Christopher Hitchens --1949-2011

I don't think I fully know how to process this. I fully understand that as many of my fellow liberals found Hitchens completely irritating, galling, provocative, as found him admirable, inspiring, as a person who told the truth as he saw it. I'm a liberal and an atheist in part because of the conversation I have always had in my head with him--Christopher Hitchens:  Iconoclast, contrarian, intellectual, atheist, lover of literature, analyzer of culture.

I did not know him personally, but through his writing, I feel like I've known him for years. Of course I've known him--his voice was one of authenticity.He was who he was when he spoke out about whatever moved him to speak. He was wrong sometimes. In terms of his support of the Iraq War he was damn wrong. But in many ways, to me, he was right. His skepticism about saints and the exposure of them, his knocking down of shibboleths--that was right.


I know so many people disliked him for his certitude over various positions, but even where I disagreed with him, I admired his skill in argumentation--I read him because even if I did not agree with him, I always thought he was one with whom one might reasonably speak.

His passing greatly saddens me.

(Many edits--posting upon hearing of a person's death in the late night and after a glass of scotch is by no means the ideal conditions for me to post.)