Reading Martin Amis--2
Peg Eby-Jager
Hitchens & Bellow
It seems to me that the
story of Hitchens’ introduction to Saul Bellow set in motion the “Christopher
Hitchens Show” that came to dominate the evening. Hitchens had mildly agitated
for this story, in which he played the lead, to be told. “No sinister balls!”
Amis reportedly demanded of Hitchens in the car on their way to Bellow’s home.
“Distressing, hard-nosed, left-wing blues,” explained Amis, was their shared
definition of “sinister balls.” But it was to be a balls-out night for Hitchens,
who, shortly after arriving, picked a fight with his friend’s literary mentor
over Edward Said—at the time Bellow’s favored bête noire.
Hitchens now commandeered the evening with Our Favorite Writers just as
he had done with Amis’s evening with his favorite writer so many years before.
Hitchens grew animated as
he moved through a rendition of his tangle with Bellow. He told how Amis had
kicked his shin repeatedly under the table to get him to relent—more than either
of his two wives had ever done. “Bellow likes to fight and so do I,” was the
slim explanation that Hitchens had offered Amis the next morning. This story
was humorously told, and it drew a good laugh. At this point, the audience was
still rooting for both Amis and Hitchens—wanting them to open up. A discussion
of the literary major league and what happens when titans clash might have
opened on to any of a number of ideas that the audience was keen to hear about.
But it didn’t. It simply thrust Christopher Hitchens into the limelight.
Martin Amis never had a
chance, as I now see it. Christopher Hitchens is a linguistic berserker—among
other things—whirling about in the front line of battle, a cigarette in one hand
and a drink in the other, as he indiscriminately shreds the opposition with his
pick-ax intellect and his broadsword tongue. Hitchens’ rants, delivered in a
whirl of words with an unflinching moral certainty, consumed a good deal of the
evening, and Amis certainly must have known that resistance was futile.
