Christopher Hitchins on Robert Hughes

Yes, Hitch was on song there, pulling together a 1500 word commission into beautifully digressive yet well wrapped up little aria.

Also amusing to note that when it comes to writing about Antipodeans abroad in the big world, Hitch is influenced more by his old drinking Clive James than vice versa. All those elisions, allusions and transitions between the didactic and demotic are very Jamesian.

But mad props to Hitch for wringing unexpected new mileage out of moribund words like’Pentimentos’ and ‘Freshet’.

This was also a very nice observation: “Women were often kind, as they can be to those, however chaotic, who appreciate them.”
Yep, it’s both wonderful and appalling about how much women will put up with from men who, no matter how fucked up they are, make it clear how and why they appreciate the opposite sex beyond just a fuck.

But I digress, to state the obvious. Like Hitch does here:
“To say that Hughes was lucky to survive the wreck of the vehicle would be banal.”Antipodean
Then why say it you silly sausage? To beef up the word count while your head went on autopilot for a while?

And I also feel this point was half-baked.
“Australian style in its native form is hyperbolic and enthusiastic and populist. Hughes’s self-deprecation and understatement, by contrast, are almost exaggerated.”

Australian style at its best is hyperbolic self-deprecation and enthusiastic understatement, mixed in with a boxer’s timing about when to employ the ken oath vernacular, wrapped up in a love of wordplay played back at your interlocutor in noihsaf yrartnoc.

I look forward to a review of my review of a link to a review of a reviewer’s life.

Forgive me, but I can only read the piece as one wanker writing about another.