Contents

Preludial

PART I

1 | Ethics and Morals…The American eagle

Guideline: Things Fiction Can’t Do

2 | Phoebe: The Business…So I went round there

Guideline: The Novel Moves On

3 | Jerusalem…Bitter furies of complexity

Guideline: Literature and Violence

4 | The Night of Shame…She’s scaring me, Hitch

Transitional: The Sources of the Being

PART II

1 | France in the Time of Iraq 1: Anti-américain

2 | September 11 1: The day after

3 | September 11 2: The day before the day after

4 | September 11 3: The days after the day after

5 | France in the Time of Iraq 2: Shock and Awe

Interludial: Memos to my reader, and ‘Oktober’

PART III—DISSOLUTIONS: ANTEPENULTIMATE

1 | The Shadow-Line…Nobodaddy

2 | Hitchens Goes to Houston…He’s an ox

3 | Politics and the Bedroom…Not left wing enough

4 | Hitchens Stays On in Houston…The synchrotron

5 | And say why it never worked for me…Invidia

PART IV—PENULTIMATE

Preamble: The Fire on New Year’s Eve

1 | Christopher: Everyone Pray for Hitchens Day

How to Write: The Mind’s Ear

2 | Saul: Idlewild

How to Write: Decorum

3 | Philip: The Love of His Life

How to Write: Impersonal Forces

4 | Beelzebub

How to Write: The Uses of Variety

5 | London: Phoebe at Seventy-Five

PART V—ULTIMATE: DOING THE DYING

‘It seemed that out of battle I escaped’

The Poet: December 1985

The Novelist: April 2005

The Essayist: December 2011

Postludial

Afterthought: Masada and the Dead Sea

Addendum: Elizabeth Jane Howard

Illustration Credits