RIP: Christopher Hitchens
The fact that Christopher Hitchens’ death has long been expected doesn’t make it any easier to see it announced.
I disagreed with him nearly as often as I agreed with him. But he was a writer of inimitable style and flair, always interesting, never boring, never offering the expected or the trite. Few if any ever emerged the victor from a verbal sparring with Hitchens, because he was as gifted and witty in extemporaneous speech as he was with pen and computer.
Hitchens was a political changer who started out a socialist and ended up somewhat to the right of that—although exactly where, it’s hard to say. But he was first and foremost an iconoclast, taking palpable delight in skewering idols of all kinds with his biting intelligence.
I’ll miss him. No one could write like him.
[NOTE: Here’s a little piece I wrote a while back that featured Hitchens describing an encounter he once had with Margaret Thatcher.]
[ADDENDUM: Here’s a heartfelt tribute by Christopher Buckley, one of Hitchens’ many friends. Hitchens sounds like an extremely entertaining (although challenging) person to know—but anyone who ever saw him speak could guess that. What most people may not have guessed is what a good friend he was to those who, like Buckley, were among those close to him.]
This is a sad day. Not because of any loss I feel but because Hitch ran out of time. I know that I as well as others out there were praying for Hitchs’ conversion to the faith and I think deep down inside he may have been struggling with his atheisim, thus his recent more strident rejection in an effort to reassure himself, sort of whistling past the grave yard. There may be some that see his cancer as a punishment from God but I tend to think Lucifer cut his life short so as to insure against his conversion later in life, like Anthony Flew. But here is the thing. In ancient Church teaching it is said that upon a persons death an Angel and a Demon appear and struggle for the soul( in the Bible Michael was delayed as he struggled over a soul ). So there is still hope and I pray that Hitchs’ Angel is victorious.
Hitchens was a joy to read (as in the Thatcher link) and hear in debate but he had one infuriating wont — a compulsion to play the part of enfant terrible. Under that guise he could delve into disgusting observations and comments.
He could not have done better job of convincing people he was a wonderful writer, smart, witty, anything really, except… nice. Why that was such a part of him, who knows?
Oh, and ditto Trebuchet’s last line.
Nice is actually pretty far down the list of attributes of people whom I would like to know or cultivate. Hitchens checked off on many my other, more critical categories: Brilliant, fearless, articulate, colorful, and brutally honest.
The world will be a less colorful place without him. I wish I had met him.
RIP.
I enjoyed reading his writing, though disagreed with him about faith.
His last piece in Vanity Fair was very powerful and personal.
“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.”
Read it here:
http://tinyurl.com/bsrdmoj
He will be missed.
I can’t remember another example of a public loss that feels to me — and to many others, I’m sure — so much like a private loss.
I saw him a few years ago showing his home on a CSPAN interview segment. It was very bare, furnished almost entirely with books. He remarked that he was listed in the DC phone directory, and that anyone was free to call him.
He was that almost obsolete thing, a public man of letters. He was very wrong about some things. It’s hard for me to forgive him for his attitude about Israel, for example. But he was brave! Brave in the way he lived and brave in the way he died.
A quote from an Auden poem I ran across in one of the Hitchens eulogies:
Time worships language, and forgives,
Everyone by whom it lives.
I have long enjoyed CH’s writing and his rhetorical flair in a debate. I admired the man for his consistency and his ability, as a person of the left, to come to terms with the reality of the war of civilizations between Islam and the West.
“The search for nirvana, like the search for utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.” — CH
Death is a blanket against the merciless pain of suffering; rest in peace Christopher Hitchens.
I share Trebuchet’s sadness concerning Hitchens.
Concerning Michael the angel, the only “delay’ I know of that was mentioned is in Daniel chapter 10 verse 13, where the angelic like being who is speaking to the Jewish Prophet Daniel mentions being delayed by the “prince of the kingdom of Persia” for 21 days till Michael the angel came to his aid.
In Daniel chapter 12 Michael is mentioned as the “the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people” (Daniel’s people) in the context of a period of great tribulation and the resurrection.
I also see that in Jude 1:9 the archangel Michael disputed with the devil over the body of Moses-no mention is made of the soul. Remember Moses died away from his people and they could not bury him but Deuteronomy we are told God buried him. (In light of the comments of Jude it may be that Michael was the actual agent of God in the burial.)
ment “in Deuteronomy”
Although Hitchens was primarily a man of the left, I’ve always admired him for his intellectual honesty and his willingness to call BS on the left when necessary.
He gained a lot of points with conservatives after 9/11 with his criticism of Islam. While that tied directly into his atheism, I think that even Christians respected him for that.
I’ve seen a number of favorable comments about him today on the right side of the blogosphere. It seems I’m not the only one who felt that way about him. He was a leftist atheist that conservatives and even religious people could like and respect, even if we didn’t always see eye-to-eye about everything. I haven’t looked at leftist sites yet. It will be interesting to see what they have to say.
I’ve often thought that he was a possible “changer” who would have eventually ended up as a libertarian. I think he made it part way there before his life was cut short.
When I discovered, some years ago, that Hitch and the great historian of Communist Horrors, Robert Conquest, were fine friends it tickled me. When the earth’s axis shifted on 9-11-2001, Hitch entered a new chapter of life himself. He soon resigned from The Nation with an eloquent letter(published)which said that he could no longer be we with a board who thought George W. Bush more loathsome than Osama bin Laden. He spent long, wonderfully observed & written journeys in Iraq and Mideast in the ensuing years.
Happy Trails, you brilliant Rascal. May your happy atheism not be held against you by The Driver. You shall be missed.
**I recently read a piece he wrote some years back on JFK as president. WHEW…He took NO Prisoners whatsoever.**
I am very aggrieved by the news. As with everyone else, it was not unexpected, but still hard to take.
I had great admiration for Hitchens. We were the same age and from totally different backgrounds, (Oxford and the University of Missouri School of Law are barely on the same planet), but I could relate to most of what he wrote and said. He was one of the most honest writers and sages on the modern scene while being, at the same time, one of the most tolerant of other people’s views.
I consider myself to be a life-long devout Orthodox Christian, but I still admired Hitchens the militant atheist. I greatly enjoyed his numerous debates with Christians regarding religion and belief. He never, ever engaged in personal attacks and, surprisingly, seemed to always be liked by the audience even if they opposed his belief. He was akin to the great debaters of the past, all the way back to Plato and Aristotle – argue and argue, and then shake hands at the end.
I loved the time he drew a Hitler moustache on some Jihadist campaign poster in Lebanon and almost got his butt kicked by some mooslim thugs. Yet he went right back at it.
The way he documented his dying was both sad and insightful.
His adoration of George Orwell was always substantiated by the way he interpreted Orwell. It is thanks to Hitchens that I came to know Martin Amis and P.G. Wodehouse.
I felt awful when Solzhenitzyn died. And I feel awful upon the death of Hitchens. My hope is that NOW he knows he was wrong about God and that he is, also, pleasantly surprised by it.
neo-
Couldn’t have said it better myself (you always say it better).
Upon reading the news of Mr. Hitchens death I, too, felt a sense of loss. He had a big voice – one quite difficult to ignore. And whether one agreed with him or not (me, usually not, but he had the capacity to surprise), he provoked thought which I think he viewed as his mission. And in that he was most successful.
I just checked in for neo’s daily posts, after spending some time “wandering” on the Internet. I ended up at several liberal blogs via links and commentaries. I have to say I was stunned at the many comments by liberals — self-aggrandizing holier-than-thou attack dogs who bash anyone with different beliefs unbridled gusto — needless to say, zero of Hitchens’ thought, wit, style, and panache.
Such people are not interested in thinking. They have closed minds, blinders on, and perhaps earplugs, too. They revel in the company of like-minded compatriots in attacking”the enemy” (as Barak Obama has referred to conservatives — I know, I know — off subject but couldn’t resist) with self-congratulatory zest. That is exactly NOT what Hitchens did. He wasn’t just preaching to his choir. I think he relished his confrontational writing with (at least the appearance of) complete confidence and invited readers — maybe dared is a better word — to participate in critical thinking before assuming an immutable position. And that was his purpose: provoke emotion, then critical thinking. They say art is all about provoking emotion from the observer. He was exceedingly successful at his art.
What a wonderful tone and tolerance is exhibited here. I hope Christopher is able to revel in it.
Your entry today belongs on PJ Media, mostly for the link to the Thatcher anecdote, which is absolutely wonderful!
Oh, and hilarious.
Don J…
Have you read Martin Amis’s wonderful, “Koba the Dread: Laughter and the 20-Million”?
A magical ride through Horror. A Must Read.
“But he was first and foremost an iconoclast, taking palpable delight in skewering idols of all kinds with his biting intelligence.”
Today everyone’s an iconoclast, so someone’s who’s an iconoclast is no iconoclast. Today the heretic is the defender of orthodoxy, the iconoclast is the one who keeps icons whole, and no greater butcher of sacred cows can be found than the one who stands up for the sacred in an age when everything is up for grabs.
Hitchens’ true idol-smashing consisted in his skewering of Marxist orthodoxy-posing-as-heresy. His anti-religion writings… well, that stuff was old when Napoleon Bonaparte was young.
Cruising the blogosphere I’ve been rather saddened at how many Lefties feel it necessary to piss on Hitchens because he didn’t obediently toe the party line about Bush and the Iraq War. Apparently for them ideology trumps human sympathy, respect for the dead, or just common decency.
Trimegistus: well, if it’s any consolation, Hitchens himself didn’t seem to feel any need to speak well of the dead. Some of his pieces about deceased people (Jerry Falwell, for example) were famous for that.
Exactly, Neo. He labelled Reagan a “stupid lizard” just days after Reagan’s death.
I feel no need to eulogize a man whose claim-to-fame was being a contrarian. The Buckley eulogy just points out one of the bizarre aspects of his writing: He could tear apart some ignorant, unsophisticated nun for a pound (from the original Mother T-bashing Chatterjee) but he reserved a softspot for the Commies of his youth, even in his more recent writings.
I consider the following the best illustration of his character:
“For a lot of people, their first love is what they’ll always remember. For me it’s always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going.” — Christopher Hitchens, 1993
I will definitely miss the man. I loved his writing near the end. Honestly, from the right, we shouldn’t hold such a bright light to things we disagreed with. He actually saw evil in the world like homocide bombers in Israel. For someone like him that is an amazing thing. And actually it looks like he wrote an article later admitting that Reagan wasn’t such a bad guy.