Dear Peter,
      I am hoping that an open letter to my readers won’t seem unduly conceited or solipsistic. Every month for years, the letters editors at The Nation would send me the correspondence regarding me and ask me if I wanted to reply, and each time I would say no, don’t bother, the letters column belongs to the readers, I have my own space in the magazine, I won’t respond unless accused of fabrication, child-abuse, racism etc. (I’m appending a letter from Victor Navasky which proves this point, as well as illustrating his own ingratiating style.)
      However, there have been so many attacks on me from Nation quarters in the recent past that I wonder from time to time if people think I am shy, or shifty, or have nothing to say in my own defense...  This thought occurred to me with especial force when I saw the ignoble letter from Studs Terkel given such huge play by the Nation’s editors. (On this occasion, I might add, I received no advance warning. But perhaps I’d surrendered that privilege by resigning my column.)
      Consider this: In April of 2001 I was in Chicago on a book tour. Mutual friends conveyed an invitation from Terkel to call on him, and said that he needed some cheering-up after the death of his wife. So, round there I went. I’d be a hypocrite if I said I was keen on the idea, because I’d paid a similar call - again at his insistence - a couple of years before, and there is a limit to how many times you can hear the identical anecdotes from a man who is too full of himself, as well as too deaf, to listen even to your appreciation. Anyway, Terkel’s mode (unvarying on the few occasions I’ve run into him) is one of affirmative over-praise. He won’t let you defend yourself from the charge of being a great guy. Once again, he loudly hymned me as the heir to James Cameron - a good egg who was once a journalistic inspiration to us all. I can take praise as well as the next man but, when this became tiring, deflected it into false modesty. Gore Vidal had kindly mentioned me as his inheritor and I said, perhaps incautiously, that now that I had that on my dust-jacket blurb I needed no further promotion. Embarrassing? You bet. But I have two witnesses to this, and one of them was taping it for some possible profile of one or other of us. Again to repeat - this drop-by at Terkel’s home was not my idea. Nor was my mention of Vidal his discovery. As for the idea that I have “rabbit-punched” Gore - what can I say? If I could rabbit-punch the author of Julian and Lincoln, I would need no endorsement. I merely said that Vidal made an allegation of complicity against the White House in the matter of September 11, and so he did. You can look it up in the London Observer.
        Time passes and I part company with the Nation family. Of course I don’t and can’t insist on their reading the only blurb on my last collection of essays, or indeed any of the reviews of it, several of which mentioned the over-generous Vidal encomium.  But out of the blue comes a semi-coherent letter from Terkel, which is awarded the leading space on the Nation’s letters page, and goes on for almost a column and a half, and which “reveals” that I mentioned the blurb, which was on the stands in Chicago long before I arrived there.
       Now perhaps you will wonder if I am not making an absurd fuss. But when I quit the magazine, it was only after a series of appeals not to do so, and a number of assurances from Victor and Katrina that there would be no bad blood on their side. (I said that I, too, would keep things impersonal when or if asked.) They go back a long way with Terkel. He is one of the grand old men of their tradition. Thus, when he writes a long and foolish but - in his mind - revealing letter, they do wrong by him in publishing it. Do they ring and say - “Studs, it’s your call but are you sure you want to do this?” Not a bit. Nor do they contact me to ask if the story is even half-true (which they would quite certainly have done if the positions were reversed).They let him make an idiot of himself, because they think it affords the chance to be unpleasant to me. Thus does the Left expend itself.
        You can’t fail to notice the main theme of Terkel’s letter. Comb out the Chicago semi-tough big-shoulder affectations, from “kid” to “Kiddo”, and the subject is booze. He can’t stay off it (the subject I mean). As it chances, this is now the main line of attack upon your humble servant. It is said, from Counterpunch upwards, that I am an irredeemable drunk, and the despair of my few remaining friends. Terkel says that on this occasion it was martinis - which I haven’t touched since my second daughter was born in 1993 - and also says that he was “smashed” himself, which he may well have been. But no guest could be “smashed” in a house as ungenerous as his, and I was overdue for a date elsewhere and anxious to be on my way, and I have two witnesses and a video. So he’s probably staying with what he understands to be a safe jest.
       Nobody who knows me thinks that I drink too little, and I could probably stand to imbibe less. It’s both an advantage and a disadvantage to have a  tolerance for alcohol. But I sometimes wonder what those who don’t know me must think. The reputation now approaches the legendary. Yet in the past year I turned out quite a few columns and essays, and produced a book or so, and mounted the podium several times a month, and appeared on TV or radio several times a week, and flew to many cities and many countries, and taught numerous classes and seminars. I was never late for anything, whether deadline or appointment, and have never taught on any campus that hasn’t invited me back. I also managed to drive Route 66 from start to finish while somehow avoiding either arrest or collision. And I told a couple of radio stations that, yes, I would appear to debate either Alexander Cockburn or John Pilger, but the initial invitations were never followed up. In their shoes, I’d have taken on an incoherent alcoholic any time.
        It’s said, further, that I have been a slave to the bottle since heaven knows when. If true - which it is not - this would logically mean that the rot set in when I was still on the right side of the Left. But the question didn’t come up then, if you follow me. Yet at a recent lunch at the offices of the New Statesman, no less a person than Professor Noam Chomsky tells his hosts that he hasn’t bothered reading me since my attack on Mother Teresa (which was almost a decade ago) and that this is because of my hopelessly boozed-out state. As it happens, I know this to be untrue, both because I was in civil correspondence with Chomsky until mid-2001, and because he has barely seen me lift a glass. He is adhering to a party line. An odd line, too, since nobody will say that Gore Vidal is famous for abstention, or the late Jessica Mitford (shamefully enlisted as a potential posthumous critic of mine by Terkel). One of the nicest things about Alexander Cockburn is his demonstration of love and loyalty on the subject of his late father, who I had the pleasure of meeting more than once. In his own account, Alexander pays especial tribute to the old man’s fondness for drink, which never seems to have incapacitated him.
        I suppose therefore that I should be uplifted by all this, since an ad hominem attack is almost by definition an admission that my enemies would rather not engage with my arguments. I can’t quite make that claim, however. They do engage with my arguments. They generally do so in the status-quo, safety-first mode that now distinguishes so much of the Left, insisting not that such and such a line on Iraq, say, is wrong on principle, but that it is too risky or too hazardous. I would have let the whole ad hominem business drop, or pass, if it wasn’t that the Terkel stuff somehow crossed my line. It was lousy of The Nation to allow him to make an ass of himself, lousy of them to do so as a way of trying to embarrass me, and lousy of them to make it a lead letter even in a slow week. Of course, Terkel also takes the mindless view that Bush is more dangerous (and more capricious) than Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. He misuses Lear to advance the line about flies and wanton boys. But how ill white hairs become a fool and jester, and how cynical of Navasky and Vanden Heuvel to exploit an actual friend against a (now decidedly) former one.
        My faint suspicion is that this is a warm-up for the impending publication of Sidney Blumenthal’s $600,000 book, which may well venture into ad hominem territory in an attempt to redeem for Farrar, Straus and Giroux an advance which I predict they’ll have to eat. I have already told Blumenthal, through channels, that he’s entirely welcome to try this but he’d better be ready to be repaid in his own coin. I’m even wondering, after spending more than three decades in the service of the New Statesman and The Nation, and keeping my ears and eyes open, how it would look if I repaid all my new foes in the currency of gossip and hearsay.  
         I’ll close by saying that I called Terkel to ask if it was all right if I recounted my memory of the evening (he said yes). And I am writing at this length only for people who choose to see it.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to do so,
        fraternally,
Christopher

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[Navasky's response to Hitchens's letter]

CHRISTOPHER:

OF COURSE WE WILL RUN YOUR LETTER. OF COURSE OUR LETTERS-TO-THE-EDITOR ARE JUST THAT, LETTERS TO, NOT FROM. I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE CHRISTOPHER WE KNOW, LOVE AND ESTEEM -- THE ONE WHO HAS,OVER THE YEARS, HEROICALLY RESISTED RESPONDING TO CORRESPONDING READERS -- WOULD KNOW THAT EVEN A LETTER FROM THE GREAT STUDS IS NOTHING MORE (OR NOTHING LESS). RELAX.

REGARDS TO YOUR BRIDE AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS,

VICTOR

P.S. ONE DAY YOU MAY WANT TO STOP BY AND READ THE HUNDREDS OF UNPUBLISHED LETTERS WE HAVE RECEIVED REGARDING YOUR DEPARTURE. YOUR OWN LETTER NOTWITHSTANDING, I STILL COUNT MYSELF (AS I BELIEVE KATRINA DOES HERSELF), AMONG THOSE WHO WERE SORRY TO SEE YOU GO.

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[Hitchens's response]

In my letter to you and Katrina - the second one, not the first one to the magazine - I said that it was not confidential. Should I assume that your reply to me is private, or are all bets off now, as they seem to be on your end?
       Let me know soon, if you would, as I plan to write something for my own amusement and for the instruction (as I hope) of others.

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[Navasky's response]

Christopher,

As far as I am concerned all bets are not off, whatever that means. I feel I/we have been honorable in my/our dealings with you and you have never indicated (at least to me) otherwise.  If I'm wrong, I'd appreciate your letting me know.  But you may assume my letter to you is as public as you care to make it.

Happy holidays,

Victor