"Emotions, atavisms, would be set aside, while reason -- the nabob of all faculties -- went about its work."
— Amis, Martin (b. 1949)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
New York
Publisher
Vintage International
Date
2000
Metaphor
"Emotions, atavisms, would be set aside, while reason -- the nabob of all faculties -- went about its work."
Metaphor in Context
It would be a simplification to say that Christopher Hitchens had spent the last ninety minutes talking up a blue streak of sinister balls. But let us not run in fear of simplification. Simplification is sometimes exactly what you want ... The theme of discord was, of course, Israel. Christopher was already on record with a piece called 'Holy Land Heretic' (Raritan, Spring 1987), where he had adduced 'the generalized idealizations of Israel commonly offered by Saul Bellow, Elie Wiesel, and others'. Much of Christopher's discourse, at the dinner table in Vermont, can be found in this 8,000-word essay, which he wrote, so to speak, as a gentile. And the rest of his discourse can be found in 'On Not Knowing the Half of It: Homage to Telegraphist Jacobs' (Grand Street, Summer 1988), which he wrote as a Jew. Needless to say, it was a point of fundamental, of elementary intellectual honour that Christopher's changed ethnicity should have no effect whatever on questions of political science and political morality. Grandmother Dodo's disclosure had not rendered Israel any less messianic or expansionist or quasi-democratic. Christopher would do not thinking with his blood, neither at his desk nor at the [end page 259] dinner table. Emotions, atavisms, would be set aside, while reason -- the nabob of all faculties -- went about its work.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Amis, Martin. Experience: A Memoir. New York: Vintage, 2000.
Theme
Post-colonial
Date of Entry
05/26/2008
Date of Review
05/26/2008
