Hitchens
My Junior year college rhetoric project was a paper dissecting Christopher Hitchens' essays in The Nation. I was a regular Hitchens reader and disagreed with almost everything he wrote; but he wrote so well I couldn't resist reading him. He was clever and devastating in his criticism of all that I believed. My goal was simple: If I could demonstrate his logical flaws, his errors in reasoning, his poor sourcing. . .I could defend my world view against all attackers.
I remember sitting in my father's office late into the night over Thanksgiving break working on Dad's word processor, racking my brain to find arguments against Hitchens latest editorial on Nicaragua.
We have lost a formidable but honorable foe.
I remember sitting in my father's office late into the night over Thanksgiving break working on Dad's word processor, racking my brain to find arguments against Hitchens latest editorial on Nicaragua.
We have lost a formidable but honorable foe.
He wasn't always a foe. See here http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2004/02/hitchens200402
and here
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/11/hitchens200711
and here
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/hitchens-war_613488.html
Anyone who called Michael Bloomberg "a mayor who is that most pathetic and annoying figure —- the micro-megalomaniac" can't have been all bad.
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He was a foe I could admire.
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There is a wonderful compliation of videos with Hitchens at:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/christopherhitchens
Interesting how we both could disagree with him from separate sides of the aisle - yet end up admiring his intellect and his writing.
A signigicant loss to the literary community...
- J.
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What JEFF said. Also, thanks for the C-SPAN video.
I was always entertained and informed by Hitchens. I often agreed and not seldom disagreed. Other times, he spurred me on to a third way. I have followed him for a long time. He changed. There was nothing too static about his opinions, as I see them. To me, that's one of the real marks of intelligence and honest wit. I shall miss him.
A couple of times I watched longer sessions years ago that Brian Lamb had with Christopher and his younger brother, Peter, a conservative English journalist. Great TV, for me.
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