A Hitch in time.
Yesterday, the first thing that leaped out at me from the Google News feed on my computer at work was the hardly unexpected, but no less devastating, word of the passing, on Thursday night (15 December) of British-American professional provocateur Christopher Hitchens (journalist, essayist, book critic, public intellectual, public gadfly), from pneumonia accompanying a nearly two year fight against esophageal cancer.
Hitchens was a frightfully fecund author who apparently made friends, enemies and frenemies (a neologism one suspects he would have disdained to use) even more prolifically than is usual for a journalist-author of his rough caliber. In the best literary tradition, many of his feuds were conducted publicly, in print or at open debates; over the years I was amused, enlightened and discomfited (usually all at once) by his accounts of them, and tended to pick sides based largely on his own prose: I was for Hitchens in his war of words with John Le Carré (an author whom I didn't read until last year) over the fatwa decreed against Salman Rushdie in February 1989 by the Ayatollah Khomeini over Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses -- Le Carré sided with the fatwa, although he tried to reposition himself ten years later; I was, regretfully, against him in his falling out with Gore Vidal (another literary provocateur, and one whom I've read quite a bit) in the wake of 9/11, although the strains in Hitchens's regard for Vidal first began to show in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing on 19 April 1995.
He was also an avatar and archetype of the high-functioning, chain-smoking, hard-drinking writer who could seemingly drink a circus elephant under the table and still churn out reams of high-quality, erudite prose, thwarting many a baleful editorial eye. Indeed, many of the pallid representations of same in the entertainment media -- Spider Jerusalem in Warren Ellis's and Darick Robertson's comic book series Transmetropolitan; David Duchovny's Hank Moody in the Showtime series Californication -- appear even more insipid and unbelievable when stacked alongside Hitchens's life and oeuvre than they do when taken on their own merits. By all reports, Hitchens remained gleefully unapologetic about his taste for strong drink (and his tobacco addiction) to the end of his days; in this he reminds one a bit of the titular hero in Mozart's Don Giovanni: a seducer and manslaughterer who is dragged to Hell precisely because he refuses to repent even in the face of eternal damnation, thus earning many an audience's grudging respect. (I hasten to add that Hitchens would doubtlessly scoff at the moralizing, theological trappings of the opera.)
If I didn't always agree with him -- I'm still far from convinced about his cheerleading for the recent Iraq war (and, if pro_war_liberal wasn't a dead community, I'd love to see some further spirited debate there over Hitchens's arguments for the invasion), while, on a lesser note, his infamous "Why Women Aren't Funny" piece for the January 2007 edition of Vanity Fair went over like a pregnant pole vaulter (and apparently not just with me) -- such was the force of his intellect and facility for argument that I was and remain doubtful about the Iraq issue at least, and constantly second-guess my own inclination against it, even in the wake of the many revelations of the shameless mendacity and skulduggery that were employed to take us to war, as well as the shameful and niggardly double-dealing in the care and treatment of our wounded veterans. Even if Hitchens has been accused by some of providing "intellectual cover" for supporters of the war, he did not march in lock-step with the neo-conservative agenda, particularly as expounded by former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Hitchens, somewhat late in the day, famously had the honesty and courage to have himself waterboarded (which was a part of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" as practiced under the administration of "Bush 43"), after which he declared -- to the surprise of no one who has ever nearly drowned, or had a friend or family member nearly drown -- that, contra Cheney and Rumsfeld, waterboarding is, in fact, torture.
Hitchens didn't care whose ox he gored: he (in)famously took on Mother Theresa, and, subsequently, religious belief in general (although at least one person has written a convincing qualification of this, citing -- who else? -- Hitchens himself), earning him the ire and vituperation of many (as one may deduce from a cursory glance at the comments made to many of the on-line obituaries published by the major newspapers and magazines); but he was also honest enough, even in the heat of a public debate with an MP whom he accused of being a paid PR flak for Saddam Hussein, to verbally recognize when his opponent had scored a palpable hit -- with the audience, if not against Hitchens himself.
On a more minor note, it was Hitchens who indirectly prompted me to write a letter to the editor in response to an essay that he wrote on Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time; said letter was the second letter of mine to be published, and the first to be published in a major magazine. If for no other reason than this extremely insignificant one, I would regard his writings with a sentimental fondness.
Still, one can't help but wonder: was Hitchens's death, coming as it did at the end of the very same day that U.S. forces were officially withdrawn from Iraq, prompted by this rather emphatic rebuttal to his passionate advocacy for the war of the last decade? Though Hitchens would probably emphatically deny it, the timing of the two events irresistibly prompts the question.
Ah, well. He's left quite an intimidating pugmark on the world of letters; hopefully at least one person in the blogosphere (or -- *gasp* -- the print media) will oblige his belligerent spirit by giving their remembrance of him the headline "Hitch: Cock." Somehow, I think he would've liked that.
Hitchens was a frightfully fecund author who apparently made friends, enemies and frenemies (a neologism one suspects he would have disdained to use) even more prolifically than is usual for a journalist-author of his rough caliber. In the best literary tradition, many of his feuds were conducted publicly, in print or at open debates; over the years I was amused, enlightened and discomfited (usually all at once) by his accounts of them, and tended to pick sides based largely on his own prose: I was for Hitchens in his war of words with John Le Carré (an author whom I didn't read until last year) over the fatwa decreed against Salman Rushdie in February 1989 by the Ayatollah Khomeini over Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses -- Le Carré sided with the fatwa, although he tried to reposition himself ten years later; I was, regretfully, against him in his falling out with Gore Vidal (another literary provocateur, and one whom I've read quite a bit) in the wake of 9/11, although the strains in Hitchens's regard for Vidal first began to show in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing on 19 April 1995.
He was also an avatar and archetype of the high-functioning, chain-smoking, hard-drinking writer who could seemingly drink a circus elephant under the table and still churn out reams of high-quality, erudite prose, thwarting many a baleful editorial eye. Indeed, many of the pallid representations of same in the entertainment media -- Spider Jerusalem in Warren Ellis's and Darick Robertson's comic book series Transmetropolitan; David Duchovny's Hank Moody in the Showtime series Californication -- appear even more insipid and unbelievable when stacked alongside Hitchens's life and oeuvre than they do when taken on their own merits. By all reports, Hitchens remained gleefully unapologetic about his taste for strong drink (and his tobacco addiction) to the end of his days; in this he reminds one a bit of the titular hero in Mozart's Don Giovanni: a seducer and manslaughterer who is dragged to Hell precisely because he refuses to repent even in the face of eternal damnation, thus earning many an audience's grudging respect. (I hasten to add that Hitchens would doubtlessly scoff at the moralizing, theological trappings of the opera.)
If I didn't always agree with him -- I'm still far from convinced about his cheerleading for the recent Iraq war (and, if pro_war_liberal wasn't a dead community, I'd love to see some further spirited debate there over Hitchens's arguments for the invasion), while, on a lesser note, his infamous "Why Women Aren't Funny" piece for the January 2007 edition of Vanity Fair went over like a pregnant pole vaulter (and apparently not just with me) -- such was the force of his intellect and facility for argument that I was and remain doubtful about the Iraq issue at least, and constantly second-guess my own inclination against it, even in the wake of the many revelations of the shameless mendacity and skulduggery that were employed to take us to war, as well as the shameful and niggardly double-dealing in the care and treatment of our wounded veterans. Even if Hitchens has been accused by some of providing "intellectual cover" for supporters of the war, he did not march in lock-step with the neo-conservative agenda, particularly as expounded by former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Hitchens, somewhat late in the day, famously had the honesty and courage to have himself waterboarded (which was a part of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" as practiced under the administration of "Bush 43"), after which he declared -- to the surprise of no one who has ever nearly drowned, or had a friend or family member nearly drown -- that, contra Cheney and Rumsfeld, waterboarding is, in fact, torture.
Hitchens didn't care whose ox he gored: he (in)famously took on Mother Theresa, and, subsequently, religious belief in general (although at least one person has written a convincing qualification of this, citing -- who else? -- Hitchens himself), earning him the ire and vituperation of many (as one may deduce from a cursory glance at the comments made to many of the on-line obituaries published by the major newspapers and magazines); but he was also honest enough, even in the heat of a public debate with an MP whom he accused of being a paid PR flak for Saddam Hussein, to verbally recognize when his opponent had scored a palpable hit -- with the audience, if not against Hitchens himself.
On a more minor note, it was Hitchens who indirectly prompted me to write a letter to the editor in response to an essay that he wrote on Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time; said letter was the second letter of mine to be published, and the first to be published in a major magazine. If for no other reason than this extremely insignificant one, I would regard his writings with a sentimental fondness.
Still, one can't help but wonder: was Hitchens's death, coming as it did at the end of the very same day that U.S. forces were officially withdrawn from Iraq, prompted by this rather emphatic rebuttal to his passionate advocacy for the war of the last decade? Though Hitchens would probably emphatically deny it, the timing of the two events irresistibly prompts the question.
Ah, well. He's left quite an intimidating pugmark on the world of letters; hopefully at least one person in the blogosphere (or -- *gasp* -- the print media) will oblige his belligerent spirit by giving their remembrance of him the headline "Hitch: Cock." Somehow, I think he would've liked that.