Christopher
Hitchens
Christopher
Hitchens’s latest book, Mortality, is
a collection of essays that were originally published in Vanity Fair during the last year of his life. These essays document
his life with cancer and the process that he went through in order to prepare
for his death. In this posthumous work, Christopher Hitchens’s voice is
unsettlingly vivid and strong. This is
to be expected, of course, and it is just as it should be when reading Hitchens.
However, the strength of the writing can become too much to bear at times.
Reading
this book is an exercise in reconciling two pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit
together. The work’s feisty sense of liveliness
overpowers the notion that he has passed away. You might even find yourself
rooting for Hitchens’s recovery when he writes about how his chemotherapy successfully
caused his tumors to recede. With a voice so full of conviction and passion, it
becomes all too easy to forget that this is a posthumous release. Not even the
grave can tame the voice of Christopher Hitchens.
Writing
of how he envisioned his final moment, Hitchens said he wished to actively
experience his own death. He didn’t want to quietly pass into non-existence. He
wanted death to be something that he could be present for and claim as his own.
We can only hope that Christopher Hitchens achieved such a state, and that he
was ultimately fulfilled by it. In Mortality,
Hitchens looks the grim reaper in the eye and finds that the values of love,
struggle, and passion are reflected right back.
- Graham
Nicholas
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