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Christopher Hitchens

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Julia

In Memoriam
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10 May 2005
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Many will be aware that this public intellectual (and very public atheist) has oesophageal cancer and is facing an early death.

Tony Jones (for once) did a great interview with Christopher Hitchens on Lateline last night, where Hitchens - as only he could - outlines his current situation in response to empathic questions from Jones. It was a rare example of genuine rapport between interviewer and interviewee.

The second part of the interview airs this evening on Lateline at 10.30 pm.
It's not often we get stuff of this quality.
 

I haven't seen this interview yet as we are 3 hours behind in Perth, but there are some really good interviews with Hitchens since he was diagnosed with cancer on YouTube and some essays by him on Vanity Fair. He has a great intellect and will be sorely missed.

This is a recent essay.....

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/12/hitchens-201012
 
Very moving couple of interviews,
thankfully Jones exercised some restraint, no '..answer the question..' style badgering this time.

I'm not 100% in his policy camp, but Hitchens has been the best ever performer on the Q&A show that's for sure. Enormous intellectual rigour to everything he approaches.
 
Thanks Julia,

I did not see the programme but will try and see the second part tonight. I am a great admirer of Christopher Hitchens (though his arrogance sometime grates) - his style of writing, his razor sharp intellect, his thought processes, his commitment to his beliefs - have read and enjoyed "God is Not Great" and seen several interviews with him on Utube.

It was while I was reading his book that I heard about his cancer and it came as a dreadful shock. He will indeed be missed.

Ruby
 
Ruby,
might be wrong but I think parts 1 & 2 were Wed and Thurs nights, i.e. already screened.
 
Logique said:
Ruby,
might be wrong but I think parts 1 & 2 were Wed and Thurs nights, i.e. already screened.
Click to expand...

Oh yes, silly me! Senior moment!! I seem to have lost a day. Thanks for setting me right.

Ruby
 
For anybody who has the inclination, and everybody should, Hitchens's 'The trial of Henry Kissinger'. That's an obituary I'm hoping he lives to write; for the millions of lives not lived, more than a few Australian. A nod was given in the preface to Joseph Heller, who referring to Kissinger 'saw him early and saw him whole'... I've not yet read 'Hitch 22'
 

"If Kissinger values his reputation, he really must sue"... he never did.

The world will be much poorer for losing this great man.
 
Here is a link to a speech that Hitchens gave to the "The Festival of Dangerous Ideas" last year. For me it is replete with wonderfully articulated ideas but the one that has stuck in my mind is the imagery he evokes when he quotes an analogy by cosmologist Sir Martin Rees. The speech is well worth the effort to hear IMO

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/foraradio/stories/2009/2713250.htm
 
Xmas Day. Not a lot to do so I thought I would re-visit the Christopher Hitchens speech referred to above. I found the quote referred to by Sir Martin Rees so thought provoking that I have written it below.

Hitchens leads in to the quote by making the point that the possibility of us being here forever, or even as long as our planet, is nil. But suppose that we are, he quotes Professor Rees:

“Most educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection. Many seem to think that humans still are somehow the culmination of this. Our sun is less than halfway through its life cycle. It will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then do exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoeba”.
 
Is he just another smoker taken by Cancer, or is he a an Aristotle or Shakespeare.

A Winfield Blue methinks.

gg
 
Garpal Gumnut said:
Is he just another smoker taken by Cancer, or is he a an Aristotle or Shakespeare.

A Winfield Blue methinks.

gg
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Taken by smoking and whisky. But he asserts if he had the choice to live over, he would do just the same.

An enormous intellect that will be sadly missed when he passes away.
 
I think a question that is exercising the minds of many is whether such a high profile and public atheist will maintain this position in the period leading up to his imminent and predictable death. I am picturing the "no atheists in foxholes" mentalities metaphorically crowding around his deathbed hoping for a final concession to the possibility a god may exist.

And Bellenuit, he will be sorley missed. A great intellect combined with such an ability to express himself is a rare talent
 
He does sound (and read) like a very compelling thinker. Great to see such intellect still around and respected.

One thing that fascinated me was his support for the Iraq war. I didn't focus closely on his reasoning but I have always believed this was very difficult war to support if one looked critically at the proferred evidence. (almost all fabricated or a lie as it turned out)

Let's pray for a successful miracle and see if we can convince him of the possibility of divine intervention !
 
I've been reading some of his recent commentaries, on Slate, via drudgereport, and I must admit he has some intellectual rigour.

It is though, just the common man's and woman's thoughts, such as I or you, put in better prose with a dollop of irony.

Poor bastard, I'd hate to be dying of cancer of the essofagus or throat.

He is a valuable commentator in a babel of commentary.

gg
 
basilio said:
Let's pray for a successful miracle and see if we can convince him of the possibility of divine intervention !
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I wouldn't be holding my breath, basilio. I reckon if there was a person who will live up to his convictions to the end, it's this man.
The world will be much the poorer when he leaves.
 
bellenuit said:
Taken by smoking and whisky. But he asserts if he had the choice to live over, he would do just the same.

An enormous intellect that will be sadly missed when he passes away.
Click to expand...
I don't know who this guy is, or even if he is dead yet, but.....

he'll be even more sadly missed by his family and friends who have watched him die a slow and painful and selfish death by smoking and whisky. Those people who commit themselves to such a death and explain it away as 'my choice' are simply addicts who can not, or are not willing to, do what is better for their most important connections. No sympathy whatsoever except for the people he has made suffer after he has turned to dust.

 
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