Did he often infuriate us? Oh, hell yeah.
But Christopher Hitchens wrote with great power, enormous intelligence, delicious wit, more than occasional meanness, but always, always with a grace that took your breath away and, in the end, maybe that grace trumped everything—even when you tried not to let it, even when you disagreed with him, bigtime.
The loss of his voice is profound.
If you read nothing else on Hitchens, read Christopher Buckley’s essay on his friend in the New Yorker.
UPDATE: There are, of course, a number of eloquent stories and essays about Hitchens,—among them, this essay by LA Times book critic David Ulin.
Here’s a clip:
….Among his role models? Thomas Paine, whom he described in 2007 as “part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend.”
There’s something telling about such an image, with its notion of Paine — or, more accurately, Paine’s belief in “human rights, and … their concomitant in democracy” — as a weapon, one that is as necessary to the future as he was to the past. It suggests that Hitchens didn’t take anything for granted, that he knew vigilance is the best, perhaps the only, defense we have.
This is why he revered George Orwell also, for “his commitment to language as the partner of truth.” In his 2002 book “Why Orwell Matters,” Hitchens makes that idea explicit, rejecting a view of the author as a sanitized icon in favor of something more complex and profound. “I sometimes feel as if … Orwell requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies,” he wrote, “an object of sickly veneration and sentimental overpraise, employed to stultify schoolchildren with his insufferable rightness and purity.”
No one would have characterized Hitchens as “an object of sickly veneration and sentimental overpraise”; he could be a bully, and it sometimes seemed as if he’d rather shout down those with whom he disagreed than engage in conversation. But he was as committed to telling the truth as any of his great heroes, and nowhere as movingly as when he wrote about the illness that would take his life…..
What the hell was up with that Henry the V panel C Buckly mentioned? One of the weirdest aggregations – along with Judi Dench and, of course, Hitchens who apparently would show up anywhere there was a crowd – I’ve ever heard of.
Hitchens was wildly over-rated as a political writer in all of his incarnations IMHO. I don’t think he ever escaped the trap of politics as a grandiose personal conceit poorly conceived – as evident in his youthful choices. Despite the twists and turns, he never got past that marker. Even at his best – which was the journalism from several regions of brutal conflict – there was the ’60s aura of “in search of Che.” And, although minor compared to the later crankery, his anti-Clinton grandstanding, actively in the company of such as Ann Coulter was simply perverse (with the emphasis on “simply” and not in a good way.)
But when he wasn’t just tossing it off, he was a wonderful writer and had an amazing literary mind. I will say that his anti-religious screeds were thin and reminded me of my own clarity on the subject when I was fourteen years old.
I enjoyed most of his memoir, but had to set it aside after it got to his quasi-neocon conversion on Iraq. That great “moral stance” was too toxic to revisit ii depth. I’m not in the forgiveness business, so I’m not moved to embrace as legitimate the public voices that played a significant role – and Hitchens did among the “leftish” self-styled intellectuals – in promoting that gruesome, utterly dishonest and destructive episode. It tore the country apart at a moment when we could least afford that and had a rare opportunity to rise above our worst selves – and we’re still living with the fallout. Hitchens was more than a mere provocateur in that scenario. His star rose with the advent of that catastrophic venture. Aside from the hundreds of thousands dead and the millions displaced, the mullahs in Tehran have much to thank Hitch and his “comrades” for. But that necessarily said, Hitchens was a great wit and a great wordsmith of the moment.
Also a man of great personal courage and grace, which became evident in his writing on his illness. His final Vanity Fair piece is stunning in that regard.
His wit and his famous personal ecumenicism (or should that read “famous person ecumenicism”) – which excluded Henry Kissinger but found a destructive sociopath like Grover Norquist acceptable enough to invite over for drinks and chat – is celebrated in this remembrance from David Frum (who is actually making a much more industrious, less self-congratulatory and far more politically relevant attempt at ideological resuscitation, if not rebirth, than Hitchens actually did.) Another good read that’s not in the New Yorker links:
http://www.frumforum.com/christopher-hitchens-1949%E2%80%932011
Hitchens was a unique and entertaining figure, but that he gets compared to Orwell is an indication of how genuinely stupid and impoverished our political discourse has become.
Agree with nearly all. (Especially about Orwell.) And yet his literary grace always gets to me. Thanks for the commentary, Bruce—and the extra link.
It’s too bad that Christopher Hitchens is finding out at this time and in this way that God is real. He’ll have an eternity to reflect upon that.
It’s my faith that a loving, forgiving God wouldn’t allow eternity to pass without having a soul exemplified by Hitchens’ indomitable spirit and large measure of personal decency and courage around, if only to gently tweak him…I’m sure Hitchens is making out better in any afterlife conceived in love and justice than phony, hate-mongering gasbags like Jerry Falwell.
I have no expertise on the afterlife.
As a humble tribute to CH, I’m making a point of re-readind The Satanic Verses and Hitch’s book on Jefferson.
Bruce, your reference to and adjectives to describe Jerry Falwell in an attempt to discredit what is clearly the message of salavation in the New Testament is desperate and an insult to Christians. But, we’re big enough to forgive you.
Rob, let me help you, I have it on good authority that there are no unions in Heaven, so you’ll have an eternity to organize the citizens of Heaven and convince them that God is unfair.
Woody – I’m a Christian. Falwell was an insult to Christianity.
You’re welcome to your faith and I’ll stick to mine, which isn’t twisted and bigoted, like Falwell.
Bruce: “It’s my faith that a loving, forgiving God wouldn’t allow eternity to pass without having a soul exemplified by Hitchens’ indomitable spirit….”
Bruce, either God’s not loving and forgiving or you don’t have a clue about the tenets of Christianity, which you claim to be your faith. Also, your constant barrage against Falwell is no argument and is whipping a dead horse.
I take no pleasure in stating the obvious outcome of Hitchen’s denial of God’s existence, his refusal to accept the sacrifice of Christ on the cross as payment for his sins, and his negative influence in dissuading potential believers. But, I’m not going to pretend that someone goes straight to heaven because I liked him or thought him to be decent.
You need to consider these things for your own salavation rather than pretending that God gives multiple routes to a heavenly eternal life with Him that are not scriptural.
From Salon.com, re: Hitchens:
“Once he became an unpaid administration propagandist, Hitchens, formerly a creature of left-wing magazines whose largest mainstream exposure was in Vanity Fair and occasionally on Charlie Rose, was suddenly on TV rather a lot. The lesson there, I think, is that the popular American mass media will make room for even a booze-swilling atheist Trotskyite if he’s shilling for a the latest war.”
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/when_hitch_was_wrong/
Obviously this man Woody is a learned theologian and spiritual thinker.
Incidentally, Jerry Falwell – who I mentioned because he was famously reviled by Hitchens on the occasion of the former’s death in a FOX News segement with that creepy blowhard Sean Hannity – was such a meticulous and profound spiritual leader, messenger of God’s Word and follower of Jesus Christ that he offered this insight into the issue of racial desegregation at the time it really mattered as a question of Christian ethics:
“If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never had been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”
Because the sociopathic and obviously racist Falwell wrapped his “mission” in a fraudulent, fabricated and utterly incoherent notion of “Biblical literalism” to confine God’s love to his own modest imagination, intellect and suspect personal and political intentions, his pretense of being among some supposed “elect” in “salvation” was convenient cover in rationalizing as somehow “Christian” a life devoted primarily to hate-mongering, right-wing crankery and intentional divisiveness.
I don’t have simple and convenient formulas to offer in explanation of the most profound mysteries. Anyone who does is a fool. There’s not much anyone with even a modest dose of intellectual or spiritual honesty could possibly say on this beyond that observation. To make “grander claims” is just pathetic. It’s why characters like Hitchens have a decent point when they take on the dark side of religious dogmas and/or totally infantilized representations of God as “authority” for sociopaths and bigots like Falwell in human history. FWIW there is a rich Christian theological tradition that includes such voices as Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, the great Biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann and the like that is mine. Imbecilic clowns like Falwell, Pat Roberson, Richard Land and various other fundamentalists, Theocrats, Christianists, Dominionists, Islamists and the like deserved everything a Hitchens could summon against them.
My last word on this tangent – my original comment was intended as a bit of ironic humor. Debating Biblical literalism with those oriented to a totally discredited fundamentalism – especially when it’s wedded to defense of right-wing crankery, as it is so often and and which of course gives the game away – is a waste of time. (Although I have had some fun messing with Jehovah’s Witnesses who thought they wanted to talk with me.)
Bruce, have you considered becoming Unitarian?
Merry Christmas.
No.
Blessed Christmas to all.
Most incisive, even-handed remembrance of Hitchens I’ve seen yet, by his long-time Nation colleague Katha Pollit:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/165222/regarding-christopher
Bruce
Excellent link. Pollit’s points about CH, and especially his drinking, are quite sobering. No pun intended.
Think I’ll continue on w/ The Satanic Verses with a straight glass of cranberry juice.
To Hitch. And healthy livers.
I think you can safely lace your cranberry juice with a little bit of vodka, Rob. But point taken.
Great piece by Pollitt, Bruce. Good balance for all the adulation. Thanks for the link. (Except that I disagree intensely with her view of Orwell’s nonfiction, and how it would be received were it not for the two ultra famous novels.)
Yeah, I agree. My own appreciation of Orwell is based more on the nonfiction. References to the fiction are so culturally embedded in the language used to describe totalitarianism that the actual books almost need no longer exist. I think the comparison to Orwell is more a problem as regards Hitchens in that I have never seen a claim for anything coming close to Homage to Catalonia among his reportage and essays.