I think it was a I don't know if she if they could come back now I think they'd still be wondering when I was going to get a proper job of work I think they might but I knew that she was would exceed anything for me and I feel her the scene you you described that I I read in which i think is actually very in some way permit me to say somewhat cinematic the way you set it up with a Pathan and in front and brought me back to an early obsession of yours which I happen to share which you don't really talk about it all in this book but I'd love to speak about it speak about it with you a little bit which is your interest in the Elgin marbles yes and I just recently last week was in Jamaica interviewing the Nigerian Nobel Prize whoa Lisa Inca yeah who is who you admire as well as I do great hero and we were talking about retribution and he believes that retribution sometimes need only be symbolic but that it can go beyond the symbolism and we should just return he said quite forcefully all the stolen artifacts at their museums to their proper owners which is complex and certainly we know it's not as as he puts it is very simplistic it's not complex at all but it would deplete our Museum yes it would but can I just tell my so Yonker story would you mind just in case it amuses people know why you have in your heads in your minds ladies and gentlemen the image of Wallace lenka the very Nigerian novelist well he's about six foot six I'd say very tall and he has the most pure anthracite skin and a Nimbus of white hair and he's done an enormous amount of jail time and exile time in his native Nigeria always for the right notice for the right cause but for the right reasons he's always given the best interpretation of that course he's a his prison writings are among his best he's one of Africa's really great here's nothing and I was I got off a plane at the Carter hey no literary festival few years ago and there was a greeter on the tarmac with a sign saying will si incur Christopher Hitchins I thought that's nice and I walked up and I said well okay I'm here and he looked at me looked up at the sign looked down and said which one of you I thought this is a sort of arrival I suppose he's completely wrong about that it's not to do with the national patrimony of our treasures I mean after all there are no Babylonians left there are no Chaldeans there are no Hittites for one thing there really aren't any ancient Greeks either if you if you'll be honest about it all Romans and the countries of Africa are I mean the we did return some stuff to our shanty now Ghana because it really was that the kingly treasure of their of their monarchy but you know this it made a lot more to them they did to us but that should be very rare the case of the Elgin marbles is very simple one here you have the sculpture of the frieze of the Parthenon a sculpture carved to tell us single unified story by phidias and his assistants it's probably the Parana the night procession and it's a single work of art and it's been broken into two and exhibited uselessly and pointlessly in London where no one can tell what it's about and separated from the building it can't be returned to the building but it can be returned to Athens and a museum has been built to do that and every other European country is given back their fragments of it I mean if you'd like to imagine say the panel of the Mona Lisa having been captured during the Napoleonic Wars and sawn into as did happen to a lot of things one half of the Mona Lisa is in the museum in Lisbon and the other is in a museum in Stockholm I think there'd be a general curiosity to see what the picture would look like if it was put together I hope so anyway well that's the case with the Parthenon frieze it's as simple as that and it wouldn't matter if the Greece was under Turkish occupation as it was when the sculptures were removed illegally by Lord Elgin the aesthetic imperative is obviously the dominant one the deciding one sure I'm sorry to say I don't think I'm and I'm sad to hear that so Inca is pandering to or even conceding anything to nationalism in museum building I think that's the enemy of culture and I say it with regret because he's a he's a he's a giant nobody can be right about everything well one could give it the old college try you in some way I see similarities between your memoir and the writing of Robles educational Santa motel in some way you're molding and putting together the private and the public as you say you've written a book around the context and the back the context and the battles of ideas it seems to me that you you are the right man at the right place at the right moment nearly always during your lifetime you found yourself lucky enough in historical circumstances to find yourself at a moment when something dramatic was happening but even in in the drama of ideas in your early years at university you studied with some of the finest minds and I'd like to hear I think it's let me just check I'd like to bring you back to those early years if you don't mind and if you could just play clip number two what is this what is it on the bed among pelagic travelers lost on a yield conceited way no number two - not number three my sorry never known it to fail EEP American Jewish that's what he wants to do it because this is his personal Truman gold Alcala in this way he achieved something which he and not some videos this is lau desires if he doesn't do that he's not human being at all he has no accountability the whole notion of moral responsibility which for Rousseau is the essence of man almost more that his reason depends upon the deck that a man controls truths between alternatives choose between them freely be uncovered if a man is cursed cursed by somebody else by talent or even by material circumstances then it is absurd to say she chooses and for who so he becomes a thing a chattel an object in nature something from which no accountability can be expected that as some he will knows the inimitable Isaiah Berlin inventor of the Fox a hedgehog distinction being returned I used to be able to do him a bit we once sat together arguing about Marx Karl Marx and he wrote an incredibly bad book and he I was studying the Oxford course called PPE philosophy politics and economics and he was pretending the Marx was his student and how how he would award points to marks for this course it well I think webson Elfa really I think pretty what was certainly an alpha and alpha politics it's now felt personal Alfred but it very much a bjbj- R economics then there were perhaps an impersonator bitter Alpha Beta Alpha plus food for philosophy all right now in Syria where I'm sitting here I'm nineteen this guy was in Russia and witnessed the revolutions the only person I've ever met who was an eyewitness just in Petersburg in 1917 and he's grading Karl Marx for the course I'm reading burial that was this that did make you feel about wasting your time you you I mean you've been accused and I else alpha elf I mean you've been like you've been accused and not an accusation you will get from me that this book is filled with name droppings of sorts but no I know I mean right I should have left out all the interesting people yeah as I said not them not and I should wear airbrush them and why bother with the jokes they tell me only honey bits I mean it's just as I said it's like scraping acquaintances isn't it well you you right next time I promise a more sort of austere account thing well you you you right here I hope that by dropping these names I can convey something of the hidden headiness of it it might have been heady at at any time but in the sixty eight atmosphere it chance to coincide with other ferments and intoxications as well and those days you you you rub shoulders with these extraordinary figures how do you think an Isaiah Berlin would view you today well he was always very nice to me actually he would you drop me a line whenever he noticed now written especially of inevitably or invariably rather if it mentioned him he was so me an enormous lie that I have in print that was later corrected in Michael ignacio's very hagiographic biography of him I don't think he will actually be remembered as the great man he's thought of now gently he has complete staying power because if you did remember that voice and that style as with Morris Peres and quite a lot of the so-called Giants of Oxford that says you won't I don't say this to gratify his stepdaughter but one who will I do remember was sergej yeah Freddie the great philosopher author of languished truthin and logic who was also the senior member of our socialist society in Oxford is one of the great defenders of logic and reason and science against religion he'll last but a lot of them weren't you and he share something in common quite deeply it's a sense of insecurity Freddie no Isaiah Berlin absolutely berlin used to say all the time and people thought he was joking and I'm sure he wasn't that he was overrated the people thought his stuff was a lot better than it was and he would say wrong way this long with his illusion continue long may it continue and I occasionally read praise to myself that I don't think I deserve and it makes me very uneasy you know fraudulent no but not exactly but there was a very great Scottish journalist and reporter when I was growing up called James Cameron who he's still remembered by many people because of the extraordinary early dispatches he wrote from the Vietnam War for the Daily Herald old labor paper but for a wonderful memoir called point of departure about the days of old history I remember him saying to me once and he wrote it too he said every time I roll the paper into the typewriter you see how long ago it was every time I do that I think today's the day they're going to find me out and if you don't have a bit of that if you don't think that there's something meretricious about success or celebrity and that you watch how stage fright every time you go on because you shouldn't just become too used to it then I think you probably are flirting with being a fraud but being aware of the possibility that you might just be lucky as is a good thing and Berlin to his credit did have that and he couldn't get people to believe him as I said you you have been lucky you have been struck by good fortune yes since we're here in this library you look about change not yet um you you have this wonderful line the lexicographer will wilfred funk yes was once invited to say what he thought was the most beautiful word in the English language and nominated mange now what is that it is any of you here's a question did any of you ever used to take the Reader's Digest at home you were admitted even if you did we used to it was the most elevated reading in the house for a while and a thing that grabbed me was a feature in it called it pays to increase your word power by Wilfred funk who is one of funk and Wagnalls and so there'd be a new word every word 20 new words or even there were three possible definitions of it and then you'd have to pick what's the like one I used to do it also I loved you I liked all language games as you know and when he was asked his favorite word and sure he said main which is you don't know I don't know it's it's the it's the it's that it would be are so emotional cause it's the way that the coat of a favorite cocker spaniel gets eaten away by disease it becomes mangy mange is the the eroding rotting living death of your fur I think that's a fair crazy of the situation I think it's a right that was that situation that's what he picked and I hope it never happens to my own pelt I would say library yeah I'm you know several words I've picked the men's wouldn't be one of them but majors good because it's a learn word from Norman French so you can learn about why that is and c'mon do more J etc but a library for me you have lots to say about it in the in the in this passage you mentioned that library and I'm sorry I don't need to find about Keith the terrible thing though is that Keith is too much of librarians name isn't it no insults or any of this torch I thought your gable key is somehow library be able to help me get him no no no no no I mean I'll be there when Keith gives Tong on this you you write that in your school of the blue-eyed small boys small for his age and was rather feminine eyelashes was indifferent to sports and happiest in the library is buggered I mean the library is a place that you have always loved not just as a refuge from sodomy I have this lets get that get that out of the way which but it isn't always because you meet all kinds of characters in their life have you been in the stacks here yes what a question have you that sounds like a Monty Python question is it have you always been in the stats bring it on you say this which I find extraordinary in the education of young children as I have I am quite relieved to read this if I turn to you to know how to educate my own children you say perhaps two or three times a year I receive a questionnaire from some writers organization or some writerly magazine asking me to name my formative books yeah the temptation to inflate the currency of the past is always present it was when perusing the immortal Gustave Flaubert at the tender age of X what would you say six that my eyes were open to in fact I suspect that it doesn't very much matter what one reads in the early years once one has acquired the essential ability to read for pleasure alone well and why why is that so important and is that missing do you find from your own students now yes and one thing that's missing I think is what what it's originally said by Mark Twain and then the next present purposes by George Orwell is the good bad book yeah the book that can really inspire an elevates you but you lay for a bit ashamed to admit so the influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin is a very good example in my case how green was my Valley and incredibly sentimental the brilliantly poetic account of life in a Welsh coal mining community at the turn of the 19th century absolutely absorbing and making a bridge between books for boys and books to man buildings or not in other words in its nature and also in its effect very important I'd find it harder and harder now when I teach my class to find a book that they've all read or already voluntarily who as opposed to being an even one that they might all have been compelled to read like Toni Morrison I suppose is one that they will feel they were made to read but I used to be able to count on Salinger having read that you can't be sure of that now or of Twain or even a Fitzgerald it's very very difficult so the struggle for a common discourse is I mean it happened it's happening to you now I remember a moment when I was teaching many years ago and I was teaching Bartleby the Scrivener and the student who always said something very interesting but all is slightly off I once in front of a large class asked him if he had read Bartleby the Scrivener and his response was not personally yes yes it's very good it's good I gave him an A+ meanings I mean he'll go far in England you had England the answer would be not as such yeah you've ordered a good so defensive dugout you've always been one who has loved playing with words I think limericks in particular have been something you've you've liked and cultivated whether it's yes maybe you might try a few out daughters even the most pure I'll stuff you see can build muscles in you you learn a bit from it you you have to start small that's Mallen and with my friends who had writers as emotionally about his idea not a nameless being one and of course and Ian McEwan being either and the great the best at all these games Salman Rushdie we started with some very Scrabble level but then I think it transcended itself for me to try think you know you took you come here one talks with you about bowels I flow Barre Proust so forth we'll go back we can talk a source but you don't know what the audience really wants is a little tincture of filth yeah that's what that's what they want filth and plenty of it so for example we used to play a pure are game which has checked any well-known phrase or saying that contains the word heart okay you've thought of one now take that out put in the word dick so dick break hotel very much it had Wounded Knee I left my dick in San Francisco the dick is a lonely hunter the dick has its reasons it is perfectly cherished in a way you're laughing at this at all but but you know we pass them around and every Friday with lunch we'd have we'd see how we'd so try and polish it up a bit and then it all gets worthwhile because Woody Allen moves in with his daughter his daughter daughter and people ask him even on the record well what are you doing setting up housekeeping with your kid and he says well the heart wants what it wants and it makes it all worthwhile I chose the cleanest one on purpose the Limerick the Limerick is more literary because people think of it as a delivery system for filth of course which it's not or needn't be I mean there is the young engine driver named Hunt who was given an engine to shunt saw a runaway truck by shouting out duck saved the life of the Pharaoh in front which was written by Robert conquest who also you remember ladies and gentlemen the speech that Jack gives and act 2 of as you like it the seven ages of man all the world's a stage all the men and women many Clinton's you've got it 24 lines I counted them conquest gets it into seven richer five seven ages first puking and mewling then very pissed off with your schooling then Fox then fights then judging chaps rights then sitting in slippers then drooling that's it there's nothing left out of that Wendy cope one of the great women poets of our time has turned the wasteland and I don't if I can do it like I can I recall it well I'll think about it while I tell you another one that's Calvin's theory of predestination the once was a man who said damn it is borne in upon me I am creature that moves in predestined grooves I'm not even a bus I'm a tram okay in April this is the wasteland I think I've got it in April one seldom feels cheerful hot Sun and black dust make me fearful clairvoyance depress me commuters distress me met Stetson and gave him an earful there's the whole failure of chase Elliott in one go but then there is the young hooker from Crewe who filled up a with glue this is what you're waiting for and said with a grin since they'll pay to get in they can pay to get out of it too you have new net I think is smutty yeah your your mother had great ambitions don't mention my mother just like that that was a natural segue um so coming back to to Yvonne she had great ambitions for you and I I suppose I don't know if she imagined this but I suppose by taking you out of your class and putting you on in another class branding your tongue in a different way as it were yes and for you to speak I don't know if it's upper-class but you speak no no if you meet a genuine member with upper class you you will instantly able to tell the difference I don't quite how they do it well but it can't is very hard to say oh really you're going to doubt everything you've ever said well one of the things I think one of the great descriptions in in your memoir is of New York and your love of actually this very area of New York yeah you you speak for instance you right here on midnight you say I simply found myself somewhere in mid Manhattan Midtown Manhattan looking up at skyscrapers but the illusion was accompanied by a feeling of profound happiness a sensation of being free in a way I had never before known I could read so many of these wonderful passages where you say Evelyn Waugh was in arrow when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy there was rather a ten I I love this it was rather a tensile excitement in that air which made one think made me think for many years that time spent the sleep in New York was somehow time wasted whether this sort has lengthened or shortened my life I should no but it has certainly colored it sure and why did you move to DC for goodness sake because I because I because New York was too rich for my blood and I wasn't getting any work done that's the honest truth it was precisely that you have a later I went to bed I'd wake up early now there were too many distractions I was I was quite young then I didn't have any responsibilities didn't earn any property no how many children and God knows what might have happened if I had stayed and when I was it's like I returned to the faith of my fathers and the Puritan upbringing that I'd had of the feeling that one must apply oneself and go somewhere boring and severe and put myself between the shafts and teach myself to work hard and alone and that was a good decision too but the main decision was to move to the United States I didn't after that I didn't much mind where I was and I didn't know this then but the feeling I had when I was young that I had to become a writer and the dreams and the yearnings that I felt was around the same time the imperative of moving to United States I couldn't explain either to anybody but I'd there they were and I now all these years later realized that they were aspects of the same thing that in order to do the first thing to come a writer I had I would have to come here then one of the things you're most proud of is becoming an American yes why well because after um various alarms and excursions in Beirut and Baghdad and Afghanistan and elsewhere some of which I described in the in the book after the terrible assault on American civil society in 2001 and especially on my two beloved cities Washington and New York I began to identify very strongly with the United States and to rather despise myself for having a cushy billet of American children an American wife the European Union passport and a platinum green card that never ran out it was I some I thought I was cheating on my dues and I began to identify much more with with America in its struggle against theocracy and barbarism and to resent the people who were slandering it for doing servants who still did it so I thought I'd take the next step has it been painful for you to see so many friends you once upon a time had leaving you for some of the beliefs you now hold no there's nothing to the much nicer friends that I've made instead well in particular now I'm perfectly serious Paul I know you are the friend to the friends I've met among especially among Arab and Kurdish Iraqis who now have their own country and their own dilections their own constitution their own press and in the Kurdish case their own self-government in the northeast of the country I'd far rather spend time with them than with the people who wish that they were still the private property of the well who acted as if they didn't care as if they were still the private property of the saddam hussein crime family and it's some ownership of US has not changed in the least to the contrary the liberation of Iraq was the most arduous political argument I had to take part in but it was the one where I had the least respect for the people who were taking the opposing view and where I'm absolutely appalled to this moment that they won't admit how wrong they were that was that was something I'm extremely proud of and of course of course if you if you take part in a combat a conflict like that you can expect to lose friends but don't forget you can expect to make them too and the ones I've made are people who have liberation fighters that can be better than some member of moveon.org I sometimes worry that you get entrenched in your beliefs strike it from your list of anxieties you have enough on your plate man entrenched is where I'd hope to be just as some people it's funny some people used to think that it was horrible to be called predictable even now no one ever says that about you intending it as a compliment but I don't see why it's so pejorative I like to think anyone who cared to know what I think or was really took the trouble to be interested would if I asked well I wonder what Christopher's position is on the continued existence of the Saddam Hussein regime would say well come on I mean what would you care would you think you a recent attack Israel underflip Thea I just wonder what you think about that oh well that's a micro event but it's a catalytic one from it for more major ones I think it's a small event in itself but as with everything to do with Israel it raises the question of the legitimacy of the Israeli State that's not actually I think and I say in my long ish chapter that I hope everyone will read and by the way if you'll buy it I'll sign it on the Israel and the Jewish Question is the difference Israel will never be a normal state the desire for normality will continue to elude you it will never be normal or safe to be a Jewish either and I hope it never is by the way I say quote Leo Strauss are saying the Jews the point of the existence of the Jews is to show that there's no redemption there is no salvation that's what the Jewish people prove so by all means people can say well it shows there should be no occupation I've been saying that for 30 years the occupation of Gaza was a crime to begin with and was ended too late to do any real good you can say all that but what these people on that flotilla are saying is we are the understand the euphemus and supporters are saying is we are the advance guard of the friends of hamas and the friends of jihad how they get them call themselves called activists i don't really quite know it's quite clever to get yourself just called that if you're a member of a group like international answer contributed a lot of thee which are the American Friends of North Korea the American Friends of Saddam Hussein the American Friends of Hafez al Assad the American defenders of the Islamic Republic of Iran well if they should be brave enough to stand by their principles and not be just told that they're activists some people feel that you ha and the guests the honored guests of the of the thuggish government of mr. Erdogan who just a few weeks ago said if anyone mentions the Armenian question in public ever again I will expel all the remaining Armenians from Turkey no it was don't bring up the last genocide or I'll hurt them again this man isn't out of control thug and he's posing as a defender of the rights human rights of the Palestinians it makes me want to throw up things I've forgotten every ting some people feel that you misbehaved when you wrote the obituary of Edward Sayid in what respect in in more than one way but in one way more in rising at a to Lehman in writing the obituary you wrote well you should enlarge that in some way you were you were criticizing him at a moment when he was dying no the are not written when people know of course right we've been through that we have he was an ex professor excellent do you think you were you were tough on him sure yes as I was I should have in other words I'm saying that in the chapter that you write at the end of your book which brings us to Israel in some form of fashion about Edward you perhaps you rewrite the last part of your friendship in a sweeter light than the one it was in at the end of of his own life and well relationally affair one can't be the judge of how things appear to other people but when I say that at the end of his towards the end of his life Edward referred in print in a Saudi sponsored magazine in London to something that I had written about the liberation of Iraq and described the position taken by the both of these words as racist that's not sweetening bring me an answer civet good apothecary to Sweden that he was too fastidious or perhaps too nervous to actually put my name he didn't say me you just said quoted the words he didn't call me a racist to my face but I didn't make it any better and I thought well you have to take a thing like that seriously I wouldn't have a racist for a friend so I presume he doesn't want me for one either it would be a terrible thing if a word like that lost its potency so I that was a flutter which I hugely regret and I would submit to anyone's arbitration whether or not those words could have that opprobrious sound attached to them I would accept your verdict if you like but you don't seem to be suggesting that no I'm suggesting that some friendships you described in the book have have been lost and have in some way been lost in particular because of the great change that happened in you I mean you changed your mind from left to right and stay there this is if you will not you'll excuse me for saying cool that's facile of course I forgive you completely um we got after it but I mean no I asked your pardon what is surely consistent even if it's only even if consistency isn't that great a virtue in me is that I have an absolute loathing for theocracy in all its forms the most the most repulsive at least in the sense of being the most violent form that theocracy takes at the moment is is Islamic Jihad follow me closely here Edward though he was a secularist and a non-believer and not a Muslim in any case was brought up as a Christian could never quite bring himself to condemn this in round enough terms if he would ever condemn Islamism he would say it's terrible but it's really the fault only of American policy that it exists he couldn't condemn it dig and search as we say as a thing in itself and after while this reluctance I knew this would happen led to a breach between us I thought it had to be condemned for its own sake and in its own name and so the breach eventually occurred but it wasn't initiated really by either of us it was just something that had to happen and yes it's an infinite course of pain to me that it happened towards the close of his life but that's that wasn't controlled by other of us well I've tried to write as carefully as I can about that and my very long association with him in the in the book and I don't think I've dishonored him in any way but I don't think the friendship requires the concealment or suppression or euthanization of differences of principle for those people who want to get a sense of you should they should they turn very quickly to page 333 and 334 of the proofs questionnaire is do you think that will enlighten them or just amuse them I hope both the house the question area is supposed to be accidentally revealing answers right I think it is which one you have in mind I'm going to you can choose and pick whichever ones you want to read I'm amused to have you read them because just a couple of weeks ago I was interviewing Ben laughs Pivo there's a French talk show host who was 20 at the store for about 25 years every Friday interviewed people from around the world from social eating to Nabokov to the house etc live east houses and had actually never been interviewed himself but ended every Apple stuff which was watched every Friday by five and a half million french-speaking people it's quite a feat he finished every Apple stuff with the post cast questionnaire actually what was interesting in speaking to him when I asked him why he accepted to be interviewed when he said he had never been interviewed he said I'm 75 years old I've never been interviewed and you're not French first time a Frenchman believes it's an advantage not to be French but choose a couple just some that might well get people to get your book but also get people to know a little bit more about just about you that I haven't been able to set out you probably all know that my colleagues in Vanity Fair every month subject some well haired person to the it's not a questionnaire designed by Marcel Proust as some people think it's um it's that twice in his life Proust who loved these kinds of things agreed to answer a questionnaire and we have his answer and so it's a digest of that and so in a chapter called something of myself I thought I might risk it well I'll take the page you leave up of what you regard is the lowest depth of misery just to give you an idea Proust reply was to be separated from mama I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish in the lower depths come enforced idleness sexual boredom and or impotence at the highest pitch the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child where would you like to live in a state of conflict or conflicted State what is your idea of earthly happiness to be vindicated in my own lifetime I'm now reading this as if it was written by somebody else do you think you what faults do you feel most indulgent to the ones that arise from urgent material needs who your favorite here is a fiction Denis Barlow Humbert Humbert Horatio Hornblower Jeeves Nicholas somenova shrew Boshoff foolish the memorials Lucifer who are your favorite characters in history Socrates Spinoza Thomas Paine Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky who are your favorite heroines in real life the women of Afghanistan Iraq and Iran who risked their lives and their beauty to defy the foul nurse of theocracy ayaan Hirsi Ali and azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model there's enough no bit more who your favorite heroines of fiction Maggie Tolliver Dorothea Becky sharp candy oh but thirties aren't daily your favorite page Okoye otto dix your favorite musician jazz park Bob Dylan your favorite virtue an appreciation for irony your least favorite virtue or nominee for the most overrated one faith closely followed in view of the overall shortage of time by patients there the rest they will read later on tonight what is your favorite flower garlic in in closing I'd like us to listen to the third clip we have here which is something that you often do as you travel the country and since America has mattered to you so much I'd like for us to listen to a poet who describes what you do fairly well on the city am uncle agent travelers Lost finale old conceited way to Massachusetts Michigan Miami or LA an airborne instrument I sit predestined night day to fulfill Colombia decent management's unfathomable will by whose election justified I bring my gospel of the mules the fundamentalists to none the Gentiles unto jewels and data is seven days a week before a local census Jill from talking site to talking site conject or propelled the war my welcome everywhere I shipped so frequently so fast I cannot now tell where I was the evening before last unless some singular event should intervene to save the place a truly asinine remark a silver wiggling face or blessed encounter full of joy unscheduled on giesemann fan with here an addict triptalk team there are Charles with him stands since many but a dunghill is I mount the rostrum unafraid indeed for damnable to ask if I am over paved spirit is willing to repeat without a qualm the same talk but flesh is homesick for a snug apartments in New York a Southie 56 he finds a change in mealtimes after he'll grandfather property to like a luxury hotel the Bible is a goodly book I always compare rulers possessed but where they cannot say the same but Hilton's be my guests nor bear with equanimity the radio in students cars moussaka breakfast or dear God girl organized in bars and worst of all the anxious thought each time my pain begins to sink and a no-smoking sign comes on what will there be to drink is this Amelia where I must hug Graham British how infra dig snatch from the bottle in my bag an analytic sweet another morning comes I see bring bringing below me on the plane the roofs of one more audience I shall not see again god bless a lot of them although I don't remember which was which god bless the USA so large so friendly and so big well I asked my students to consider the following TS Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot left st. Louis Missouri and tried to make himself into an Englishman and succeeded in becoming an Anglo Catholic a snob an anti-semite and a Royalists at least and to some extent an Englishman though people used to laugh the way he wore bowler hats on in the wrong way and on the wrong days and Whiston hew Orden coming from Yorkshire wanted to transmogrify himself into an American and succeeded at any rate in becoming a gay sin Marks Place New Yorker which is a start and I asked my students to answer the question which of which country which culture got the best of the bargain and I think there's no question that America got the best of that bargain and that in case you didn't know ladies and gentlemen is his Orden reading his poem on the circuit about his travels around the United States which I was privileged to hear him read for the first time actually I say read he would always recite his poems even after a decanter of gin he would never read from them he needed no prompting he could he could simply go to the usually the pulpit he'd like to read in Anglican churches and declaimed them as it were and I heard it in greats and knows Church in Cambridge in 1966 and it was one of the one of the many things that contributed to my increasing stirring of desire to to see North America so you couldn't have ended on a more perfect note and I don't know where you found that but that was brilliant and thank you very much out it thank Christopher Hitchens you

Channel: Talladega Tom

Views: 77,495

Keywords: Book, Interview, Christopher Hitchens, hitch22, Hitchens, Hitch 22, atheist, god, atheism, faith, religion, dogma, Books, Library

Id: 39k-u_kJ2ZM

Length: 88min 41sec (5321 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 31 2012