And Yet...: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

Author:Christopher Hitchens
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Current Affairs, Reviews, Politics, Commentary, Essays, History
ISBN: 9781476772080
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-11-23T11:00:00+00:00

On the Limits of Self-improvement, Part I

Of Vice and Men

Begin professional report and opinion here

Insofar as we are able to be objective, here follows a brief physical review of the subject, Christopher Eric Hitchens, at the time of this writing enjoying his fifty-ninth summer. Obstacles to the continuance of such enjoyment may be listed in no especial order as follows.

The subject has good genes on both sides of his family and has been mercilessly exploiting this inherited advantage for some decades. An initial review of his facial features, as glimpsed in the shaving mirror, reveals relatively few lines or wrinkles and only a respectable minimum of secondary or tertiary chins. However, this may be because the skin is so tightly stretched by the generally porpoise-like condition of the body when considered — which with a shudder it must be — as a whole. Moreover, the fabled blue eyes and long, curled eyelashes (for some years the toast of both sexes on five continents) are now somewhat obscured by the ravages of rosacea and blepharitis, which on certain days lend a flaky aspect to the picture and at other times give the regrettable impression of a visage that is actually crumbling to powder like a dandruffed scalp. It may be for this reason that the subject prefers to undertake the morning shave through a cloud of blue cigarette smoke that wreathes the scene in the fumes of illusion. (N.B.: This would not altogether account for the subject’s habit of smoking in the shower.)

The fanglike teeth are what is sometimes called “British”: sturdy, if unevenly spaced, and have turned an alarming shade of yellow and brown, attributable perhaps to strong coffee as well as to nicotine, Pinot Noir, and other potations.

Proceeding south and passing over an almost vanished neck that cannot bear the strain of a fastened top button or the constriction of a tie, we come to a thickly furred chest that, together with a layer of flab, allows the subject to face winter conditions with an almost ursine insouciance. The upper part of this chest, however, has slid deplorably down to the mezzanine floor, and it is our opinion that without his extraordinary genital endowment the subject would have a hard time finding the damn thing, let alone glimpsing it from above.

Matters are hardly improved on the lower slopes, which feature a somewhat grotesque combination of plump thighs and skinny shins, the arduous descent culminating in feet which are at once much too short and a good deal too chunky. This combination, of ratlike claws and pachydermatous-size insteps, causes the subject to be very cautious about where, and indeed when, he takes off his shoes. There have been unconfirmed reports of popular protest whenever and wherever he does this. Nor do his hands, at the same time very small and very puffy, give any support to the view that the human species does not have a common ancestor with the less advanced species of ape. The nails on the hands

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