RIP Christopher Hitchens

Word is shooting around online at top speed.

Confirmation via Vanity Fair Twitter.

Slideshow up on main site.

man for some reason I thought this was gonna be like steve jobs and he was gonna be around for a long time

rip

scorpions

a fine lush and sometimes good writer rip

Oh damn. I mean not a suprise I suppose but still wasnt expecting it :(

VF piece now live

aaaand i think its just killed their website :/

David Folkenflik via NPR

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/09/17/christopher-hitchens-women-just-arent-that-funny

Selections from an interview with Dawkins for the New Statesman that's about to run.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/995phqjw.asp

having dug up some samples of misogyny and war mongering not sure what piece to post to demonstrate his expertise at character assassination since theres like all of them to choose from

journalists are being v strange on twitter, excellent unfollow opportunity

That's because a lot of them wish they were as famous as he and had as much to drink as well.

true

http://i40.tinypic.com/51vfbo.jpg

RIP.

Was going to ask if he was the most famous person to be openly alcoholic, but presumably there are a load of musicians.

he had good zings

I liked his mother theresa book

I really admired some of his death penalty articles.

do not link to national post

he had good zings

― Matt Armstrong, Friday, 16 December 2011 02:31 (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

oh damn why couldn't it have been peter?

like most writers who say what needs to be said he said a bunch of stuff that didn't need to be said but it came with the territory. sleep well you brilliant, angry shit-stirrer.

^^ i f/w with this epitath

^Thirded. RIP Hitch :'(

RIP and ty

never met hitch but we both wrote for the same ny tabloid for awhile in the late 80s. not trying to exalt myself rather i'd like to claim him as mentor of sorts, his weekly book review column became a touchstone for me. an instructive example of how much can be accomplished in just 500 or 750 words. quite a bit, in his case.

http://i.imgur.com/Up2xH.jpg

One of those writers who were part of the environment – I took him for granted. An incalculable influence on my thinking and writing over the years. I saw no reason to take it personally when we disagreed more often than not the last ten years.

for those keeping track, below the fold

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwa8osRq9P1qz6z0no1_500.jpg

Sullivan shares an anecdote:

I'd asked him last year to write a letter to the Immigration Services sponsoring me to finally become a permanent resident of the United States. Who better than my fellow Englishman immigrant of the last twenty-five years? A while later, he emailed:

"Safely in the US mail. I managed to say that your faith had allowed you to extend a warm hand to so many of your fellow men, and then remolded that bit to make it sound a touch less close to the heart's desire.

Brunch? Sunday? Smooch Hitch"

I responded,

"lol. many many many thanks. an honor. brunch sounds great. we tend not to be conscious till around noon, tho. xx a"

He replied:

"Dearest Andrew I always think of Sunday lunch as beginning at about 2.30 ("a lavish and ruminative feast", as Waugh says about elevenses). Want to come here?"

Yes, I do, Hitch. Yes, I do.

That "lol" must have advanced the crawl of Hitch's cancer.

Yeah the difference in casual email tone does say it all.

Frum:

A friend of theirs once took Christopher Hitchens and his wife Carol Blue to dinner at Palm Beach’s Everglades Club, notorious for its exclusion of Jews.

“You will behave, won’t you?” Carol anxiously asked Christopher on the way into the club. No dice. When the headwaiter approached, Christopher demanded: “Do you have a kosher menu?”

Also from that:

On one of the last occasions I saw him, my wife and I came to drop some food–lamb tagine–to sustain a family with more on its mind than cooking. Christopher, though weary and sick, insisted on painfully lifting himself from his chair to perform the rites of hospitality. He might have cancer, but we were still guests–and as guests, we must have champagne.

Hell the whole piece is one anecdote after another. I'll stop with this one:

Hitchens was not one of those romantics who fetishized “dialogue.” Far from suffering fools gladly, he delighted in making fools suffer. When he heard that another friend, a professor, had a habit of seducing female students in his writing seminars, he shook his head pityingly. “It’s not worth it. Afterward, you have to read their short stories.”

That Frum obit is the best I've read so far.

Yeah, just finished it. Definitely the keeper at this point.

really really sad news.

I remember when this appearance inspired a lot of friends who'd never read him to give him a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrFgX83OsEY

rip. dude was a fucking gangsta

by which i mean with hitch basically goes the entire tradition of public intellectualism

how come DOOM or Ghostface never asked him to appear on a record

Perrin knew him quite well in the late '80s and '90s -- he was his "hero" at the time -- and the last 3/4 of this piece is pretty amusing:

http://redstateson.blogspot.com/2006/10/our-reflection-darkly.html

obv I loved his work for the Voice and the Nation before he lost his marbles. And I hope God is merciful to him.

And I hope God is merciful to him.

eh, fuck that. RIP, in the ground.

Perrin's Hitchens obit... from 2003:

http://www.citypages.com/2003-07-09/news/obit-for-a-former-contrarian/

The man was so prolific that you can, if you wish, ignore the polemics and concentrate on the essays on literature. Unacknowledged Legislation is his best collection.

lol

you nice liberals are so literal-minded. she's just a provocateur! isn't it fun?

She claims Hitchens drank last July, but he said several times that he gave up drinking; he'd lost the taste for it.

http://imnotatoy.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/w5bcn.gif?w=500

good katha pollitt remembrance bit.ly/tjCN5l

TNC grapples with Hitchens' support for Iraq.

Nevertheless, I think Glenn's frame is wrong. Virtues don't excuse sins; they cohabit with them. Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder. Perhaps worse he was a slaveholder who comprehended, more than any other, the moral failing of slavery, and it's potential to bring the country to war, and yet at the end of his life he argued for slavery's expansion, and on his death many of his slaves were sent to the auction block.

At his end, Jefferson sided with those who would eventually bring about the deaths of 600,000 Americans. He argued that the antebellum South would have either "justice" versus "self-preservation." To paraphrase Churchill, it chose the latter and consequently got neither. But Jefferson was a beautiful writer, and a great intellect, whose thinking and prose I consistently find stunning. This admiration does not negate his moral cowardice. Both are true at the same time. (The same point could be made in regards to our conversation over Elizabeth Cady Stanton.)

Given Hitchens own ties to this magazine, of which I'm very fond, I'd like to say that--at least in this space--there's no demand for exclusion, or any sense that Hitchens worthy of unalloyed admiration. No one should ever receive, or wisely desire, such a thing. I can't really speak for other people, but I don't believe in an essential, irreducible moral nature. I don't see Hitchens, or anyone else, as a case of either/or.

pollitt's piece is good. it's kind of a trip for me to imagine them interacting irl.

What I saw was that drinking made him angry and combative and bullying, often toward people who were way out of his league—elderly guests on the Nation cruise, interns (especially female interns).

post graduate level zing

really who dreamed up this idea of a cruise as fundraiser for a political magazine

just imagining it is so strange and horrible

there should be a short story where it's really some kind of bait and switch and they've all joined the navy reserve or an oil shipping line or something

shanghaied to write spam for the russian mob

I voted for him twice, and I wouldn't want to be at sea w/ Ralph Nader (esp if Jim Hightower was also around)

what u voted twice for ralph nader how has this fact never come out on ilx before???

jk :)

morbs and nader bunked together in the navy how has this fact never come out on ilx before???

haha

i just cannot stop imagining a soused hitchen screaming at a tableful of old lefties just tryna enjoy their chicken a la king and then flipping the table and storming off in disgust

its really amazing

katha pollit clucking in the background

chainsmoking in his cabin angrily writing out a 1200-word screed about the variety show

threatening to quit if pollitt doesnt publish it immediately, on board the ship

puking over the side of the deck while his intern holds his hair

trying to charm an indifferent waitress with a story about dodging a militia in lebanon and then barfing over the side

xp lool

really who dreamed up this idea of a cruise as fundraiser for a political magazine

http://media.salon.com/2010/07/pollster_scott_rasmussen_to_speak_on_national_review_cruise_for_free-460x307.jpg

haha goole

I'm pretty sure couscous is favored over chicken a la king on The Nation cruise.

also Richard Dreyfuss was on it a couple years ago

why was Richard Dreyfuss on some couscous?

Dan crunches on indefinite pronounds like cornflakes.

RICHARD DREYFUSS OVER A BED OF COUSCOUS JOIN US NATION MAGAZINE CRUISE 2012

*pronouns

btw I hate to tell u this year's returned to port yesterday

http://www.nationcruise.com/

lol at puking while an intern holds his hair

http://nearemmaus.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/hitch.jpg?w=690

omg he rode a folding bike, it all makes sense now

he was recreating Lenin's arrival at Finland Station.

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/20/i_knew_christopher_hitchens_better_than_you/singleton/#comments

Not as funny as I wanted it to be.

still pretty funny

The first time I saw him, he had a bird on each arm and a woman by his side.

Sometimes the cheap laughs are the best.

http://overratedwhitedudes.tumblr.com/post/14311784932/more-lucid-than-the-average-mean-spirited-drunk

overrated tumblr whites

Ron Jeremy? come on, bro.

okay "the MGD 64 of human beings" for McConaughey is pretty funny

yeah honestly I only disagreed with like 3 of them but Ron Jeremy is deserving of his status.

Oh man, I haven't thought about Neil Pollack in years!

neither have i!

I don't have a clue who he is!

he was a thing for a while!

The anthology of american literature is basically pieces like this about/in the style of most major macho literary figures of the 20th century. Since then, I guess he's written a bunch of other funny stuff too.

Yeah, Anthology is hilarious