Monk

“How good it is to be us!”

-- Christopher Hitchens

It is said that Hitchens liked to cap an eight-hour dinner party, complete with heavy boozing and literay pyrotechics, with that line. How nice a touch to the life! I can wish that I had such moments. It's possible that I may have had a couple of moments when I might have felt something like that back when I was a young teenager, during those Yokota days, but it is much too little and too long ago.

Gore Vidal, the elegant, acerbic all-around man of letters who presided with a certain relish over what he declared to be the end of American civilization, died on Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles, where he moved in 2003, after years of living in Ravello, Italy. He was 86.

-- New York Times


“There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”

-- Gore Vidal

I didn't really know the man and his work, but for a vague understanding that he was an intellectual warrior for the liberals and progressives. I first developed a fondness when I came across a quote of his during the pornography debates of decades past on whether porn causes men to go out and rape. As best as I can recall his quote, he said, "The only thing that pornography ever provoked is masturbation." It was then that I knew he was on my side, at least for a lot of issues. As with Noam Chomsky, after 9/11, I feel that he went too hard on the anti-American line.

I also recall the connection between him and the late Christopher Hitchens. For a time, Mr. Vidal was looking toward Hitchens as his protege, but I suppose Hitchens developed enough of a reputation on his own and did not really rely on Vidal, which churned up some ill feelings. Though, considering Vidal's prolific novels, it does occur to me that this is one measure in which it could be said that Hitchens fell short. That is, he never wrote a novel. This does not diminish his work and his reputation, I suppose, but it is a significant limitation, and maybe it was this that kept Hitchens a little humble about his accomplishments, not having any "1984s" behind his name, something that could better endear his memory to the masses and the future.

Andrew Sullivan went to Christopher Hitchens's memorial service yesterday.

_ _ _

And then his last words. As he lay dying, he asked for a pen and paper and tried to write on it. After a while, he finished, held it up, looked at it and saw that it was an illegible assemblage of scribbled, meaningless hieroglyphics. "What's the use?" he said to Steve Wasserman. Then he dozed a little, and then roused himself and uttered a couple of words that were close to inaudible. Steve asked him to repeat them. There were two:

"Capitalism."

"Downfall."

In his end was his beginning.

-- Andrew Sullivan

_ _ _

It may be recalled that Hitch was a pretty good lefty in his youth. I remember when he was happy to bow down before Noam Chomsky. However, I thought that Brian Lamb got Hitch to renounce socialism on C-SPAN, but maybe I misremember. It was after he became a hawk on the Iraq war, and I could have let that over-color all his politics. Still, it is difficult to imagine him being happy as a true equal. Aristocracy and privilege sat on him well, a giant among men. Maybe he just got dreamy again at the end.

There was no “tunnel,” and no vividly bright light that I moved toward, and whatever euphoria I experienced was as transient as the buzz from polishing off a few bottles of wine with dear Martin in the cafés of Monmartre. Yes, there appeared to be a passageway leading to something a bit brighter than the total darkness that I expected, but I experienced this for what it was: a well-known epiphenomenon of oxygen depletion in the dying retina.

-- Christopher Hitchens, as told to Art Levine at The Washington Monthly

A little something to remind us of Hitch. I'm not sure that this wasn't actually written by Hitchens, not from the afterlife, to be sure, but done before his hyperactive brain was finally stilled. People in the comments section derided Levine for falling short of the mark, but I thought it felt like Hitch's voice, perhaps minus a little of the volcanic flair of the colorful writer, though he might not have been at his best during the last weeks of his cancer-eaten life.

The influential writer and cultural critic Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday at the age of 62 from complications of cancer of the esophagus. Hitchens confronted his disease in part by writing, bringing the same unsparing insight to his mortality that he had directed at so many other subjects.

-- ONTD/NPR

The intellectual world has become a duller and less literate place. He had at least another ten brilliant years in him. I can feel this loss.

We have a Christopher Hitchens update, as he writes about his struggle with cancer. Since he whips up a lot of impressive Nietzsche talk with his report, I'll keep much of his essay. He tees off on the famous quote about what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. He notes that some things just keep beating you down. I could add that some people never even get to really live and know what it is like to be strong, not even for a season.

( Read more... )

If there is a God, and he lacks a sense of irony, he will send Hitchens to the hottest precinct of hell. If God does have a sense of irony, Hitchens will spend eternity in a town that serves no liquor and has no library. Either way, heaven will be a less interesting place.

-- Bill Keller for The New York Times

It looks like the cancer is starting to get the upper-hand on Hitchens.

"There is, especially in the American media, a deep belief that insincerity is better than no sincerity at all."

-- Christopher Hitchens

Martin Amis seems to have written a pre-eulogy for Hitch. I can understand it. It's hard to think that we probably should have had another good twenty years of Hitch's commentary on the political and cultural scene, while someone like Rush Limbaugh will be with us forever. Talk about the dumbing down of the culture...

Just after we get a lovely article by Christopher Hitchens on the graces of the King James version of the Bible, we now see a letter he has written to a society of atheists at The Richard Dawkins Foundation that is almost menacingly caustic. Since it is Easter, I thought about holding it for later in the week, but may as well strike while the iron is hot. For those of faith and tender heart, one can understand his bitter words as a response to the narrowest forms of fundamentalism which do hold religion and faith as a weapon rather than as a promise and a hope in the long night, for what is life without a little mythic grandeur, especially if one is not over-burdoned with wealth, friends, and fame.

( The Letter )

I suppose Easter, the season of our Lord's dying and rising, has invited a number of good articles about reading the Bible, and I will let a few of them trot about on this page, so that you may ride them or else let them run free as you scroll yonder.

The first article, by Kristin Swenson, brings out the argument that, even if you are not a believer, if you do not care to be literate in the Biblescape, you can find yourself left out of a lot of hot, trending topics of cultural discussion:

If you're not biblically literate, you can get along all right, but you're missing out. It's like a cocktail party with raucous conversation. You're invited, but until you know something about the Bible, you'll be stuck talking about the weather at the punch bowl.

( Read more... )