On the Death of Christopher Hitchens
“I drink, because it makes other people less boring…it is an unforgivable sin to be boring." – Christopher Hitchens
This morning I awoke to hear the sad news that Christopher Hitchens – journalist, polemicist, political thinker and literature critic – had passed away in the late hours of last night, having ultimately lost his painful “quarrel with death” through the intervention of Death’s very own brand of pneumonia.
The death of Christopher Hitchens rings down the curtain on arguably one of our most gifted and controversial polemicists of the last two decades. A veteran journalist with a career spanning more than four decades, his shamelessly contrarian stance, his magnetic personality and his keen wit coupled with the sharpest of British prose (still alive in his writings and reflected thusly in that of his inspirations – George Orwell, P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh) made him a force to be reckoned with both on and off-screen.
When I last watched him speak in person in June earlier this year, he was beaming in from his home in Washington D.C. via livestream to participate in a debate at the University of Waterloo. He soon got busy mopping up his opponent in a bid to reclaim a debate that that had degenerated into a watery discussion around the role of religion in preserving human culture. Although I felt a little shortchanged at the turn of events, it was still a treat to watch this man command the attention of all those present, completely walk over his opponent and have his say regardless of the timeliness (or lack thereof) of some of his comments.
Truly Hitch.
As many people mourn his passing with shots of Johnny Walker’s Black Label (his favourite), and make plans to turn December 15th into some sort of memorial day for him as we’ve done with 4/20 for Bob Marley, my thoughts keep turning back to the fact that Christopher Hitchens has been, arguably, one of the biggest reasons why I chose to pay more attention to the world of politics and religion.
I first stumbled across him in my second-year of university, when I watched a video of him debating someone from a few years earlier. I remember being hooked right from the very beginning by his ability to weave words together to prod, poke, peruse, humour, undermine and ridicule his opponent, all the while entertaining the audience while also imparting vast amounts of information in such a way as to tantalizingly hint that if you stuck around for just a little while longer, there would be more to come. And of course there was – but only so much as to make you want more, and so he made you wait eagerly for his next article or televised appearance.
I suppose in many ways watching Christopher Hitchens debate was like drinking from a fire hose, something unexpected would always happen. I can only imagine the words that his debating opponents would have used to describe their experiences on-stage with him.
That first day I discovered him, I spent four additional hours watching more videos and searching and reading (and re-reading) his articles as quickly as I could find them online. I remember that soon after that day, my room-mates and I regularly ended up engaging in long-drawn-out conversations deep into the night on the role of religion, politics, atheism and philosophy in society. We soon turned those into a tradition, a staple of our nocturnal lifestyles, and the conversation would inevitably turn back to this man and his ideas time and time again. His writings were the grist for our mills of thought, made all the more special because the three of us – an agnostic, an atheist and a theist – came from sufficiently different backgrounds as to make these conversations interesting, edgy and yet invigorating.
Around this time last year, he was scheduled to debate Tony Blair in Toronto. This was a sold-out debate with long (and I mean really long) waitlists and an angry and vociferous online audience of fans and opponents who all wanted to watch him, spectacularly raising the debate's profile in the days leading up to the event. An online petition was started demanding that more seats be opened up to accommodate the excess demand, and it soon received a lot of traction, eventually going on to be featured on the websites of several prominent thought leaders in the conversation around the role of religion in the public sphere. Such was his appeal.
His more entrepreneurial fans were selling tickets for nearly $1000 on eBay twenty-four hours before the event itself. I remember being infuriated at not being able to get a ticket myself, so one of my room-mates and I decided to make the trip down to Toronto to crash the free public reception. Although the plans ended up being derailed (long story), the entire experience ended up being inextricably linked with my memories of the Christopher Hitchens experience in Canada in the closing months of 2010.
We still chuckle about how things could have turned out differently.
Very few writers have had as much of an impact on my writing as Christopher Hitchens. I began writing on this blog a couple of years ago, but Hitchens’ prose soon became regular fare in my bid to capture my thoughts on paper more succinctly, and with greater impact that I was able to do at the time. Reading his prose wasn’t as entertaining as watching him speak, but it was a lot more informative because each article was a sculpture of words. You could feel that he was infusing the article with a bit of himself and that made the writing all the more richer.
However, at times, despite the fluidity of his prose, I always got the sense that he would miss the mark with his arguments. His obsessive endorsement of the Iraq War always rang hollow to me, as did some of his (several) views on religion. But this was a public intellectual whom I simply couldn’t ignore. At best he embodied the core message of Apple’s Think Different campaign. At worst he was very obnoxious.
He infuriated, inspired, annoyed, amused, provoked and invoked respect in equal measure, but what was always clear was that this was a man who had genuine conviction in the validity of his opinions. He wrote his heart out and meant what he said. He didn’t take kindly to being viewed as a run-of-the-mill talking head nor was he particularly bogged down by the cares of personal branding and all those other PR-related requirements that plague many scholars these days.
No, what was of more obvious was that, ironically as it may sound, Christopher Hitchens was a man of deep faith. Not of the religious type, but of the type who had a deep conviction in his own arguments and a strong moral certitude that was often overlooked by both his supporters and enemies. He was stubborn, he was obnoxious, he was inspiring, he was entertaining. He was driven. Simply driven. From his book, you could tell that he was tortured by his mother’s suicide, and I’m pretty sure he thought about it every single day. This was a man who you may or may not have liked, but you certainly could not ignore him. He commanded a presence, wherever he went. He was a soldier; he held onto his viewpoints when the going got very bad, and he didn’t waver, despite the fact that he lost friends and supporters for no other reason than his choice of viewpoint.
I wish I could say more, but I can’t. This blog post is not a formal obituary. I didn’t know Christopher Hitchens personally nor did I follow him for as long or as closely as some of the more accomplished journalists and thinkers who are writing several other obituaries to mark his death.
Nevertheless, this man made an impact in my life. He introduced me to issues that I had scarcely given any thought to. He led by example to show that it was, and still is, possible to make a difference simply by clinging to your convictions and never giving up an inch to your enemies in order to make the going a little easier. He impacted my writing and showed me that it is simply inexcusable to be boring.
He demonstrated all these things and more – but let’s just say that anyone who admires men of principle, moral character and genuine conviction, and who believes that we need to question things that we have long taken for granted, or who simply admires ideas for their own sake, needs to pick up a book or an article written by Christopher Hitchens and read it in its entirety.
My only regret is that due to the nature of Death itself, we will never know what Hitchens would have thought of the many obituaries that are now being written to encapsulate his life in bite-sized form.
I’d give an arm and a leg to know that.
Rest in peace Hitch, you will be missed.
- Prashanth
(Photo courtesy of Vanity Fair)
