RIP

Christopher Hitchens. . . One of the best cultural critics I've ever read. In fact, I had just finished his essay collection Arguably when I saw the news. Wonderful stuff. John Updike was the high-water mark of criticism for me until I read Hitchens.
[www.nytimes.com]



Post Edited (12-16-11 16:59)

Sad to see he's gone.

I seem to recall an irritating willingness on his part to rush into conflicts in the Middle East that alienated me towards his opinions to an extent - especially after American boots were on the ground in Iraq. I have a filing cabinet full of op-ed pieces from the lead-up to the Iraq War and am fairly certain that some of his stuff is in there based solely on how much it outraged me at the time.

It's also impossible to not recall Mr. Hitchen's brief appearance in Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy with a certain amount of glee. I won't rehash any of that here out of respect for the deceased.

Christopher Hitchens was readable and thought provoking, which put him light-years ahead of a lot of our homegrown pundits.

…

A few of his best zingers concerning atheism:

"Just consider for a moment what their [the devout's] heaven looks like. Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea."

"Time spent in arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough almost never wasted. The argument is the origin of all arguments; one must always be striving to deepen and refine it; Marx was right when he stated in 1844 that 'the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism.'"

That's kind of the problem. . . he'll be remembered for his polemics. But his book reviews (particularly literary biographies) were remarkable--as were his takes on other such cultural matters.

Hitchens was among the most well-rounded, impressive critics/commentators I've had the opportunity to enjoy. I probably disagreed with half of what he wrote over the years, but always enjoyed trying to keep up with him. It seemed to me that he wasn't concerned about currying favor who shared his views on a particular subject, let alone winning over converts.

It was his review of the final Harry Potter book that convinced me to read the whole series:

[www.nytimes.com]

I figured that anything that can stir up this level of ambivalence in Christopher Hitchens is worth checking out.

We're all the worse for his loss, but we're all the better for what he gave us, whether we agreed with him or not.