Friday, December 16, 2011

DID NOT GO GENTLE: I am consciously grazing against the edge of our No Politics rule, but I would be remiss if I did not note the unfortunate passing last night of Christopher Hitchens, esophageal cancer having claimed him at age 62.  The profoundly prolific polemicist gleefully knocked down orthodoxies, assuredly pissing off each of us on multiple occasions, but, wow, what wit! what writing! His was a brain worth following wherever it chose to go. “I personally want to ‘do’ death in the active and not the passive,” he once wrote, “and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.”

Christopher Buckley has some thoughts, while Vanity Fair has compiled much of his writing for the site and his Daily Show appearances, along with a video compilation of his best ripostes.

Bonus: Mental Floss on ten lesser-known folks who passed away in 2011.

18 comments:

  1. Joseph Finn9:23 AM

    RIP Joe Simon, creator of Captain America.  Here's hoping he and Jack Kirby are punching Hitler in heaven. (And if Hitchens was surprised, well, he can join in.) We've far few too of the Golden Age folks left.

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  2. Anonymous10:45 AM

    You mean "passed away in 2011."

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  3. Fixed. D'oh.<span> </span>

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  4. The Pathetic Earthling10:57 AM

    I chanced upon Christopher Hitchens sitting on a park bench (I only noticed him after I was also sitting on the same park bench) in San Francisco in about 1998.  I was not all that familiar at the time, but I stumbled a few kind words and he was immediately very solicitious about who I was and what I was doing.  An entirely charming man.

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  5. Benner11:15 AM

    Hubert Sumlin, RIP.  Played guitar for Howlin' Wolf, or rather, Howlin' Wolf shouted for Hubert Sumlin. 

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  6. <p><span>The WaPo quoted in their Hitch obit that he wrote that it was important to learn from Orwell </span><span><span>“it matters not what you think, but how you think.” Hitchens was a great thinker, a great writer, and I believe he also made others think through his words. R.I.P.</span></span>
    </p>

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  7. LDP in Cincinnati1:04 PM

    Hitchens' farewell to "venemous hick" Jesse Helms in Slate is one of the best obituaries ever written. 

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  8. Tosy and Cosh1:16 PM

    When I saw that ahe had died, on Twitter late last night, it made me very sad. Public figure deaths almost never make me sad, and I'm not sure why his did. I wish I was more familiar with the political or literary topics he covered, because when he wrote about something that wasn't obscure to me (God Is Not Great is a favorite), he was one of my favorite writers.

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  9. isaac_spaceman1:25 PM

    Off topic, but I don't think I would sit on a park bench in San Francisco unless my pants were made of penicilin. 

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  10. sconstant2:18 PM

    Russell Hoban, fantasy/sci fi writer, illustrator, creator of Emmet Otter (and his Jugband Christmas), but his seminal work, in my view, was Frances:

    Frances did not eat her egg. She sang a little song to it. She sang the song very softly:
    I do not like the way you slide,
    I do not like your soft inside,
    I do not like you lots of ways,
    And could do for many days
    Without eggs.

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  11. Professor Jeff3:00 PM

    Holy cow. I never put together that the author of "Riddley Walker" and the author of "Bedtime for Frances" were one and the same. Mind. Blown.

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  12. isaac_spaceman3:05 PM

    Bread and Jam for Frances is a depressing allegory about the impermanence of youthful love. 

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  13. This took me a bit to find, but it's one of my favorite Hitchens "moments" (it's a very long moment):  A 2002 discussion among Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan, and Brian Lamb on C-SPAN.  This was back when C-SPAN's Washington Journal was (in my opinion) worth watching, before they started pandering too much to the audience and mostly let smart people argue.  Sullivan and Hitchens made for a great discussion. 

    http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/NewsReview925

    More broadly: I greatly admired Hitchens, and feel like he was mistreated a bit over the past decade.  And while it is surely tragic that he has died at 62, I strongly suspect he lived more, and more to his liking, than many who live much longer.

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  14. J.O'Connor4:26 PM

    I've found myself thinking about Christopher Hitchens on and off throughout the day.  I'm not sure why.  I've only read a few of his essays and seen him once or twice on TV.  I admired his wit and his flair, but I never really saw what others did, for which the fault is probably mine.   I think it's a matter of temperment.  Hitchens seemed to relish intellectual combat with no quarter taken.  He was, as someone said about HL Menken, a good hater.  For me, that agression has always gotten in the way of my appreciation.   But having read some of the rememberances posted around the net, he also seems to have had an enjoyment for the things he liked -- among them, drinking, smoking, and dinner parties -- as powerful as his disdain for the things he hated.  He also seems to have had the gift of making and keeping life long friends.  Sixty-two years is a relatively short life nowadays, but he seems to have made each one count.

    I found moving both Christopher Buckley's appreciation in the New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/12/postscript-christopher-hitchens.html and Ta-nehisi Coates in the Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/christopher-hitchens-is-dead/250096/

    I also meant to comment on last week's obituary post (about Harry Morgan, Dobie Gray, and others) to mention two more recent deaths, both of which appeared in the same paper edition of the NYTimes, but were buried in the on-line edition.  One was for a woman I'd never heard of before reading her obituary, the casting director Marion Dougherty, responsible for casting the first starring roles for Al Pacino, Raul Julia, Jon Voight, Chiristopher Walken, Glenn Close, and Diane Lane, among others and for casting Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton in All in the Family.   According to the obit, she's featured in a documentary about casting directors that's scheduled to be released next year.  The other was a small obituary for the second tier soul singer, Howard Tate, who never hit it big, but whose songs were covered by Janis Joplin and (early in his career) by Jimi Hendrix.  Tate's career petered out in the seventies and he became an insurance salesman in suburban Philadelphia before developing an addiction to crack and alcohol that left him homeless on the streets of Camden.   He then found God, became a minister, and put out a Grammy nominated comeback album.  No word on whether his life will become the subject of a documentary, but it should be.   I bought a collection of Tate's 60s material several years ago.  His best song is probably "Ain't Nobody Home," but in tribute to Hitchens and others whose lives remind us to make the most of ours, the one I've been listening too is his version of "Get It While You Can," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9PawalWXUk

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  15. Jordan7:05 PM

    I saw Hitchen's speak four or five years ago and even when people did not agree with him (which most of the audience didn't), they respected what he had to say, which is about as good a complement as you can pay someone.  And man, could he spin a tale.

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  16.  “Hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don’t let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing.”
    <span></span><span></span>- Christopher Hitchens

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