SALON

Friday, Aug 6, 2010 3:01 PM UTC

Sympathy for Christopher Hitchens

The famously hard-living writer contemplates dying -- and becomes human again

By

Topics: Cancer,

Sympathy for Christopher HitchensDetail from cover of "Hitch 22"

When my friend Michele was a lifeguard, people used to ask her, “Are there sharks in the ocean today?” And she would reply, “There are sharks in the ocean every day.” Christopher Hitchens is swimming with the sharks. The possibility of death — the reality of mortality — became less abstract for him in June, when, on the brink of publishing his new memoir, “Hitch-22,” he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

In a brilliant, beautiful and, fittingly, darkly hilarious essay for the new Vanity Fair,  the most seemingly indestructible man in journalism describes his “very short-lived campaign of denial” and “the new land” of sickness with his trademark gimlet eye, chronicling “the way that my razorblade would suddenly go slipping pointlessly down my face, meeting no stubble.”

Is this meditation on life’s finite nature the beginning of a softer side of a legendarily boozy, cantankerous scribe? Thankfully, no. The 61-year-old Brit who has, in just the past few years, declared women unamusing, wholeheartedly supported the war in Iraq, gone gunning for Mother Teresa and bragged that he drinks enough every day “to kill or stun the average mule” continues to declare “war on Thanatos” and turn a phrase so deftly it’ll make your eyes water. He remains a big, fat jerk and a goddamn genius, acknowledging with brutal clarity, “In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist” and complaining that this whole “boring” cancer thing might spoil his plans “to read — if not indeed write — the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger.”

While the contemporary field of journalism is riddled with pigeon-chested tweet monkeys, Hitchens remains the last of the larger-than-life scribes. You won’t find too many magazine writers — let alone men his age — whose exploits inspire Onion parodies. And so we wouldn’t want the iron man to go all Ram Dass now. Yet the eloquent feistiness of Hitchens’ story, it turns out, makes a stunning counterpart to author and doctor Atul Gawande’s hauntingly stark New Yorker piece this week on “Letting Go.”  “Ultimately, death comes,” Gawande explains, “and no one is good at knowing when to stop.” He writes of a difficult conversation with the sister of a terminal patient, who asks him plaintively, “Is she dying?” Are there sharks in the ocean today?

When, earlier this summer, an elderly family member completed months of chemo, he was none too pleased to get word much too soon after that the cancer had moved to another part of his body. He’s started chemo again, and is making plans for his next big adventure abroad. But whether it happens five years from now or three weeks from Tuesday, he is going to die. So am I and so are you and so will Christopher Hitchens. It’s just a question of how gracefully we fill the time until it happens, and how authentic to the life we have led we can hope its final act will be.

Despite being an everyday occurrence and a reliable favorite on the evening news, death isn’t a subject we gaze too fondly upon when it comes to our loved ones or ourselves. The instinct to rage against the dying light is too strong. Yet we’re built to expire; we’ve got to clear out to make room for the new people. We can, especially if we’re fortunate enough to be someone like Hitchens, a guy who really knows how to squeeze a whole lot of living into his stint on earth, aspire to stay as long and as joyfully at the party as possible. Eventually, though, we don’t have to go home, but we can’t stay here. But don’t let me explain it. I’ll leave it to an earlier essay by Hitchens, who as usual says everything smarter and better than just about anyone. “We are born into a losing struggle,” he says, “and nobody can hope to come out a winner.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 72 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
From global warming to fluoride: Why do people deny science? An interesting question.
43 points44 points | 60 comments
vote
Developers evict historic women’s shelter to build luxury hotel - The 104-yr-old Anna Louise Inn has ended its 2-year legal battle with a Fortune 500 company & will now move. Many view the victory of the insurance company over a community touchstone as a major blow to the city.
34 points35 points | 2 comments
vote
Anonymous rallies behind Kaitlyn Hunt
29 points30 points | 34 comments
vote
The GOP Is the 'Party of Crybabies' for Demanding No One Criticize Their Policies or Donors
20 points21 points | comment
vote
Illinois' fracking and coal rush is a national crisis: Illinois and its Mississippi River banks are becoming another ground zero in the war over climate change.
16 points17 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations