Around three AM last night I woke with jet lag delirium and turned on the VoiceOver screen reader on my IPad. I read for two hours from the “Quotable Hitchens” which is both spirited and alphabetized. It is strange to read another man’s witticisms and pith while drifting in and out of sleep–one feels escorted by a devil, a redoubtable and jocular daemon, who might well be an atheist but still has the tinctures of zeal.
Meanwhile in the waking world I’m trying to imagine a hat made of metaphor–half of wind, half of sail that takes you to a far shore where money is useless. Americans need such hats. I will give them away if I find them.
**
Years ago I heard an old woman in a Helsinki coffee bar tell her companion, who was also an old woman, that she had murdered her husband. What to do? I waited by the women’s room for the companion. “I’m sorry, but I heard your friend say she killed her husband,” I said. “Oh yes,” said companion lady. “But she’s never had a husband. It’s all in her mind. She kills him every day.”
**
Hitchens doesn’t have metaphor. He’s the cock of the walk and loaded with palaver. A politician. One you might very well want on your side. This is, of course why he hung out with Martin Amis and Stephen Fry. Two men with big metaphorical hats.
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Planet of the Blind 