Book 2 - Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

The cover is simple: a posed photo of Christopher Hitchens, near the end of his life, seated, gazing at you with heavy eyes. The tonal range is limited, dark, mostly brown, and the face emerges from the background rather than being highlighted against it. It is like an old Dutch painting (it actuall looks darker on the book than it does in this photo). You can see the diminished strength of the body but the eye is still searching. It is compelling and you want to look at it to read into the face what you know of the man and his situation. From what you read in the book you know this is the look of someone facing his fate full on.

This is a short book, his last work and not quite finished, as it ends with scraps and notes that would have been filled out if there had been time. Nevertheless it is affecting; not in a sentimental way - he would have hated that - but because he is unbowed, still prepared to carry on his battles. To his core he was a polemicist and, whether you agreed with him or not, you always want a warrior to be carried out on his shield. Right to the end he wrote fluently and well (not necessarily  the same thing) but you would expect that as it was how he defined himself and his wish was to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense.

The ironies of his illness was where it struck - a cancer of the throat. Speaking and good conversation were amongst the things he loved the most (his writing style was only found when he was told something he had written was a bit dull and he should write more like the way he talked. He tells writing classes that anybody who could talk could also write but adds the kicker: how many people do you know who can really talk? Well Christopher `Hitchens could certainly talk and was a formidable debater. As he says:

“The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favourite authors and see if that is not one of the things that engages you, often at first without you noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realising that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful. This is how philosophy evolved in the symposium, before philosophy was written down. And poetry began with the voice as its only player and the ear its only recorder … All the best recollections of wisdom and friendship, from Plato’s “Apology” for Socrates to Boswell’s Life of Johnson, resound with the spoken, unscripted moments of interplay and reason and speculation. It’s in engagement like this, in competition and comparison with others, that one can hope to hit upon the elusive, magical mot juste. For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.”

Let that be an epitaph for someone whose life was of the mind but also social.

Date of publication
2012

Randomness factor:

I selected this from some just returned books in the library