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.' "
