Christopher Hitchens, 13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011

Not all my views have been vindicated, even to me. I see that I write that “I personally want to ‘do’ death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.” I cannot quite sustain this jauntiness in the light of what I now know. Should the best efforts of my physician friends be unavailing, I possess a fairly clear idea of how Stage Four esophageal cancer harvests its victims. The terminal process doesn’t allow much in the way of “activity,” or even of composed farewells, let alone Stoic or Socratic departures. This is why I am so grateful to have had, already, a lucid interval of some length, and to have filled it with the same elements, of friendship and love, and literature and the dialectic, with which I hope some of this book is also animated. I wasn’t born to do any of the things I set down here, but I was born to die and this coda must be my attempt to assimilate the narrative to its conclusion. (Christopher Hitchens, 20 January 2011)[1]

The above passage is the final paragraph of the preface to the paperback re-edition of Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch-22: A Memoir. The book was written while the author was probably already ill, though he did not know it at the time, and the preface was written after he was diagnosed with cancer. The narrative of his life, unfortunately, concluded on 15 December 2011.[2]

He leaves behind countless reams of writing and hours of speaking. In addition to his family and friends who grieve him, many others who have never met him are thinking of him upon learning of his death. He wrote on a wide variety of topics — everything from how to make tea[3] to the importance of the King James Bible to our language and culture,[4] from book reviews (such as his review of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy)[5] to a confirmation that waterboarding is torture (after having undergone the procedure himself),[6] from the untruth and undesirability of religion[7] to defenses of war (especially the war in Iraq).[8] He wrote with great eloquence, drawing on history and literature, and managed to both inspire and infuriate readers.

After his diagnosis,[9] he wrote various essays about his experience with cancer: Tropic of
Cancer,[10] Unanswerable Prayers,[11] Tumortown,[12] Miss Manners and the Big C,[13] Unspoken Truths,[14] and his latest, Trial of the Will.[15] He addressed the subject of his illness (and impending death) with his usual wit. Although Hitchens acknowledged that his illness might not allow him to “do death in the active and not the passive,” these essays displayed bravery and thoughtfulness in the face of death.

I never met the man, though like many, I enjoy his writing and speaking immensely. The first of his works I read was God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything as part of an effort to read more about religion and atheism. At the time, I was already questioning the existence of God and beginning to consider myself an atheist, but his book (among others) inspired me to think more about the questionable morality of religion and especially about the questionable desirability of the afterlife, even Heaven. His now famous comparison of Heaven to a celestial dictatorship, though it may seem harsh to some, as well as his recent essays about cancer have helped me in the ongoing process of dealing with my fear of death.

I’ve read only a small fraction of his lengthy bibliography, though I plan to read more in the future. There are times when I cheer on the inside while reading what he wrote and hearing what he said, other times when I cringe inwardly, and still other times when I become absolutely infuriated. He could be moral and upstanding one moment and absolutely loathsome the next, inspiring both gratitude and anger. His death does not change this about his writing. (The admonishment to speak no ill of the dead is overrated and would be ironic if applied in this case anyway.) No matter whether I agree with him or not on the topic being discussed in a particular piece, his writing challenges me to read more about the topics he’s written on — to learn more and figure out if I think he’s right or not, because one should always seek to keep learning and make up one’s own mind. Disagreeing and debating with him is a challenge, as acknowledged by The Onion’s obituary,[16] but one should want an opponent like him to truly test one’s own views.

Yesterday morning, I had a momentary thought of toasting his memory with a drink (preferably Johnnie Walker Black), despite the fact that I don’t drink alcohol, but I won’t go through with it. Remember always to keep reading, keep thinking, and keep fighting on.

There is probably not God and probably no afterlife, but on the off chance that these do exist, may Hitchens speak on the side of the prosecution against the Almighty.

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References

[1] Hitchens, Christopher. Preface. Hitch-22: A Memoir. New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2011. (Book originally published in 2010)

[2] Weiner, Juli. In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011. Posted on 15 December 2011 at Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 16 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011.

[3] Hitchens, Christopher. How To Make a Decent Cup of Tea. Posted on 3 January 2011 at Slate. Retrieved on 16 December 2011 from http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/01/how_to_make_a_decent_cup_of_tea.html.

[4] Hitchens, Christopher. When the King Saved God. Posted in the May 2011 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 16 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/hitchens-201105.

[5] Hitchens, Christopher. Oxford’s Rebel Angel. Posted in the October 2002 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved 17 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2002/10/hitchens200210.

[6] Hitchens, Christopher. Believe Me, It’s Torture. Posted in the August 2008 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808.

[7] Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2007.

[8] Hitchens, Christopher. In Defense of Endless War. Posted on 19 September 2011 in Slate. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/09/in_defense_of_endless_war.html.

[9] Hitchens, Christopher. An Update from Christopher Hitchens. Posted 30 June 2010 at Vanity Fair. Retrieved 16 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/an-update-from-christopher-hitchens.

[10] Hitchens, Christopher. Tropic of Cancer. Posted in the September 2010 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-201009.

[11] Hitchens, Christopher. Unanswerable Prayers. Posted in the October 2010 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/10/hitchens-201010.

[12] Hitchens, Christopher. Tumortown. Posted in the November 2010 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/11/hitchens-201011.

[13] Hitchens, Christopher. Miss Manners and the Big C. Posted in the December 2010 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/12/hitchens-201012.

[14] Hitchens, Christopher. Unspoken Truths. Posted in the June 2011 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/06/christopher-hitchens-unspoken-truths-201106.

[15] Hitchens, Christopher. Trial of the Will. Posted in the January 2012 issue of Vanity Fair. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201.

[16] Fumbling, Inarticulate Obituary Writer Somehow Losing Debate To Christopher Hitchens. Posted on 16 December 2011 at The Onion. Retrieved on 17 December 2011 from http://www.theonion.com/articles/fumbling-inarticulate-obituary-writer-somehow-losi,26890/.

Don’t Panic: a blog entry in honor of Towel Day

Today, May 25^th, is Towel Day[i] in honor of the late great Douglas Adams.  (The holiday was first celebrated in 2001, soon after Mr. Adams’ death.[ii])  He’s perhaps best known as the author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: a trilogy in five parts.

So, why is this event called Towel Day?  It is because of a famous passage from the first book of the series.

The following is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (described as “the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor”[iii]) has to say about towels:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.  Partly it has great practical value.  You can wrap it around yourself for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sand beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value.  For some reason, if a strag (strag:  non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc.  Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost.”  What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect?  There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass:  know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy:  really together guy; frood:  really amazingly together guy.)[iv]

It may seem a far stretch and an odd idea to refer to a towel as “massively useful,” but the writing and imagination of Adams makes us as readers both laugh and also seriously consider the notion of what we would need to bring if we were to decide to hitchhike across the galaxy (in a universe where this was possible).   It raises the question, What would I do if I suddenly found myself in a predicament necessitating an escape from the planet Earth and into the abyss of space? It is perhaps a hypothetical situation, but the idea of this adventure and the possibility of encountering the hilarious events as described by Adams is enough to both amuse and inspire.

Part of Adams’ legacy is his ability to satirize the genre of science fiction while simultaneously using that very genre to inspire us to think.  The advice he gives applies literally only in his fiction universe, but from it we can find much to consider about our own universe and ourselves.

The Guide itself has become the stuff of legend (or, if not, at least the topic of fan obsession).  The following passage about The Hitchhiker’s Guide itself is particularly interesting.

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.[v]

Although this passage from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is meant, no doubt, to be humorous, it is also strangely appropriate.  For those who do not know, the Encyclopedia Galactica[vi] was first written about by Isaac Asimov (whose list of works[vii] is long enough to make any author despair of never accomplishing anything comparable).  Asimov is one of the greats of science fiction, among the Big Three[viii], and the Encyclopedia Galactica is just one in a list of many repositories of knowledge (or Libraries of Babel[ix]) which are often included in works of fantasy and science fiction.  Although the worlds or universes described in such works are often not merely fictional but also beyond the realm of reasonable possibility, they still have much relevance to our own lives.  These repositories of knowledge, such as the Encyclopedia Galactica or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, show humanity’s need to gather knowledge and gain a better understanding of the world around us.

The Earth spins on its axis and orbits the sun.  The years pass by here on our planet as the universe looks on uncaringly.  Meanwhile, we look eagerly for the meaning of life, the universe and everything.  We write and read stories in order to better understand our own stories here on Earth.

Adams is clearly a part of this grand tradition, and it is for this reason that it is appropriate that he was inspired by Asimov and that a day is celebrated in his honor.  His stories are one small step toward humanity’s goal of better understanding our lives here on earth and what we should do on this little planet in the wide abyss.

If nothing else, his writing taught us one important lesson to keep in mind while navigating the strangeness that is human existence:  Don’t panic.

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References and Endnotes

[i] URL of the link:  http://www.towelday.org

[ii] http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/05/0525first-towel-day/

[iii] Adams, Douglas.  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Del Rey (an imprint of Random House Publishing group):  2005, p 2

[iv] Adams, Douglas.  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Del Rey (an imprint of Random House Publishing group):  2005, pp 26-8.

[v] The italics were in the original.

Adams, Douglas.  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Del Rey (an imprint of Random House Publishing group):  2005, p 3.

[vi] URL of the link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Galactica

[vii] URL of the link:  http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_FAQ.html#starters1

[viii] The Big Three of science fiction were Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein.

[ix] I very much recommend reading the entry on The Library of Babel and visiting other pages on the TV Tropes website.  It is hilarious, and if you read a page about a genre you like, you’ll probably recognize some of the tropes and have a good laugh.

URL of the link:  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLibraryOfBabel