Blast! Why shed tears for passing of Christopher Hitchens. I say cheers. He was so provocative, captivating even to the end. True, no one person could agree with all that he wrote; yet it was precisely his polemic challenges to the intellect that made his work magnificent must reads. He turned his passions and curiosities into deeply penetrating prose, thought provoking pieces that leave us with a lot to contemplate.
His work influenced many, including me. His personal essay on waterboarding pushes his own courage even as it butts against his conservative hawkishness. It is precisely this article published in Vanity Fair that compelled me to write in this blog about the matter and take it a step further [see in this blog on October 2008].
How fortunate we are to have his body of work that embraces American heroes, like Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, ironically from a Brit who became a US citizen. Yet for others in power he exposed close up of clay feet in excruciating clarity as in No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton. He suffered absurd criticism in the NY Review of Books for taking a point of view that “politics is essentially a matter of character.”
Besides his substantial oeuvre, we are left with an overriding mystery. Of all of his principled beliefs, it's his atheism, or more precisely his demeaning put down of believers, that leaves us wondering. As we were drawn into his last battles of Stage 4 esophageal cancer, he is frank, exposing his vulnerabilities on a very personal level. As he contemplates what must seem to be an abyss, he draws not so pretty pictures of the dilemmas he faces. It is amazing to me that hat he was compelled to write even while under the ultimate deadline. Instead of bitterness he speaks to dying as if he was covering an armed insurrection. With the ultimate coup de grâce his thoughts on death and dying also acknowledge prayer groups assembled on his behalf. Could he at the end have reversed his long standing rejection of a higher power of God? Even in death he leaves us pondering what are essential truths.
Hitch, on the other side, now knows absolutely. I'm certain he would want to publish his observations in his vivid, over-the-top style.
So fondly it's time to give this man his due, an extraordinarily gifted writer with the email address "hitchbitch@vf.com." For all he's left behind, his "voice" lives on as an inciting and exciting embrace of the English language, cherishing the belief to rise to the occasion of the noble fight, especially for our democratic ideals.
RIP: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011
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