Let's be honest in admitting when a 'deserved' drink becomes needed, writes Carol Hunt
There's a story Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair tells of the late, great Christopher Hitchens's ability to consume alcohol and remain supremely compos mentis. He recounts an afternoon lunch in New York with the author and public intellectual, where "pre-lunch canisters of scotch were followed by a couple of glasses of wine during the meal and a similar quantity of post-meal cognac. That was just his [Hitchens] intake."
After "stumbling back to the office", Carter is astonished to see Hitch produce "a 1,000-word column of near perfection in under half-an-hour".
Sadly, as Carter concedes, the genius and stamina of Hitchens was, dare he say it, a "gift from God" like few and far between. The rest of us mere mortals are hard pressed to produce readable material when stone cold sober and sometimes not even then. Which is probably just as well.
Hitchens was famous for giving advice to young writers on how to successfully booze while working and how alcohol is a good servant but a bad master.
Source: Carol Hunt, Irish Independent, 17/04/16
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