Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

It was only yesterday that I remembered I should read Christopher Hitchens’ latest article for Vanity Fair: a touching, mordantly funny, survey of life, Nietzsche, Sidney Hook and death. Though one knew the occasion would not be long delayed, it remains wincingly sad that it must be one of the last things the great fighter ever wrote before his death. As he put it:

Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings.