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Christopher Hitchens is on the move, threading his way like a guerrilla soldier through the lunchtime pedestrian traffic near Rockefeller Center, and nothing will slow him down: not red lights, not tubby tourists with shopping bags barricading an intersection, not even a display for his new book in the window of Barnes & Noble that he has just crossed Fifth Avenue to admire. He's been cooped up in his trendy but windowless hotel room all day in a barrage of promotional phone interviews and he needs these basic elements of sustenance: a shot of sunshine, 10 blocks worth of midtown air, his pack of Rothman's King Size and a Johnny Walker Black. For starters.

"Buon giorno!" he calls out to a server as he arrives at his destination. The concierge found him this place yesterday, a pricey trattoria boasting a patio with one of the city's few smoking sections, and now Hitchens is already back for his second meal here, to enjoy the shrimp tartare and grilled calves' liver with polenta in between puffs of his cigarettes, "so we can defy that complete hemorrhoid, Michael Bloomberg," and his smoking ban.

Defiance is the raison d'être of Christopher Hitchens, or at the very least, his lifeblood. His books include an attack on the saintly Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton's administration. Last summer, he swore at and gave the finger to Bill Maher's studio audience. A few months ago, under the headline in Vanity Fair A Provocation, he sent female stand-up comedians and their fans into fits with a strongly worded essay arguing women aren't funny. Perhaps most defiantly, he is also dedicated to the contrarian notion that ideas matter, that one can make not only a good living, but a difference, as a public intellectual.

Born in Portsmouth, England, and schooled at Oxford in the cut-and-jab of the debating society, he revels in the rough and tumble of public argument, not to mention the way every argument manages to be at least in part about Christopher Hitchens himself. "There's a whole website that does nothing but trash me, and several that go out of their way to mention me whenever they can," he says, with evident pleasure.

He can be a charming lunchtime companion, blending personal idiosyncrasies - he says "Woof!" if he approves of something; briefly left without a fork, he holds his meat with a thumb and saws away with his knife - with extended digressions about the state of the world.

Still, he appears to view even this affable encounter, lubricated by Scotch and merlot, as a pugilist sees a training bout: "Good for you, you've caught me right away," he says in response to a question that wasn't even intended as a criticism, playing the role of both debater and debating coach keeping score in his head. He's just trying to stay in shape.

Two days earlier, on Monday afternoon, delivering the keynote speech at an American Society of Magazine Editors luncheon, Hitchens attacked his roomful of colleagues for neglecting to publish the Danish cartoons that sparked Muslim riots last year. He included in his targets Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, where he is a columnist. "I just told them they were a pack of cowards. They just sold out totally," he spits, lighting up a Rothman's and taking a sip through a tiny straw from his first of two generously poured Scotches.

"I had a fight with someone at the end, somebody who I won't name, from a major illustrated news magazine. He said he had to think about his staff. I said, 'Don't be telling me that. If that's the way you think, maybe you should go work for a corporation that doesn't depend on the First Amendment.' "

Hitchens takes a deep drag of his cigarette and continues, but it's not clear to whom exactly his words are now directed: Is he still quoting from that thorny encounter, or is he somewhere else now, speaking perhaps from the Socratic core of his mind, where he develops and refines his arguments before sending them forth?

"You have to defend [the First Amendment], and that may sometimes be risky, but you're telling me you wouldn't take a risk for free expression? Get out of here. You're being very rude to me. I'm actually going to say I'm offended. I can be offended too." He affects an effeminate voice: " 'I find that offensive.' Fuck. I was so cross.

"I remember when the fatwa against Salman was issued," he continues, and he tells a story about a large U.S. bookstore chain that refused to stock Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses after his friend became the target of an Iranian state-sponsored death threat in 1989. The chain's executives said they were merely trying to protect their employees, but the workers in fact rebuffed the ban and insisted on stocking the book. "That was almost the best news I read in the last 20 years or more," he says. But his ebullience is short-lived; his mood turns dark. "People can't wait to give in. They cry before they're hurt. I can't stand it."

Almost under his breath, he spits: "They say religion makes people better. It's not true."

Which brings us around to Hitchens's new book, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, a gleeful, forceful attack on the world's major faiths and their practitioners. "I wanted to put heart into people who over the last few years - there are many, many millions of them, believe me - who've just had enough with clerical bullying, and realize they can't any longer take enlightenment values for granted, they have to fight for them," he says. "And I want to draw out the enemy into plainer view."

He waves over a waiter and orders a merlot.

"Most people think when they hear I've done this book, they think it's an attack on bin Ladenists and the [right-wing] Christian coalition, and they're all fine with that," he continues. "That's what they think the debate is. It's not at all. The left in this country in particular is saturated with piety. The very fact that there's such a person as the Rev. Al Sharpton ought to be a national disgrace. He's held up by the liberals. His balloon is pumped up. I have quite a strong attack on Dr. [Martin Luther] King, and on Gandhi, and on the Dalai Lama and all the other freaks who are - well, Dr. King was not a freak - who the left tend to like."

Until about five years ago, Hitchens was a member of the Left, a proud Trotskyite although never a defender of the Soviet state as it existed. For 20 years, beginning shortly after he arrived in the United States in 1981, he wrote a column for The Nation. He frequently attacked U.S. foreign policy, including both the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. But during the Clinton years, he found himself aligned with the growing neo-con movement and its increasing influence, especially regarding intervention in Bosnia. After Sept. 11, he became a tub-thumping advocate for U.S. intervention.

On April 13, his 58th birthday, he took U.S. citizenship. "I did it as a gesture of solidarity only. I have a green card that doesn't run out. After 9/11, I began to feel that I was sort of slightly cheating on my dues by being only a guest," he explains.

Now, like a reformed smoker driven mad by the scent of cigarettes, Hitchens is violently contemptuous of his former crowd, especially those who advocate a withdrawal from Iraq. "Well, okay, that's their choice."

He pauses, takes a drag on his cigarette. Then, like a boxer who has fooled his opponent into letting down his guard, he lets rip. "I despise them. Really despise them. I'll never forgive it. They're prepared to let Iraq fall into the hands of the scum of the Earth - furthermore, our deadliest enemies - a country that has probably more oil than Saudi Arabia and Iran, thanks to some exploration since liberation, even in Anbar province, a target for takeover for al-Qaeda. 'Let 'em have it.' What the fuck is that?"

The photographer has arrived. Hitchens orders another glass of wine and asks that he not be photographed with cigarette in hand. "I really wish I could give it up. Though I don't think I'm a role model or anything, it is a fucking awful habit and I'd rather not flaunt it."

As the lunch winds up, he is asked what he thinks about the news that The New York Times this week announced it would no longer participate in the White House Correspondents' Dinner, the annual event where the press and the president spend an amicable evening together. He hadn't heard the news. "How did I miss that?" he exclaims. "I'm upset, is my reaction." He explains that he'd wanted Vanity Fair, in whose name he hosts an annual after-party, to be the first to pull out of the dinner.

"I think the dinner should be scrapped," he barks. "Son of a bitch! I can't believe no one told me at the office yesterday." Pause. "Well, I have been a little self-absorbed.

"Woof!" Pause. "Okay, well, that has implications for me."