Christopher Hitchens: RIP
“Eloquent” is such an easy word, you feel like you need to coin something special just for Christopher Hitchens. It would have to combine “eloquent” with “erudite” and “deliberate” and “devastating” and “shocking” and “unflinching” and “élan” and “delightful,” all twirled up together into an irreducible whole. I suppose “Hitch” would do, only now that he’s gone we have no one to apply it to.
Years ago, I watched my best friend wage a losing war with cancer. Hitchens’ essays on his own fight were somehow more illuminating, more intimate than my actually having been there all those years ago. He wrote his essays without ever sounding maudlin, yet without false hope or cheap cheer. Hitchens wrote about his own dying process the same way he wrote about everything else: perfectly “Hitch.”
I didn’t know the man, never so much as bumped into him by chance at some conference or meeting or watering hole. I would have liked to. As something of convivial drinker myself, I like to think we’d have been able to hit it off, if only for a few hours. Anything longer than that, and I fear I’d stop being interesting to him. And that’s OK: What an unforgettable experience that would have been, if only for me.
Hitchens lived big, thought big, wrote big, drank big, and smoked big — which was, of course, his eventual undoing. We watched him fight and die, just as big and as publicly as he did anything else, and we knew this coming. Looking at all the columns and remembrances and blogs this morning, you can tell many people had their obits in the can weeks or months ago, awaiting this day to fill in the proper dates and add a few final thoughts or details.
I didn’t do that. I couldn’t do that. Because while I know he’s gone, I don’t yet miss him. There are still works of his I haven’t read. For as long as I want it to, there will always be new Hitchens available to me, in the way I knew him best: On the printed page. He left, as the late Steve Jobs used to say, “a dent in the universe.”
The English-speaking world lost two of its most daring thinkers in the last few months, men brought down by their own bad habits. I suppose there’s a lesson in there. I don’t suppose we’ll learn it any time soon.
Like Hitchens, I don’t believe in an afterlife. I hope we’re both wrong. And if there is a heaven big enough to squeeze in Hitch, it had better have a smoking section.
If doesn’t, it soon will.
Well said, Steve.
Nice obit. Hitchens was a leftist you could trust. He could criticize the right from the left but he wasn’t afraid to criticize the left from the left as well. My favorite thing about him, though, was that he also criticized both the right and the left from…ABOVE.
There’s one adjective never attributed to Hitch: boring.
Maybe the lesson is that if bad habits are so important that people who really matter will sacrifice themselves for them, then who is a nobody like me to say we should root them out?
IMHO he was just a clever bender who used his logic skills to construct a fantasy world inside which he could live with himself and his closet proclivities.
I fear that, like his model Orwell, Hitch’s politics and his entire world view were shaped by his desire to be a member of a social class that did not welcome him.
It pains me to say it, but I think George Galloway had a more authentic character than Hitchens.
Steve, I thoroughly enjoy you with the other Trifecta guys. And, I am certain that you and they have had some very interesting conversations about the ‘afterlife’, especially from Scott Ott. As such, I endeavor to address the following:
“Like Hitchens, I don’t believe in an afterlife. I hope we’re both wrong.”
If you find out you were wrong (as is likely ‘Hitch’ now has) the obvious next question would be: “What does the ‘afterlife’ consist of?” To which, you have quite possibly swerved into answering that with the next statement:
“And if there is a heaven big enough to squeeze in Hitch (and, by default yourself?), it had better have a smoking section.”
To which I respectfully posit: “The smoking section is reserved for the ‘other’ place.”
I choose not to live in nanny states.
This is not to be construed as an insult by any stretch of the imagination, but being able to wrap a finite mind (such as yours or mine) around the infinite is as impossible as it gets. By you stating that you “choose not to live in nanny states” I can only surmise you are attempting to define heaven (and the ‘other’ place) through earthly comparisons, where someone else decides for you what is and what is not to like or do. This is much like the writer of Revelation attempting to describe future events with only earthly experience to draw from in order to make sense of what he is being shown. Heaven and the ‘other’ place are most assuredly not anything like what our five senses enable us to experience here on Earth. Nevertheless, it is more real than we can even begin to imagine.
You contradict the first with the second. Which is it?
fullcirclethinker wrote:
To which I respectfully posit: “The smoking section is reserved for the ‘other’ place.”
Dang! I thought Chesterton would have made it.
Pity the poor soul that cannot find its heart’s desire in Heaven!
Heart’s desire? I would presume that that would only define what would benefit the individual now spending eternity in the ‘afterlife’, referred to here as heaven. As such, I highly doubt that would include indulgences contrary to what is best for the individual. To wit: As it pertains to the ‘here-and-now’, it is beyond dispute that inhaling anything originating from tobacco is at all beneficial, as I am sure ‘Hitch’ would attest to were he still among us. It is likely that this habit contributed to his untimely demise.
As to what I was referring when addressing the phrase ‘smoking section’: You undoubtedly know what I mean. It has absolutely nothing to do with tobacco (or any other form of ‘smoking’ by means of inhaling).
it is beyond dispute that inhaling anything originating from tobacco is at all beneficial
Ditto coffee.
I think we would agree that Heaven is the heart’s desire, Fullcirclethinker. If Hitchens finds no home there, it is because he refuses it. in my opinion Pride, not smoking and drinking, was Hitchens biggest sin.
Agreed on both counts as it pertains to Heaven and Pride. Heaven should be the heart’s desire, and pride is the original sin, beginning with both Adam and Eve showing their pride by being unwilling to fess up to what they had done. To me however, that is the perfect example to prove that God exists. By allowing each individual free will to choose (starting with Adam and Eve, as well as the serpent), with the ultimate choice being where they will spend eternity, he (Hitchens) did what we all do. He made a free will choice and God in His infinite Love not only allowed him to make a choice but then honored that choice. After that, having breathed his last breath, the die is cast. And, like ‘Hitch’, we are all without excuse before His presence once that has happened. To that end, God has extended His Hand, encouraging us to make the right choice. And, for me, that choice is His Free Will offering accomplished both by dying on the cross and rising from the grave.
I have a gay brother and a lesbian sister who are exactly like Hitchens. They are compelling to be around, and are always the center of any conversation. Just make sure you’re not around when Medusa comes out. Then run for the hills.
It is pure narcissism, reinforced by great intelligence. They can argue any side because they are their own compass; their own North Star. Everyone and everything else is a tool, to be employed for their glory.
I have lived my life to be as much like them, without that Medusa, as possible. I adore their wit, their style, their intellects. They are both very accomplished in their fields. That does not make either of them good people.
I really want to see Mr. Hitchens’ face when he explains himself to St. Peter.
We live in a free and open society, and if Hitchens chooses to be an Atheist or not, he has the FREEDOM to do so, with no coercion. If nothing else, he chose an extremely brave and honorable stance against Jihad, and defended this country and our fighting men. He stood against the groupthink of the left, and the groupthink of Islam.
The best we can do is to avoid trying to impose some kind of Christian Groupthink on him. We should be better, more American, than that.
Because Hitchens sided with the communist dictatorships against the West during the Cold War, I say good riddance.