"Just to have been there when the British Special Branch went to arrest him in his hospital room, that is the one thing I would have most liked to see. 'Come along now, Mr. Pinochet, you've been nicked," he said, clearly savoring the image. "Any court in any democratic country will no longer take the excuse 'I did these crimes, but I have sovereign immunity.' These people must now live the life of a pirate. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to go, no longer able to say 'I was trying to impress Richard Nixon.'"

Hitchens is hoping the clock is finally running out for Henry Kissinger—and, if not in this life, the statute of limitations will follow him to his grave. His new book is dedicated to "the brave victims of Henry Kissinger, whose example will easily outlive him, and his 'reputation.'"

Ah, but it would have been nice to confront Kissinger, to gun him down in front of his gentrified neighbors, to call him out in horse country as something no better than a horse thief. By his cancellation, Kissinger has done as much.

Still...damn that would have been nice.

The new book is also dedicated to the memory of Joseph Heller, who has called Hitchens "a remarkable commentator [who] jousts with fraudulence of every stripe and always wins. I regret he has only one life, one mind and one reputation to put at the service of my country."

Other fans of Hitchens include a veritable Gadfly Hall of Fame. Gore Vidal has said, "I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens."

Edward Said offers, "He is accurate where others are merely dutiful, unpredictable where the tendency is to go for the cliché...And he is an internationalist, respectfully at home where others are merely brash or provincial."

Susan Sontag said, "His allies, of whom I count myself one, rejoice in the sureness of his aim. May his targets cower."

Even the reactionary Florence King has said, "If Christopher Hitchens is a Marxist, I want to be one too."

Lest we forget, Dennis Miller has called Hitchens "the Mark McGwire of skeptics."

Hitchens is indeed skeptical of such praise. He insists, "If you look up clips on me, even people who write in a friendly way about me feel obliged to mention 'oh, he's the guy who trashed Princess Diana or Mother Teresa.' And I guess I probably can't shake that now. It's in the slush pile."

Though still relatively young, at 51, he has intimations of his mortality.

"I can remember distinctly the realization that I had outlived Oscar Wilde at 41, and George Orwell at 47. It was quite a vertiginous feeling," said Hitchens. "By the time Orwell started to write his stuff on British imperialism, he was in his mid-20s. That's some of his best stuff, and people don't realize that. I remember noticing that I was now older than he was at his death. He died a few months after I was born. The same feeling with Wilde. It doesn't come up all that often. After all, Anthony Powell lived to be 92 or thereabouts. Robert Conquest is a good friend of mine, and he's about the only person still around from that generation, apart from Bernard Knox who, by good luck, I also know. They're both well into their 80s and incredibly equitable guys, and I'm dimmed. That's why I can't stand it when people like Podhoretz say that if Orwell had lived, he'd have become a scumbag like him. One has to say that that is not allowed."

As for whether he, an astute judge and professor of great literature, regrets the path his writing career has assumed—turning him into something of a public figure—he is circumspect.

"I don't have the sense that if I had been left with more leisure time I would have produced a sonnet sequence or a novel sequence," he said. "I am convinced that some people are doomed to write and there's nothing they can do about it. In my case, I was lucky because I didn't want to resist. I know enough novelists and poets to be pretty certain that if I ever made a smart decision in my life it was to look at their work, decide I wasn't up to it (to say nothing of the work of others, like George Eliot, say), and concentrate on trying to make an effort in the world of the essay...where I have had some success."

As for the current resident in the White House, Hitchens reserves a special chamber of invective, having called him "Governor Death" in the past and vowing to dog his every step in the present and future.

"Notice how often the phrase 'peaceful transition of power' is being used to describe the Bush ascendancy. They try to brush your patriotic G-spot with this phrase. But why do they keep telling you this?" asks Hitchens, who then answers his own question. "They want to ventriloquize you. If it were a peaceful transition of power, it ought not to be constantly brought to our attention. But let us not be cynical. To have a peaceful transition of power is a good thing, and what a terrible thing if it can be profaned. It did happen in 1968..."

And off he goes again, hot on the trail of Henry Kissinger.