Hitchens, Amis, Rose
Christopher Hitchens’ sad rhyming with the malady that did in his father — esophageal cancer — was brought to the fore movingly, and in that strange manner of contemporary life, publicly, as Hitchens almost appeared to be making the rounds in this dire moment. He was on video at CNN, at the Atlantic, and discussed at length on Charlie Rose by Martin Amis.
Amis has a natural gravitas and, as usual, was beautiful in his use of language. Hitchens is lucky to have Amis as a friend. We have both our experience, which we define as our life, but also the spirit existence that our presence inhabits in the memory and thoughts of others. Amis’ mental universe provides generous accommodation to Hitchens. Amis made clear how dear a loss Hitchens’ passing would be for him.
Their friendship goes back. Hitchens regards Amis as the greater of the two — Hitchens is the self-described smaller fish. Hitchens is right. Amis is a novelist and artist and Hitchens is a commentator. A wonderful commentator, and fine writer, but still the field delimits the achievement. Hitchens is only 61, far too young for a prognosis he indicates is little likely to be longer than five years. Of course, it is always too young, always too soon.
Hitchens himself, it is gratifying to say, is still at his best in a short, beautifully written recent essay @Vanity Fair about his experience.
On the land of the sick,
Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work. As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited.
Hitchens had been a long time smoker and as many who work on their own, at home, driven by a heartless boss,
I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.
On receiving chemo,
You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.
Hitchens can be alternately abrasive and oily, true to his upbringing, with a mother who wished he be part of the upper class “if there is to be one,” and a father who disliked the upper and working classes equally. Hitchens brings a respectability and artfulness to dispute and made the debate more meaningful. By nature he is not a rebel, as Amis would have it, but a provocateur. But Amis is correct in saying Hitchens is a brave man.
I write this as if he were gone, but he is here, and if not “fighting a battle,” a phrase he points out is unique to cancer, he is hardy in spirit both in the videos and his writing — may Hitchens have many years before him to contribute and thrive.
