"Anyone who's closely read Mr. Hitchens's work -- including his best-selling manifesto 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' (2007) -- or seen him do battle on cable news programs, knows that he has a mind like a Swiss Army knife, ready to carve up or unbolt an opponent's arguments with a flick of the wrist."
— Garner, Dwight (b. 1965)
Author
Place of Publication
New York
Date
June 1, 2010
Metaphor
"Anyone who's closely read Mr. Hitchens's work -- including his best-selling manifesto 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' (2007) -- or seen him do battle on cable news programs, knows that he has a mind like a Swiss Army knife, ready to carve up or unbolt an opponent's arguments with a flick of the wrist."
Metaphor in Context
Anyone who's closely read Mr. Hitchens's work -- including his best-selling manifesto "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (2007) -- or seen him do battle on cable news programs, knows that he has a mind like a Swiss Army knife, ready to carve up or unbolt an opponent's arguments with a flick of the wrist. He holds dear the serious things, the things that matter: social justice, learning, direct language, the free play of the mind, loyalty, holding public figures to high standards.
His mental Swiss Army knife also contains, happily, a corkscrew. Mr. Hitchens is devoted to wit and bawdy wordplay and to good Scotch and cigarettes (though he has recently quit smoking) and long nights spent talking. He is also devoted to friendship. "Hitch-22" is among the loveliest paeans to the dearness of one's friends -- Mr. Hitchens's close ones include Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and the poet James Fenton -- I've ever read. The business and pleasure sides of Mr. Hitchens's personality can make him seem, whether you agree with him or not, among the most purely alive people on the planet.
His mental Swiss Army knife also contains, happily, a corkscrew. Mr. Hitchens is devoted to wit and bawdy wordplay and to good Scotch and cigarettes (though he has recently quit smoking) and long nights spent talking. He is also devoted to friendship. "Hitch-22" is among the loveliest paeans to the dearness of one's friends -- Mr. Hitchens's close ones include Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and the poet James Fenton -- I've ever read. The business and pleasure sides of Mr. Hitchens's personality can make him seem, whether you agree with him or not, among the most purely alive people on the planet.
Categories
Provenance
Reading: spotted as blurb in advertisement in NYT Book Review (September 4, 2011), p. 15.
Citation
Dwight Garner, "In Memoir, Christopher Hitchens Looks Back" The New York Times (June 1, 2010). <Link to NYTimes.com>
Date of Entry
09/07/2011
