In a wide ranging interview about literature in Stop Smiling magazine, polemicist Christopher Hitchens explains why he uses words like “Promethean,” despite the protests of his editors, who often make the case that readers won’t know what a given word means. Unsympathetic, Hitchens summarizes his typical reply: “You either know what ‘Promethean’ means or you don’t. If you do, it saves you about 50 words. And if you don’t, then you can look it up!” Hitchens also decries common editorial intrusions—such as when a casual reference to Tolstoy gets changed to a clumsy reference to the “19th Century Russian novelist Count Leo Tolstoy,” as if such limited context tells you much more than you already knew. When asked about his own attempts at fiction, Hitchens reveals that he learned to stay away from fiction writing by comparing his work to that of his friends — writers like Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, and Julian Barnes.