December 16, 2011
An extremely sad day: Christopher Hitchens has died
Robin sent me an email from India to tell me the news, and I must admit it hit me much harder than I would have imagined. I never met Hitch, but we knew people in common and I have been a devoted fan of his since the 80s when I discovered him through one of his articles in Harper's magazine and I have been following him closely ever since. It has become normal in some circles to always preface any profession of admiration for Hitchens (and anyone who doesn't admire him in some way or other is a rotten Philistine in my not-very-humble opinion) with something like, "I don't agree with some of his political views, but...", as if it is normal to agree with public intellectuals of prodigious output 100% of the time. This just irritates me.
The world of letters has lost a giant, atheists have lost their most articulate spokesman, all of us have lost one of the most provocative and courageous voices of our time. And what a voice! If you have not read his autobiography, Hitch-22, do yourself a favor and get a hold of a copy right away. I cannot think of any recent prose which could match the felicity, clarity, honesty, wit, masterful and effortless erudition, and sheer muscle of Christopher Hitchens's lapidary writing there.
The bravery and spunky defiance with which Hitchens faced his painful illness should teach all of us something about how to live. He remained productive and alert to the bitter end. In his last article for Vanity Fair, published just last week, he wrote:
I am typing this having just had an injection to try to reduce the pain in my arms, hands, and fingers. The chief side effect of this pain is numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my “will to live” would be hugely attenuated. I often grandly say that writing is not just my living and my livelihood but my very life, and it’s true. Almost like the threatened loss of my voice, which is currently being alleviated by some temporary injections into my vocal folds, I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.
I know I shall be thinking of him and our own profound loss all day today, and very frequently in the future, and I will be reading and rereading him for a long time. One time Robin's sister found herself standing next to Hitch at a party in Manhattan and turned to him and asked, "Hey, you're Christopher Hitchens, aren't you?" to which he replied, "The sexually magnetic Christopher Hitchens!" Indeed, he was a beautiful man.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 03:39 AM | Permalink
Comments
I know what you mean Abbas. I too have never met CH in the literal sense, but have most frequently in engaged him in the literary sense. I don't know why but it's like a punch to the guts, one that I wasn't expecting any time soon and I will feel it keenly for some time to come. I am surprised by how sad it makes me and have never felt anything similar without knowing a person well.
What an infinitely better place the world would be if even a fraction of it's population absorbed a portion of what Hitch has said and applied his thinking tools and his inquisitive nature to their everyday interactions. His insight into 'motive' was profound.
What a great fortune it is that we were ever witness to the particular assemblage of neuronal matter that was Chris Hitchens. RIP.
Posted by: MattInOz | Dec 16, 2011 4:37:16 AM
Abbas: "as if it is normal to agree with public intellectuals of prodigious output 100% of the time."
I shall say nothing more, but I must say that I find it disheartening to see how cavalierly you dismiss criticism of the "minor" issue of his stance on the Global War on Terror. It is all well and good to admire someone, but admiration does not require idolatry.
Posted by: Foppe | Dec 16, 2011 4:49:40 AM
I think Hitchens deserves the idolatry. I'm going to miss his presence dearly. There's now a big black hole in our public sphere.
Posted by: Bryon | Dec 16, 2011 6:47:04 AM
I just can't see how mourning the loss of a profoundly incisive intellect is tantatamount to idolatry. That said, his support of the war was, for me, one of the things I learned the most from. He never convinced me that it was right, but he disabused me of the illusion that everyone who was for the war was an idiot. I used to watch him in interviews talking about his support of the invasion and imagined how I would respond if given the chance . . . I never won a single one of those imaginary debates because, well, he was Hitch and I wasn't. Embracing the value of all of his ideas (not just the ones with which I agree) has helped me to realize that I can be more Manichaean in my thinking than I'm generally inclined to admit. That's just one of the reasons I'm grateful for his remarkable life.
What a sad day. Cancer sucks.
Posted by: Evan | Dec 16, 2011 10:25:53 AM
Abbas, I too sometimes preface my admiration for Christopher Hitchens' brilliant and incisive writings by mentioning that I did not agree with his stance on the Iraq war. That is not to say that I expect to agree with public intellectual 100% of the time but that this particular divergence, I did not expect to happen.
Hitch 22 is a very readable book - funny, poignant at times and for the most part honest. What struck me greatly about it was that Hitchens, a brash man with a considerable ego that he displayed unabashedly, was also a very faithful friend. His admiration for his close knit group of literary and political pals was fulsome and generous. A memoir is often a venue to brag about oneself. Despite his seeming arrogance and confidence in public, Hitchens does very little of that in his book. Instead, he has much good to say about others.
I will miss Hitchens. Just a couple of days ago I remarked to you that he had the rare gift of being as effortlessly articulate in speech as he was in his writings. He died as he lived - prodigiously chronicling for our benefit his elation, pain, condemnations and irreverence with an immaculate facility of language. Above all, he was never a bore.
Posted by: Ruchira | Dec 16, 2011 10:39:28 AM
Abbas, the death of Hitchens is a sad event. However, let me not preface anything and just say that he was absolutely brilliant in spurts but over- rated as a public intellectual. He was a polymath and a fantastic literary critic but not a systematic thinker much as he liked to believe otherwise. His best work are his long form essays published in the Atlantic on topics ranging from Wodehouse to Partition. His output and intellectual energy were breathtaking but as his Slate pieces will show, you are often better off with greater reflection.
For my intellectual heroes I find much greater inspiration in another atheist, Tony Judt, who showed just as much courage in the face of premature death, never shied away from his sometimes contentious views but didn't trade in public insults. His work had greater intellectual depth, was lighter on polemics if a tad less entertaining. Hitchens was a showman and thus more celebrated and admired. In addition to his genuine abilities, his charm, great gifts of verbal razzle dazzle and a tragic illness have made him an icon of this time but let's not confuse this with a consistently strong intellectual output. He also displayed a genuinely unattractive viciousness toward his perceived enemies of whatever ilk.
Posted by: Fawad | Dec 17, 2011 3:03:06 AM
Fawad, thanks for reminding us of Tony Judt. Just as Hitchens recorded his harrowing journey of living with cancer and its cure, Tony Judt's essay on being held hostage within one's helpless body by an incurable debilitating condition (Lou Gehrig's disease) was another excruciating example of sharing one's pain through well chosen words. I agree with your assessment of Judt's brilliance and quiet courage.
Posted by: Ruchira | Dec 17, 2011 10:40:04 AM
Ruchira, thanks for your comment. Judt's final collection of NYRB essays collected in The Memory Chalet are a fine example of a noble secular humanist mind. The essay you link to is included in it.
Posted by: Fawad | Dec 17, 2011 9:34:08 PM
Thanks, Fawad. I will look for the collection. I tend to agree with you about Hitchens and Judt. But that said, Hitchens was always fun to read even when you didn't agree with much of what he was saying.
I noticed that I said "cancer and cure." Of course, it wasn't cure for Hitchens - just "treatment.
You mentioned CH and Wodehouse. One of the first posts I wrote on my blog was about Wodehouse and I began it by quoting Christopher Hitchens.
Posted by: Ruchira | Dec 17, 2011 11:44:41 PM
Dear Fawad and Ruchira, of course I agree with you guys, but I loved Hitchens anyway. I think my wife explained it best when she said after hearing of his death: "Hitch was the Muhammed Ali of the world of letters. He may not always have been right, or the smartest, or the strongest or biggest, but he was always the most beautiful, the most interesting, the most surprising, the most agile heavyweight in intellectual combat, the quickest in dodging the blows of opponents, and someone who inspired people. Like Muhammed Ali, one HAD to love the Hitch." Yes, Tony Judt was undoubtedly the much deeper thinker and I have nothing but immense admiration for him but he was Joe Frazier at best! :-)
(And like Joe, he unjustly did not get as much attention as he deserved!)
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Dec 18, 2011 6:40:30 AM
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