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Aug 23

Christopher Hitchens and the Last of His “Fragmentary Jottings”

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Culture

by Eric Pfeiffer

Slate has published a few “fragmentary jottings” that the late Christopher Hitchens wrote in the last chapter of his posthumous book, Mortality. Rarely has anyone spoken more eloquently and truthful about their own demise. Reading his thoughts reminds us of how boring the world seems without one of its greatest thinkers and writers.

“This alien can’t want anything; if it kills me it dies but it seems very single-minded and set in its purpose. No real irony here, though. Must take absolute care not to be self-pitying or self-centered.”

“The nice men with the oxygen and the gurney and the ambulance very gently deporting me across the frontier of the well, in another country.”

“Now so many tributes that it also seems that rumors of my LIFE have also been greatly exaggerated. Lived to see most of what’s going to be written about me: this too is exhilarating but hits diminishing returns when I realize how soon it, too, will be ‘background.’”

And finally this: “Misery of seeing oneself on old videos or YouTubes…”

Hitchens: The Benefit of Reading Your Own Obituary from on FORA.tv

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    • concerned cynic

      Hitch had a following among those with limited formal education, who knew him only via YouTube bits and the like. He was admired for his stances against organised religion, including Judaism (he could get away with that because he was Jewish by his mother), Islamic puritanism, and the American obsession with routine circumcision.

    • http://veesblog.wordpress.com/ VeroniqueD

      Hitch was one of the most entertaining, well educated and contrarian people we have known for a long time. His appreciators are not necessarily of ‘limited formal education’ as our resident concerned cynic says.

      Of the people who listened to the Hitch, I would say, with no evidence whatsoever, that at least 70% are educated to tertiary level and the rest are religites. You can always tell by the language, the grammar applied or not as the case may be and those who make comments that are understandable.

      I appreciated this great contrarian and join a large group of people likewise inclined.

    • Lincoln Jansz

      The Hitch was certainly entertaining and laudably acute when he spoke and debated on the theme which was his self-assessed mission, viz. the battle against theocratic bullying and meddling. However he was spectacularly wrong-headed about a whole host of other things, and often – at such times – was in danger of appearing to be nothing more nor less than a rent-a-mouth with an inflated rhetoric and a ridiculously bloated sense of self-importance. Examples include his nonsensical sallies against Winston Churchill (a man whose Olympian reputation he tried repeatedly and vainly to diminish, and in so doing showed himself in the most unattractive light), his absurd and preposterous defence of David Irving, and the laughable and fatuously encomiastic drivel he spouted repeatedly about Leon Trotsky – the butcher who preceded Stalin. At such times Hitchens’ critical faculties obviously deserted him, and he descended to the type of stuff that could appeal only to those who take their education almost wholly from popular media such as Youtube.

      All men and women, no matter how high they may have soared during their own lifetime, sooner or later get brought down to the level proper to them. With Hitchens I suspect this will happen sooner rather than later.