Arguing Hitchens

George Scialabba reviews Arguably:

Few present-day journalists have a detectable, much less unmistakable, prose style; the suavity and piquancy of Hitchens’s prose are unmatched among his critical peers. Equally admirable is his breadth of reading; he has made an art of casual allusion. “Erudition” is not quite right; it suggests labor, and what is most impressive about the way Hitchens liberally sprinkles apposite quotes from Auden and Larkin, Waugh and Wodehouse, Jefferson and Churchill throughout his essays is his apparent effortlessness. He always seems to have been reading just the right book at just the right moment—though at a certain point it dawns on you that it can’t be an accident; he really must be intimate with an extraordinary expanse of modern European history and literature.

If you've been reading the blog for a while, you'll be aware that I have something of a minor Christopher Hitchens obsession. More on Hitchens here.