Hitch-22, a memoir by the late Christopher Hitchens, is one of the few books I have purchased and downloaded for the Kindle app on my phone. I usually have a few digital books on the go from the New York Public Library, but sometimes the title you want is already taken out, and in this case that just won’t do. I want it readily available, and I pull it up quite often. It’s an education and an escape. A conversation with an impossibly erudite friend who has acquired and maintained thorough rigorous stress testing a nuanced point of view on nearly everything.
My favorite sections of the book are those in which Hitch and his friends, usually under the inspiration of a wheelbarrow of wine and spirits, play or invent new word games. When you have friends like Martin and Kinglsey Amis, Ian McEwan, and Stephen Fry, there’s no time for a limp phrase or cliche.
Back in their Oxford days, James Fenton came up with the “King of China” series, which followed the following strict and somber guidelines:
“…the first line (‘I am the King of China”) could not be changed at all and the subsequent lines should be obscene and if possible (failing in the above case) mildly homosexual…”
So here we go:
I am the King of China
And I like a tight vagina
It lets me show the things I know
Like the prose style of George Steiner.
or how about:
I am the King of China
And my court is crammed with sages.
But when I want a bit of bum,
I ring around my yellow pages
Fun, no? And of course, Hitchens comes out on top, if you’ll excuse the pun, with this one:
I am the King of China.
I’m a patron of the Prize-Ring.
And Every time my man’s on top
You can feel my boxer rising.
Another series begun by Tom Driberg began, “There once was a man from Stoke Poges,” which to Hitchen’s delightfully diseased mind “seemed to cry out for the rhyme ‘poke Doges,’ which in turn meant that the remainder of the limerick would have to be Venetian in flavor.”
Sadly, this series is lost to posterity, but that just means we have to pick up the literary ball and make our own. I’ve taken a whack at combining the two: a King of China composition with a Venetian flavor:
I am the King of China
My skin’s a lovely, light gamboge.
And when I sail out to Venice
You’ll find a newly jaundiced doge.
Here’s some more fun with Hitchens and Amis in the Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/263835/martin-amis-and-christopher-hitchens-in-conversation/
Leave a bit of doggerel in the comments.