Via Jim Houston in comments, a fitting valediction from Hitchens.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgYYxfpPC0
To me, the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having.
His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade. He was the consummate writer, the brilliant friend.
A woman pursued higher education without her husband’s permission. He (according to police) tied her up, taped her mouth, and cut off all five fingers on her right hand.
She is learning to write with her left hand.
Because she pursued higher education without his permission, police say.
More on Hitchens, in no particular order.
Michael Weiss at the Telegraph –
The last few days had been, for those of us who knew he hadn’t much time left, a strange bundle of suffering commingled with the joy of recollection. We got to relive what endeared him to us from the start: the hilarious tabletalk, the Borgesian library of political and literary arcana that he kept inside his head, and the writing. Of course the writing, particularly the put-downs that never let their subjects get back up again: “No one has a higher opinion of Alexander Haig than I do, and I think he is a homicidal buffoon,” “a herd of antis in search of a climax,” “not only a bore, but the cause of boredom in others.”
It is undeniable that the world will be duller and less funny without Hitchens in it. Significantly duller and less amusing.
As for the politics, his critics always got him wrong on the supposed evolution (or devolution, as they’d argue) from Left to Right. There was the same foundational principle throughout, and if you think the hatred of the clerics and the censors and the commissars began after 9/11, you weren’t really paying close attention.
Christopher Buckley in the New Yorker –
One of our lunches, at Café Milano, the Rick’s Café of Washington, began at 1 P.M., and ended at 11:30 P.M. At about nine o’clock (though my memory is somewhat hazy), he said, “Should we order more food?” I somehow crawled home, where I remained under medical supervision for several weeks, packed in ice with a morphine drip. Christopher probably went home that night and wrote a biography of Orwell. His stamina was as epic as his erudition and wit.
…
Intellectually, ours was largely a teacher-student relationship, and let me tell you—Christopher was one tough grader. Oy. No matter how much he loved you, he did not shy from giving it to you with the bark off if you had disappointed.
…
The jacket of his next book, a collection of breathtaking essays, perfectly titled “Arguably,” contains some glowing words of praise, including my own (humble but earnest) asseveration that he is—was—”the greatest living essayist in the English language.” One or two reviewers demurred, calling my effusion “forgivable exaggeration.” To them I say: O.K., name a better one. I would alter only one word in that blurb now.
Of course he was. People who demur can’t have been paying attention.
Rick Warren on Twitter –
Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.
Tim Minchin on Rick Warren on Hitch, on Twitter –
Nauseating condescending clown RT
@RickWarren: Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.
Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter –
Gone too Soon: Christopher Hitchens 62. Tireless supporter of human rights and fighter of dogma under any guise.
Center for Inquiry on Twitter –
Hitchens was a columnist for Free Inquiry for 10 years. “The Return of Indulgences” Read this op-ed piece.
You know what? I’m a columnist for Free Inquiry. I’m a colleague of Hitchens’s. That’s quite something.
Nevertheless – the world will be duller and less funny without Hitchens in it.
If you think the hatred of the clerics and the censors and the commissars began after 9/11, you weren’t really paying close attention.
I have another memory of him, white-faced, slight and thin as we all were in those more austere times, furious, standing up to some bully or other in the playground.
Intellectually, ours was largely a teacher-student relationship, and let me tell you—Christopher was one tough grader.
Another repost, this time of a repost – metametapost. I wrote it in 2002 or early 2003 when B&W was new, and reposted it last year, on
July 1, 2010
I wrote this about eight years ago for “In the Library.” It hints at why I hope Christopher Hitchens stays around.
Christopher Hitchens is a standing reproach to people who write the odd essay now and then. He is like some sort of crazed writing machine, he seems to average three or four longish essays a day, along with reading everything ever written and remembering all of it, knowing everyone worth knowing on most continents, visiting war zones and trouble spots around the globe, going on television and overbearing even noisy Chris Matthews’ efforts to interrupt him, and irritating people. And what’s even more painful is that this torrent of prose is nothing like the torrents of people like Joyce Carol Oates or Iris Murdoch, badly written in proportion to the torrentiality – no, this is a torrent of learned, witty, informed and informative, searching, impassioned history on the hoof. If Hitchens is a journalist then so were Gibbon and Thucydides.
Unacknowledged Legislation is a collection of essays on writers in the public sphere, as the subtitle has it. The essays are many things, but one of the most noticeable is that they are unexpected. The essay on Philip Larkin for example entirely declines the opportunity to express easy outrage, and instead digs much, much deeper. The one on Martha Nussbaum’s Poetic Justice wonders why she didn’t mention Mill’s autobiography and then at the fact that she seems unaware of the element of caricature in Dickens’ Hard Times. ‘When the utilitarian teacher M’Choakumchild – perhaps a clue there? – tells Sissy Jupe etc.’ Hitchens misses nothing.
Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation, Verso: 2000.
Update: a couple more. I didn’t include Salman Rushdie’s because it was more personal, but I see it’s also on Twitter where anyone can see it, so –
Goodbye, my beloved friend. A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops. Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949-December 15, 2011.
And Richard Dawkins –
Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants including God.
My thoughts exactly.
Francis Wheen at Facebook –
BBC radio news at 7am reports the death of Christopher Hitchens, “an alcoholic”. How I wish Christopher was still here to challenge imbecile reporter Nick Higham over this lie. His epitaph, he once told me, should be “He never missed a deadline”. Farewell, dear old fruit.
Nick Cohen ditto –
The editor is letting me write about the Hitch. The fact that I had a gun to his head at the time is neither here nor there.
Also, a few minutes earlier –
Anyone who wishes to raise a glass of whisky in memory of an absent comrade can join Padraig Reidy and me at 5.30 at the King’s Head Islington.
That’s two hours from now, you have plenty of time.
Martin Robb ditto –
Now it’s up to the rest of us to stay on the case of Galloway and all the other friends of tyrants.
And on the case of the ultimate tyrant, Colonel God.
Nice piece about Rhys Morgan in the Guardian.
So why does this floppy-haired teenager bother? Wouldn’t it be less hassle to focus on becoming even better at Team Fortress 2 or just kicking back and listening to his favourite bands, Muse and Radiohead?
“It can be nerve-wracking but I think that getting the message out there is a lot more important than me being sued,” says Morgan. “I think there’s a need for more people to speak out. I hate the idea of anyone being taken for a ride.”
And there you go. That’s what a lot of speakers-out think, and that’s why they speak out. Most of us weren’t clever and together and dedicated enough to do it at age 17, and if we had we wouldn’t have been worth listening to anyway, but the reasons are still the same.
But it was when Morgan was diagnosed with a serious illness – Crohn’s disease – that he plunged deep into the world of scepticism. While off school last year, he set about researching the disease and was alarmed at some of the “miracle cures” on offer. One particularly grabbed his attention: Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), which is described on its website as the “answer” to Aids, hepatitis A, B and C, malaria, herpes, TB and “most cancer”.
Morgan looked into MMS and was alarmed to find that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had warned that, when used as directed, the solution produced was “a potent bleach” and urged anyone using it to stop immediately and throw it away. Similar warnings have been issued in this country.
Bleach. Bleach!! People are peddling bleach as a treatment! That’s scary. (And puts me in mind of a horrible story about a volunteer at the zoo and some mice and a jar and some bleach…)
“A few people on support forums seemed to be pushing MMS on others. I started telling people on the forums, look, this treatment doesn’t seem to be that great.” He got “kicked off” one forum. “They told me I was being rude and inflammatory by questioning other people’s choices.”
Because medical treatments are just a matter of “choices,” and choosing the wrong one – say, bleach – won’t do any harm. Wouldn’t it be nice if people could learn to stop thinking that way?
So what does he believe in? Morgan does not hesitate: “Evidence-based medicine. If evidence can support something, I’m all for it. One thing that really gets me is when people claim sceptics have closed minds. That’s not true: a true sceptic will be convinced by evidence. And even if the evidence supported the most absurd claims, the sceptic would agree that it’s true.”
Is that rude and inflammatory or what?!
“We should be celebrating young men who stand up against misandry. We should be celebrating the frat that said ‘no means yes’.”
Today’s murder of Gadzhimurad Kamalov, founder of the independent newspaper Chernovik, is a lethal blow to press freedom, said the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“They told me I was being rude and inflammatory by questioning other people’s choices.”
Another item from the archive. No reason. Just for the hell of it. I saw a link to it somewhere and was reminded of it so thought I would summon it from ur-B&W.
June 17, 2011
I have a new project. My new project is to convince people on the left that they must work together with Tea Partiers.
This may seem like a difficult thing to do, but I like a challenge. There are many urgent problems in the world, such as countless people who still have the wrong kind of light bulbs, and the only way those problems can be solved is if I – yes I, I alone, I personally, I bravely yet gently yet determinedly yet lovingly – build a bridge between the left and the Tea Party. The division between the left and the Tea Party is divisive, and when there is divisiveness, problems don’t get solved, because people don’t work together, so it is urgent and vital and very important to heal this tragic divide by telling the left to forget about all the things they disagree with the Tea Party about. It would be pointless to tell the Tea Party to reciprocate, of course, and besides, the left is…well you know. So the work is to tell the left how to heal the divide, while not telling the Tea Party anything, because it already.
This is my healing work that I plan to do. I believe in love and reaching out and bridges and unity. I hope you all wish me luck and every success with my work, which I will be working on in many ways for many weeks to come, and which I will be reporting on via Twitter, Facebook, the New York Times, the Washington Post, People, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Tikkun, First Things, Christianity Today, my seven blogs, some of my friends’ blogs which I haven’t counted yet, and CBS News. In spite of all this fame and exposure I remain impressively humble and kind of bashfully surprised by all the success and approval I report daily via Twitter, Facebook, the New York Times, the Washington Post, People, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Tikkun, First Things, Christianity Today, my seven blogs, and some of my friends’ blogs which I haven’t counted yet.
Once I’ve got the left and the Tea Party squared away, I’ll get to work on getting feminists and sexists to work together, then unions and the governor of Wisconsin, then the Taliban and the women of Afghanistan. As I mentioned, I like a challenge. Thank you, god bless you, and god bless the United States of America.
Frat boys are such fun. The very word reminds me of fun-loving George Bush, whom I usually thought of as frat boy. Some frat boys at the University of Vermont sound super fun.
The fraternity circulated a questionnaire to its members, asking their names, major, favorite frat-related memories, favorite actor, and who they would pick to rape. Just normal questionnaire stuff, you know.
We were sent a copy of the questionnaire, which mostly consists of benign questions like name, birthday, major, amount of time with SigEp and favorite SigEp memories, hobbies, future goals, etc. It’s actually kind of nerdy and cute, until you get to the final three “personal questions.”
1. Where in public would I want to have sex?
2. Who’s my favorite artist?
3. If I could rape someone, who would it be?
Boys just wanna have fun, boom boom.
The fraternity circulated a questionnaire to its members, asking their names, major, favorite frat-related memories, favorite actor, and whom they would rape.
Laura Bassett on the power of the bishops.
Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women
finds it troubling that a group of men that has historically denied women the opportunity to participate in leadership positions is exercising so much power over such a broad range of women’s reproductive health legislation.
“Clearly there’s a problem when men take such an interest in the sexual function of women,” she said. “There’s something deeply off about it.”
Especially those men – men who are officially celibate, men at the top of a men-only hierarchy, men who have spent their entire adult lives in an all-male profession – and, of course, men who think they’re taking orders from the Topp Man, God Himself.
