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“Stephen Spender: A Nice Bloody Fool”

Hitchens’ review of Stephen Spender, The Authorized Biography, by John Sutherland.  From the parts of the story recounted by Hitchens, it’s unclear why any one would write a biography of the poet Spender let alone review it. Hitchens writes, “Stephen Spender was to pass a great deal more of his life ‘being a poet’ than he ever did writing poetry.” Apparently it was Spender’s “third act” as a “cultural statesman” and supporter of dissident writers in the Soviet Union, along with his long association with Eliot and Auden that made him bio worthy.

  

Photo of Spender with W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood at Fire Island in 1947. Isherwood is the British Novelist who wrote Sally Bowles, the novel on which Cabaret is basde.

New Learning: Funny quote from Hitchens, “The English subdivide this title [of fool] into categories, starting with plain fool, moving through damn fool to bloody fool, and ending with fucking fool— for which one has to be sinister as well as silly."

New word: carapace = the hard upper shell of a turtle