Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens is at least very ill and may be worse than that. In the August, 2010 “Vanity Fair” he discussed his cancer with his usual insouciance and fitting irreverence, his best known quality.
I have been reading Hitchens for about 10 years, almost everything I can find, from “The Atlantic” to Why Orwell Matters, God is Not Great and his memoir Hitch 22.
What does a Contrarian say to the author of Letters to a Young Contrarian? “Thanks”? What could be more satisfying than Hitchens' reaction to the death of Jerry Falwell – “… it’s a pity there isn’t a Hell for him to go to”.
Hitchens is one of America’s great public intellectuals, an immigrant who has enriched our public discourse at the price of being condemned by almost everyone. A 60’s student radical whose first pangs of revisionism came from the discovery in Cuba that people are not allowed to leave, Hitchens is charged with apostasy from the left. He is easily if inaccurately dismissed as a “neo-con” for his support of the war in Iraq long after such support became unfashionable.
In recent years Hitchens has given America’s first very public face to intellectual atheism. God is Not Great makes his arguments with wit and wisdom from an historical and global perspective that the idea of God is necessary neither for the creation of the world nor for the adoption of a moral code. Like homosexuality in previous generations atheism is out of the closet, and last winter I had the opportunity to hear Hitchens in one of his serial discussions with Rabbi David Wolpe of Los Angeles. A lot of fun, indeed.
Hitchens was on a tour for Hitch 22 when the cancer struck. The book is perhaps an intellectual history of the last 60 years which uncovers who Hitchens thinks he is, but it seemed to be to be somehow lacking in…warmth, the kind that comes from family or good relationships. I sensed a substitution of banter or pure ideas for values, something missing in the third dimension. An interesting guy.
I wish Christopher Hitchens well. If the cancer kills him, well…it’s a pity there is no Heaven for him to go to.
I have been reading Hitchens for about 10 years, almost everything I can find, from “The Atlantic” to Why Orwell Matters, God is Not Great and his memoir Hitch 22.
What does a Contrarian say to the author of Letters to a Young Contrarian? “Thanks”? What could be more satisfying than Hitchens' reaction to the death of Jerry Falwell – “… it’s a pity there isn’t a Hell for him to go to”.
Hitchens is one of America’s great public intellectuals, an immigrant who has enriched our public discourse at the price of being condemned by almost everyone. A 60’s student radical whose first pangs of revisionism came from the discovery in Cuba that people are not allowed to leave, Hitchens is charged with apostasy from the left. He is easily if inaccurately dismissed as a “neo-con” for his support of the war in Iraq long after such support became unfashionable.
In recent years Hitchens has given America’s first very public face to intellectual atheism. God is Not Great makes his arguments with wit and wisdom from an historical and global perspective that the idea of God is necessary neither for the creation of the world nor for the adoption of a moral code. Like homosexuality in previous generations atheism is out of the closet, and last winter I had the opportunity to hear Hitchens in one of his serial discussions with Rabbi David Wolpe of Los Angeles. A lot of fun, indeed.
Hitchens was on a tour for Hitch 22 when the cancer struck. The book is perhaps an intellectual history of the last 60 years which uncovers who Hitchens thinks he is, but it seemed to be to be somehow lacking in…warmth, the kind that comes from family or good relationships. I sensed a substitution of banter or pure ideas for values, something missing in the third dimension. An interesting guy.
I wish Christopher Hitchens well. If the cancer kills him, well…it’s a pity there is no Heaven for him to go to.
posted by Contraria | 7:58 PM
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