Hitch Talk

Christopher Hitchens had been here in Houston last weekend. Dang it, how did I miss it! It would have been terrific to have listened to him, if only to see the razor-sharp intellect and not because of his increasingly emaciated appearance (he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer last year). Before I "rediscovered" him last year, I only knew that he once wrote a scathing review of Somerset Maugham's works. To see one's favorite writer torn to pieces was not pleasant. George Orwell said Maugham was the writer who influenced him the most. This I thought, rather pathetically, strengthened my case as Orwell became, through his essays mainly, my go-to guy. I was always (and still am) curious to know what he thought of Mark Twain or tea or the lure of murder mysteries (I am still trying to find out what he thought of cinema and movies). Hitchens is my present day go-to guy. In a strange coincidence he has authored a mini-biography on Orwell and is an ardent admirer of the man who gave us 1984. I don't always agree with what he says (like calling Gandhi a hypocrite and dismissing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert), but his arguments, like in the Maugham piece, have always been well-reasoned. It'd be a pity to see him go. But then in a debate/discussion last year just after his diagnosis, a fellow panelist asked at the end how he was doing. "I am dying," he replied matter-of-factly, and then "But so are you."