Memorial gatherings and the body of Christ(opher)

Mr Steve Wasserman, Christopher Hitchens' literary agent, kindly replied to my query about a possible memorial. Posted with permission.

"In accordance with Christopher’s wishes, his body was donated to medical research. Memorial gatherings will occur next year."

Forced Merriment: The True Spirit of Christmas

By Christopher Hitchens

Ever since Tom Lehrer recorded his imperishable anti-Christmas ditty all those years ago, the small but growing minority who view the end of December with existential dread has had a seasonal "carol" all of its own:


Christmas time is here by golly: disapproval would be folly. Deck the halls with hunks of holly, fill the cup and don't say when. Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens, mix the punch, drag out the Dickens. Even though the prospect sickens—brother, here we go again.

Read more (online.wsj.com)

Remembering Christopher Hitchens

By Lawrence Krauss

The world, which Christopher Hitchens would have happily admitted was already pretty dark, got a little darker yesterday. With his death, it also got a lot emptier. Christopher was a beacon of knowledge and light in a world that constantly threatens to extinguish both. He had the courage to accept the world for just what it is, and not what we would like it to be. That is the highest praise I believe one can give to any intellect. He understood that the Universe doesn’t care about our existence, or our welfare, and epitomized the realization that our lives have meaning only to the extent we give them meaning.
Read more (richarddawkins.net)

For our Finnish visitors
Matti Apusen kolumni Yhden miehen totuuskomissio (hs.fi) sekä
Kultakuume, Yle Radio 1, 'Hitchens ja kriittisyyden abc' http://areena.yle.fi/audio/1324564681224

Lawrence Krauss on CNN

Tardy thanks for Christopher Hitchens

By Windsor Mann, editor of “The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism”

It’s hard to say anything about Christopher Hitchens that hasn’t been said already, but it’s even harder to say nothing. Hitchens died last week, a year-and-a-half after he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He and I were not lifelong friends or family members, but I got to know him fairly well. We met nearly seven years ago, and it’s safe to say that, during this time, Hitchens mattered more to me than I did to him.

Read more (washingtontimes.com)

A lesson from Hitch: When rudeness is called for

By Dan Dennett

I’ve just been reviewing my experiences with Christopher Hitchens. He informed me, entertained me, provoked me like nobody else, and I will miss his antic spirit more than I can say. I didn’t know him for long, though I’d been reading his pieces, with mixed reactions, for years. We met in early 2007, and had dinner in Las Vegas, where we were both appearing in an Amazing Randi meeting. He kindled a happy bonfire of discussion that continued intermittently in meetings and emails.

Read more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/a-lesson-from-hitch-when-rudeness-is-called-for/2011/12/18/gIQAV6xz2O_blog.html

Hitch

By Sam Harris

The moment it was announced that Christopher Hitchens was sick with cancer, eulogies began spilling into print and from the podium. No one wanted to deny the possibility that he would recover, of course, but neither could we let the admiration we felt for him go unexpressed. It is a cliché to say that he was one of a kind and none can fill his shoes—but Hitch was and none can. In his case not even the most effusive tributes ring hollow. There was simply no one like him.

More: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/hitch/

UK Channel 4 Tribute

Hitch (1949-2011): Paxman & Schama

'The consummate writer, the brilliant friend'

By Ian McEwan

The place where Christopher Hitchens spent his last few weeks was hardly bookish, but he made it his own. Close to downtown Houston, Texas is the medical centre, a cluster of high-rises like La Défense of Paris, or the City of London, a financial district of a sort, where the common currency is illness. This complex is one of the world's great concentrations of medical expertise and technology.

Read more (guardian.co.uk)

A Man of Style and Wit

By Stephen Fry

Almost as many words have been written about Christopher Hitchens since he died as he would write in a typical working week. He was one of very, very few people on earth whom I would have missed just as much had I never had the pleasure and fortune of knowing him. He lit fires in people’s minds. He was an educator.

Read more (The Daily Beast)

Illness made Christopher Hitchens a symbol of the honesty and dignity of atheism.

By Richard Dawkins

On 7 October, I recorded a long conversation with Christopher Hitchens in Houston, Texas, for the Christmas edition of New Statesman which I was guest-editing. He looked frail, and his voice was no longer the familiar Richard Burton boom; but, though his body had clearly been diminished by the brutality of cancer, his mind and spirit had not.


Read more: http://bit.ly/t0ONCz (belfasttelegraph.co.uk) 


richarddawkins.net:
We will be publishing a selection of Christopher Hitchens obituaries, and posting them all in this one thread. So please keep checking back, as it will be updated from time to time over the next few days.
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644246-christopher-hitchens-obituaries

Hitchens' memoir to be published early next year

Entitled Mortality and based on his columns for Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens' final memoir will be published by Atlantic in the new year.

The forthcoming memoir will be based on the essays, said Atlantic Books, and will be called Mortality. The book had been planned for some time, said a spokesperson.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/16/christopher-hitchens-memoir-published-in-january

In Memoriam, my courageous brother Christopher, 1949-2011

By Peter Hitchens

How odd it is to hear of your own brother’s death on an early morning radio bulletin. How odd it is for a private loss to be a public event. I wouldn’t normally dream of writing about such a thing here, and I doubt if many people would expect me to. It is made even odder by the fact that I am a minor celebrity myself. And that the, ah, complex relationship between me and my brother has been public property.
Read more: http://bit.ly/rz4lJG

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

Vanity Fair


Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. 

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

Preview: Richard Dawkins interviews Christopher Hitchens

"Never be afraid of stridency"
Richard Dawkins: One of my main beefs with religion is the way they label children as a "Catholic child" or a "Muslim child". I've become a bit of a bore about it.
Christopher Hitchens: You must never be afraid of that charge, any more than stridency.

Read more (New Statesman)

New Statesman Christmas Issue

"Richard Dawkins has contributed an essay, written the New Statesman leader column, and travelled to Texas to conduct an exclusive interview with the author and journalist Christopher Hitchens. They discuss religious fundamentalism, US politics, Tony Blair, abortion and Christmas."

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/12/christmas-issue-dawkins

Trial of the Will

Vanity Fair | January 2012
By Christopher Hitchens

When it came to it, and old Kingsley suffered from a demoralizing and disorienting fall, he did take to his bed and eventually turned his face to the wall. It wasn’t all reclining and waiting for hospital room service after that—“Kill me, you fucking fool!” he once alarmingly exclaimed to his son Philip—but essentially he waited passively for the end. It duly came, without much fuss and with no charge.
Read more.

Hitchens orbits Mars, Jupiter, and Earth.

Asteroid Named for Christopher Hitchens
By Juli Weiner | Vanity Fair

An asteroid discovered by Ted Bowell, the former director of the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search, has been named after Vanity Fair contributing editor Christopher Hitchens.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/Asteroid-Named-for-Christopher-Hitchens

The New Gaffe

How the Republican presidential candidates are benefiting from their “gaffes”: They’re not unforgivable, just
imprudent. 

By Christopher Hitchens

“OK, that’s it,” said my guest a few nights ago. “That’s what?” “The Perry campaign: It’s officially over. Look, I’ve found the moment.” Together, in mild stupefaction, we watched as a fellow-creature, accoutred with gorgeous mammalian hair that is fully the equivalent of Mitt Romney’s, and fashioned in the very image of god, failed repeatedly to remember the names of the federal agencies that he had sworn to put out of their misery.

Read more (Slate)

Hitch’s Rolls-Royce mind is still purring

The great polemicist is certain to be remembered, but perhaps not as he would like.
By George Eaton

"Nothing concentrates the mind more than reading about oneself in the past tense", quipped Christopher Hitchens on discovering that his death had been prematurely announced by the National Portrait Galler. A catalogue previewing an exhibition entitled "Martin Amis and Friends" had included a photograph of the polemicist, erroneously captioned, "the late Christopher Hitchens". A month later, he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, lending his words a haunting new resonance.

Read more (New Statesman)

Stephen Fry and Friends on Hitch

Edited (45 minutes) version of the event.

In God They Trust

How the conservative belief in American exceptionalism has become a matter of faith.
By Christopher Hitchens

A small group of colonies manages to break away from a large empire in the closing years of the 18th century. The resulting state would probably be not much more than the Chile of the Northeast—a long littoral ribbon between the mountains and the ocean—if it were not for the imperial rivalries that allow for the rapid growth of the new republic’s influence.

Read More (Slate)

Because Our Fathers Lied

Remembering our veterans and reflecting on the glorious ambiguity of Rudyard Kipling's war poetry.
By Christopher Hitchens

I spent much of this weekend, as I often do this time of year, confining myself to writing and thinking about Rudyard Kipling. This may seem like a pretentious thing to be saying, but if you care about war and peace and justice and life and death, then he is an inescapable subject. The same is true if you care about modern English literature, which for no less inescapable reasons is intimately bound up with the great catastrophe of mortality that overcame British families between August 1914 and November 1918.

Read more (Slate)

Stephen Fry and Friends on Hitch, reviews

An evening for Christopher Hitchens
http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/blog/7380393/an-evening-for-christopher-hitchens.thtml

Stephen Fry and Co. on the Life, Loves and Hates of Christopher Hitchens http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/harry-cockburn/stephen-fry-christopher-hitchens_b_1085689.html 

Christopher Hitchens night: a review
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/11/christopher-hitchens-fry-penn

HitchFry Clips

Clips from the HitchFry event at Royal Festival Hall, Nov 9.

Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Richard Dawkins
http://www.newslook.com/channels/fora-tv1

Cheers!

'Arguably' on PW's Best Books of 2011 list.

Publishers Weekly
"We’ve just released our Best Books of 2011, the 100 adult and 40 children’s titles of 2011 we think everyone should read. Now we want to know what you think.

Vote on which of our top 10 picks is your favorite in the poll below, or write in your favorite 2011 book. We’ll announce the winning book in an upcoming issue of PW." Vote here.

Herman and Hamid

Why is it so hard to speak honestly about allegations of sexual harassment or our corrupt ally in Afghanistan?
By Christopher Hitchens

There were two generally depressing controversies last week, in both of which an exercise of free speech might have done more harm than good. The first concerns our disordered policy in Afghanistan and the second our ongoing and increasingly dishonest discussion of sexual harassment.

Read More (Slate)

Widow of Opportunity

Vanity Fair December 2011
By Christopher Hitchens

If you were to set a competition for the headline most unlikely to appear in an American magazine, the winning entry would surely be jackie tacky or tacky jackie. In her life and even posthumously, it always somehow fell to Jackie Kennedy to raise the tone. An exacting task in her case, and exquisitely so when one appreciates that she had to raise the tone without ever actually admitting that the tone could use a bit of raising.

Read More
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/hitchens-201112

SBS Dateline: Fighting Faith

Watch it on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o97qHxX12Y

"The annual Texas Freethought Convention draws atheists, agnostics and humanists from around the world, and this year Christopher Hitchens is the star attraction.
David Brill meets the renowned writer and thinker, as he battles cancer and uses the last of his strength to denounce religion as immoral."
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601379/n/Fighting-Faith

HitchFry Update!

Intelligence Squared
Three ways to watch it Live - Two ways to watch it later.

More info
http://hitchfry.intelligencesquared.com/

SocraticMama

via Why Evolution is True

Anne Crumpacker’s new website on secular parenting dedicated to Hitchens.

"If you’re a regular here, you’ll surely remember the story of Mason Crumpacker, the eight-year-old Texas girl who asked Christopher Hitchens to advise her on good books to read. It was a touching story, complete with Mason’s heartfelt thank-you letter to Hitch and a narrative of the episode written by Anne Crumpacker, Mason’s mom."

More http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/anne-crumpackers-new-website-on-secular-parenting/

What Will They Think of Next?

Why the crazy Iranian plot to pay Mexicans to kill the Saudi ambassador isn’t so implausible.
By Christopher Hitchens

There may conceivably be a reason to doubt the truth of the Obama administration’s claim that the “Quds Force” of the Islamic Republic of Iran went into the free market for murder in order to suborn the killing of the Saudi ambassador to the United States. But neither the apparently surreal nor the apparently flagrant nature of the thing would constitute such reasons.

Read More http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/why_the_crazy_iranian_plot_to_pay_mexicans_to_kill_the_saudi_amb.html

The New Libya’s First Mistake

Muammar Qaddafi should not have been killed, and his surviving son should be captured.
By Christopher Hitchens

Surrendering to a feeling of deep impotence and slight absurdity, I borrowed an iPad on Thursday afternoon and used it to send my first-ever message by this means. It was addressed to one of those distinguished Frenchmen who have been at the fore in pressing the outside world to remove Muammar Qaddafi from the obscene toadlike posture in which, for more than four decades, he has squatted on the lives of the Libyan people.

Read More http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/muammar_qaddafi_should_not_have_been_killed_but_sent_to_stand_tr.html

Hitchens - Fry LIVE on FORA.tv

WATCH IT LIVE NOVEMBER 9, 2011

EVENT PASS £5.00 GBP (Watch Live! Plus 30 Days Unlimited Viewing)
Don't miss this chance to hear famed public intellectual and truth-teller Christopher Hitchens and his good friend, actor and writer Stephen Fry as they discuss politics, literature and, as Hitchens puts it, "the things that make life worth defending – foes like faith and false consolation."

More Info http://fora.tv/conference/hitchens_fry

The Village Voice Bookshop 2009

The Village Voice is an English-language bookshop in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the heart of literary Paris.
http://www.villagevoicebookshop.com/

Part 1.

 

Hitchens - Fry Update

WATCH THE EVENT LIVE AT CINEMAS AROUND THE UK

Due to the huge demand for this sold out event, there will be live HD screenings in selected cinemas across the UK.

More Info:
http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/fry-hitchens/_nocache

Romney’s Mormon Problem

Mitt Romney and the weird and sinister beliefs of Mormonism.
By Christopher Hitchens

I have no clear idea whether Pastor Robert Jeffress is correct in referring to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more colloquially known as the Mormons, as “a cult.” There do seem to be one or two points of similarity. The Mormons have a supreme leader, known as the prophet or the president, whose word is allegedly supreme.


Read More: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/is_mormonism_a_cult_who_cares_it_s_their_weird_and_sinister_beli.html

Submit your video to the Hitchens project

At reddit a video tribute project has been launched.

Here's the plan:
1. Make a short video. Aim for about 1 min length, give or take. Say anything you like, keeping in mind the nature of the effort. The only thing we ask is:

2. Close your video by raising a glass. It has been pointed out that Johnny Walker Black is Hitchens' drink, but obviously use what you like.

3. Email your video to thehitchappreciation@gmail.com. Use any means you like to send the file, but YouSendIt and WeTransfer are recommended if your regular email doesn't cooperate. YouSendit.com has minimal registration requirements, and WeTransfer has a 2G capacity and no registration. Speaking of file submission specs:

4. Keep the file size as small as is reasonable for now. We don't know how many submissions we will ultimately get. Quicktime & mov have been offered as desirable submission formats, but obviously the editors will do their best to work with whatever you're able to turn in.

Learn more: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/ld7ll/ok_you_can_now_submit_your_video_to_the_hitchens/

Christopher Hitchens in conversation with Stephen Fry

Southbank Centre / Royal Festival Hall
November 9, 2011. 8.30pm

"In this special event for Intelligence Squared, Hitchens will be in conversation via satellite in Washington with his friend Stephen Fry who'll be on stage live at Royal
Festival Hall. This is a chance to hear one of the great public intellectuals of our age discussing politics, literature and, as he puts it, 'the things that make life worth defending - foes like faith and false consolation'.

Tickets and Info:
http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/christopher-hitchens-in-conversation-with-stephen-fry-61898

Mason Crumpacker and the Hitchens reading list

Why Evolution Is True has a great post on Hitchens encounter with 8 year old Mason, who wanted to know what books she should read.

Read it here.

"I’m not going to quit until I absolutely have to"

Photos by Brett Buchanan, photographer and multimedia producer, at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston 2011 .

http://www.brettbuchanan.com/2011/10/hitchens/

Hitchens and Dawkins at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston 2011

Texas Freethought Conv:
The Dawkins/Hitchens speeches and Q&A will be available soon in professional quality video. The actual conference DVD set will be on sale soon, but the Dawkins/Hitchens event will be a FREEBIE on behalf of the RDF, TFC, AAA and the professional film crew who make their living helping our movement.

Believe Me - It's Torture

BBC Radio 4
By Christopher Hitchens. A selection of the polemical journalist's essays. Read by Roger Allam.

Listen here (15 minutes). Available for 7 days.

Honouring Christopher Hitchens

Text of speech presenting the Richard Dawkins Award on behalf of Atheist Alliance of America, Houston, 8th October 2011

"Today I am called upon to honour a man whose name will be joined, in the history of our movement, with those of Bertrand Russell, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Paine, David Hume. He is a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusion far wider than anybody I know. And I live in Oxford, his alma mater and mine."

More: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/643452-honouring-christopher-hitchens

Lord Haw Haw and Anwar al-Awlaki

What the execution of a World War II traitor can teach us about assassinating American-born terrorists.
By Christopher Hitchens

The first thing to say, when reviewing the question of what America should do about those of its citizens who advocate the murder of random numbers of its civilians, is that it is flat-out astonishing to see the debate being conducted at all. Faced with jeering, sniggering, vicious saboteurs who hide from the daylight and pop up on blog and cheap CDs, calmly awarding religious permission for the capricious taking of life, what do we imagine Vladimir Putin would do?

More: http://slate.me/nz2OgY

A Voice, Still Vibrant, Reflects on Mortality

Hitchens, journalist Matthew Chapman, Dawkins, Carol Blue

By Charles McGrath / The New York Times

HOUSTON — Christopher Hitchens, probably the country’s most famous unbeliever, received the Freethinker of the Year Award at the annual convention of the Atheist Alliance of America here on Saturday. Mr. Hitchens was flattered by the honor, he said a few days beforehand, but also a little abashed.

Read More
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/books/christopher-hitchens-on-writing-mortality-and-cancer.html?ref=books

Hitchens makes first public appearance in months

By Geoff Berg

"Hitchens’ speech did not disappoint. He talked about his illness and noted that over the last year, he’d been coming to Houston regularly for treatment, presumably at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He was emphatic that though his “time” is rapidly approaching, he wouldn’t stop doing his best to shed light on the fraudulent claims made by religion, a line that brought the crowd to its feet."

Read More:
http://blog.chron.com/partisangridlock/2011/10/christopher-hitchens-makes-first-public-appearance-in-months/

Hitch isn’t done yet

PZ Myers reports from the Texas Freethought Convention

"Christopher Hitchens was granted the Richard Dawkins Award tonight at the Texas Freethought Convention. He was looking frail and thin, his voice was husky, but he was amazingly strong."
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/09/hitch-isnt-done-yet/

Dawkins and Hitchens on stage: http://yfrog.com/hw2knvwj

Book of the Week - Arguably

BBC Radio 4
A selection of the polemical journalist's essays. Read by Roger Allam.

First up 'Believe Me - It's Torture.' Hitchens confronts the issue of whether waterboarding is torture, by being waterboarded himself.


Starting Monday October 10, 2011.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sz17

Citizen Enemies

Those who protest the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki have to say what they would have done instead.
By Christopher Hitchens

Probably because it mainly provides the kind of short-term cinematic satisfaction that characterizes the Hellfire terminus, the flashy ending of al-Qaida’s main media star has only led to the reopening of some pressing questions about the nature of the jihadi menace.

More: http://slate.me/p67NQA

Pakistan Is the Enemy

We know that Pakistan's intelligence service is aiding terrorists. What are we going to do about it?
By Christopher Hitchens

In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Lt. Milo Minderbinder transforms the mess accounts of the American airbase under his care into a "syndicate" under whose terms all servicemen are potential stakeholders. But this prince of entrepreneurs and middlemen eventually becomes overexposed, especially after some incautious forays into Egyptian cotton futures, and is forced to resort to some amoral subterfuges.

More: http://www.slate.com/id/2304641/

Hitchens in Houston, October 8, 2011

Atheist Alliance of America

"Christopher Hitchens has confirmed his intent go attend the AAA Convention in Houston on October 8th, to receive the Richard Dawkins Award for Freethinker of the Year. He will also be available to sign copies of his new book "Arguably", which will be for sale at the Convention."

http://atheistallianceamerica.org/

Inside the Orgone Box

The New York Times - Sunday Book Review

Christopher Hitchens reviews

ADVENTURES IN THE ORGASMATRON
How the Sexual Revolution Came to America
By Christopher Turner

In the classic confessional memoir “The God That Failed,” Arthur Koestler describes some of the characters who made up the constituency of his Communist Party group in Berlin in the early 1930s: “Among other members of our cell, I remember Dr. Wilhelm Reich. He . . . had just published a book called ‘The Function of the Orgasm,’ in which he had expounded the theory that the sexual frustration of the proletariat caused a thwarting of its political consciousness; only through a full, uninhibited release of the sexual urge could the working class realize its revolutionary potentialities and historic mission; the whole thing was less cockeyed than it sounds.”

Read More

Knock-down brilliance

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens - The Independent
Review by Fred Inglis

Arguably? Arguably? Christopher Hitchens uses the phrase often enough of course, but strictly as Humpty Dumpty does, when Alice tells him she doesn't know what he means. Humpty Dumpty smiles contemptuously. "Of course you don't – till I tell you. I meant, 'there's a nice knockdown argument for you'." "Till I tell you": that's the point.

Read more
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/arguably-by-christopher-hitchens-2359192.html

Staking a Life

By Christopher Hitchens

Arthur Koestler opened his polemic against capital punishment in Britain by saying that the island nation was that quaint and antique place where citizens drove on the left hand side of the road, drank warm beer, made a special eccentricity of the love of animals, and had felons “hanged by the neck until they are dead.” Those closing words—from the formula by which a capital sentence was ritually announced by a heavily bewigged judge—conveyed in their satisfyingly terminal tones much of the flavor and relish of the business of judicially inflicted death.

More: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/christopher-hitchens-staking-a-life.php?page=all

Christopher Hitchens debates Barry Brummett, Part 1

Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dr. Barry Brummett (Chair, Department of Communication Studies, University of Texas at Austin) on the resolution "Religion has been a positive force in culture," June 4, 2011.

In Defense of Endless War

As 9/11 showed, civilization has enemies with which peace is neither possible nor desirable.
By Christopher Hitchens

A continuous and repetitive thread in the commentary on the decade since 9/11—one might almost call it an endless and open-ended theme—was the plaintive observation that the struggle against al-Qaida and its surrogates is somehow a "war without end."

Read More: http://www.slate.com/id/2304120/

Think Inc Update

We have just received word from Christopher Hitchens' management.

He had a medical emergency over the weekend but is now back at home and is doing ok, all things considered. He was not available to communicate before this morning. He is quite upset that he missed this event as he has never had to cancel at the very last minute before.

More: http://www.facebook.com/notes/think-inc/update-christopher-hitchens/236424399743658

V.F. Portrait: Joan Didion

In The Year of Magical Thinking, the 2005 best-seller, Joan Didion dissected the trauma of losing her husband, John Gregory Dunne. With Blue Nights, to be published in November by Knopf, she agonizingly explores the heavier blow that followed: the death of their daughter, Quintana Roo.

Christopher Hitchens contemplates a tragic achievement.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/10/joan-didion-201110

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens: review

The Telegraph | Christopher Hitchens’s provocative journalism is greater than the sum of its parts, argues Nicholas Shakespeare as he reviews Arguably.

Every generation tends to look silly to the one after; those beehive hairdos, those chain smokers. Reacting to previous experience, we don’t make progress, necessarily. Vicars have randy daughters and randy daughters give birth to boys who in turn become vicars.

More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8765444/Arguably-by-Christopher-Hitchens-review.html

Man of His Words

The New York Times | Sunday Book Review

"Anyone who occasionally opens one of our more serious periodicals has learned that the byline of Christopher Hitchens is an opportunity to be delighted or maddened — possibly both — but in any case not to be missed. He is our intellectual omnivore, exhilarating and infuriating, if not in equal parts at least with equal wit."

Don't miss the Book Review Podcast (Bill Keller on the career of Christopher Hitchens). 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/books/review/arguably-essays-by-christopher-hitchens-book-review.html

From 9/11 to the Arab spring

By Christopher Hitchens

Three men: Mohamed Bouazizi, Abu-Abdel Monaam Hamedeh, and Ali Mehdi Zeu – a Tunisian street vendor, an Egyptian restaurateur and a Libyan husband and father. In the spring of 2011, the first of them set himself alight in the town of Sidi Bouzid, in protest at just one too many humiliations at the hands of petty officialdom. The second also took his own life as Egyptians began to rebel en masse at the stagnation and meaninglessness of Mubarak's Egypt.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/09/christopher-hitchens-911-arab-spring

There's just one Hitch

The Australian Reviews Arguably.

LAST year, just before he was diagnosed with advanced oesophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens published the unexpectedly moving memoir Hitch-22.

 "I soon enough realised when young," he revealed in that book, "that I did not have the true 'stuff' for [writing] fiction and poetry. And I was very fortunate indeed to have, as contemporaries, several practitioners of those arts who made it obvious to me, without unduly rubbing in the point, that I would be wasting my time if I tried."

 As a journalist, Hitchens has done everything with his time except waste it. He has made himself the key writer of the post-9/11 age. No novelist or poet has registered the texture of the past decade as pungently as Hitchens has in the essay form.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts-arc/theres-just-one-hitch/story-e6frg8nf-1226126501899

Simply Evil

A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description and most essential fact about al-Qaida.
By Christopher Hitchens


The proper task of the "public intellectual" might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem. But what I learned in a highly indelible manner from the events and arguments of September 2001 was this: Never, ever ignore the obvious either.

http://www.slate.com/id/2303013/

Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

Reviewed by Vinton Rafe McCabe / New York Journal of Books

“Christopher Hitches has the eye of a painter and the literary skill of a novelist. He infuses his essays with the same narrative thrust that can be found in the most addictive fiction.”

"Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens proves as mercurial as the man himself; it is at times infuriating, tedious, educational, gloriously candid, and completely hilarious. The man has an opinion on everything—literally everything from the genius of Charles Dickens to the virtues of masturbation."

Read review here (nyjournalofbooks.com)

3 min. audio clip from Arguably, read by Simon Prebble: http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/audiobooks/book/Christopher-Hitchens-Arguably-MP3-Download/10103043.html

2012 Global Atheist Convention

Tickets on sale now!
Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett
Lawrence Krauss..

http://www.atheistconvention.org.au/
http://www.facebook.com/atheistconvention
http://twitter.com/#!/atheistcon

Rick Perry's God

Does the Texas governor believe his idiotic religious rhetoric, or is he just pandering for votes?
By Christopher Hitchens

"I happened to spend several weeks in Texas earlier this year, while the Lone Star State lay under the pitiless glare of an unremitting drought. After a protracted arid interval, the state's immodest governor, Rick Perry, announced that he was using the authority vested in him to call for prayers for rain."

Read More (Slate)

The Crimes of Col. Qaddafi

In the euphoria of the current celebrations, we must not lose sight of the former leader's foul deeds.
By Christopher Hitchens

"In George Orwell's 1939 novel, Coming Up for Air, his narrator, George Bowling, broods on the special horrors of the new totalitarianism and notices "the colored shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons," but also, less obviously perhaps, "the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke."

Read More (Slate)

Christopher Hitchens on Latest Book: 'Might Be My Very Last'

Prolific writer and political journalist Christopher Hitchens will release a new book this September titled Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens. The first new book of essays since 2004, Arguably features a collection of essays previously written for Vanity Fair – of which he is a contributing editor – Slate, The Atlantic, and The New York Times.

Some titles include: “God of Our Fathers: The United States of Enlightenment”; “America the Banana Republic”; “Why Women Aren’t Funny”; “First, Silence the Whistle-Blower”; “Iran’s Waiting Game”; “Easter Charade”; “Words Matter”; and “Wine Drinkers of the World, Unite.”

Read More (christianpost.com)

Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.


Product Description
The first new book of essays by Christopher Hitchens since 2004, ARGUABLY offers an indispensable key to understanding the passionate and skeptical spirit of one of our most dazzling writers, widely admired for the clarity of his style, a result of his disciplined and candid thinking. Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for arthe enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, ARGUABLY burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as-to quote Christopher Buckley-our "greatest living essayist in the English language."

Britons Have Been Violent and Cruel for Generations

Still, England has not yet collapsed into a nightmare of destruction and despair.
By Christopher Hitchens

"I realized that the collapse of British society into a Hobbesian nightmare of mutual predation and despair was still some distance off when I caught two little straws in the wind. The first was a well-framed photograph of a badly scorched bit of London, taken on the morning after a night of riots and vandalism."

Read More (Slate)

The Accidental Institution

By Christopher Hitchens

"At whose expense comes the mild irony when, this fall, the cheaply produced scandal sheet Private Eye will have an exhibition of its cartoons and pictorial covers at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a building consecrated to taste and restraint?"

Read More (Vanity Fair)

Religion Is THE Problem in the Balkans

By Christopher Hitchens


"Reporting on the capture of the mass-murdering General Ratko Mladic by the Serbian government on Memorial Day, the New York Times summarized the newly created political situation like this: “Critical questions remain about precisely who protected Mr. Mladic. The pro-Western government of President Boris Tadic says it will investigate, a politically delicate examination that could lead to former government officials and perhaps even to religious authorities, since Mr. Mladic said after his arrest that he had been visited over the years by many priests.”

Read More (Free Inquiry)

The End of the Kemalist Affair

When was the last time a conservative NATO army pushed out its highest-ranking officers?
By Christopher Hitchens


"To read of the stunning news, of the almost-overnight liquidation of the Ataturkist or secularist military caste, and to try to do so from the standpoint of a seriously secular Turk, is to have a small share in the sense of acute national vertigo that must have accompanied the proclamation of a new system in the second two decades of the 20th century."
Read More (Slate)

Think Inc. September 18, 2011

The Think Inc 2011 event has now a new website with less graphics and more info. This year's line-up includes Neil deGrasse Tyson, Christopher Hitchens (via video link), Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Michael Shermer..

Visit http://thinkinc.org.au/ for latest news, list of speakers, location, schedule, to register and more.

http://www.facebook.com/ThinkIncConference

http://twitter.com/#!/thinkinc2011

Dear Angry Lunatic: A Response to Chris Hedges

via samharris.org

"Over at Truthdig, the celebrated journalist Chris Hedges has discovered that Christopher Hitchens and I are actually racists with a fondness for genocide. He has broken this story before—many times, in fact—but in his most recent essay he blames “secular fundamentalists” like me and Hitch for the recent terrorist atrocities in Norway."

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/response-to-chris-hedges/

A Ridiculous Rapid Response

Why did so many "experts" declare the Oslo attacks to be the work of Islamic terrorists?
By Christopher Hitchens


"Having had 16 years to reflect since Oklahoma City, we should really have become a little more refined in our rapid-response diagnoses of anti-civilian mass murder. Rather than make it more difficult, the number of contrasting features in the most recent case of Norway actually makes this task fractionally easier. The fruit bat and troll population of the recent scenery of catastrophe, enriched with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell characters, permits a wider view of the various fields of fire and a greater variety of arguable motives for analysis."

Read More (Slate)

What Will Rupert Think?

The British political class may stop asking the one question that has obsessed it for decades.
By Christopher Hitchens

"It was about two decades ago, but I can still remember how long it took and how much atmosphere it sucked out of the room. In a sort of dress rehearsal for more recent events, a pair of Guardian reporters had produced a book about the inner workings of the lurid Murdoch tabloid style, and of its targets and beneficiaries."

Read More (Slate)

Scandal Sheets

In Britain, the Guardian takes on Rupert Murdoch's cynical view of what newspaper readers want to read.
By Christopher Hitchens

"On a beautiful Sunday morning at Brideshead Castle, Sebastian Flyte breaks off a desultory conversation about religion and morality because he wants to immerse himself in the scandal sheets: "He turned back to the pages of the News of the World and said, 'Another naughty scout-master … oh, don't be a bore, Charles, I want to read about a woman in Hull who's been using an instrument … thirty-eight other cases were taken into consideration in sentencing her to six months—golly!"

Read More (Slate)

Photos by Brooks Kraft

Set of pictures taken earlier this year by photographer Brooks Kraft.

http://brookskraft.photoshelter.com/gallery/Christopher-Hitchens/G0000066he0LB6TQ

Boat People

Some questions for the "activists" aboard the Gaza flotilla.
By Christopher Hitchens

"The tale of the Gaza "flotilla" seems set to become a regular summer feature, bobbing along happily on the inside pages with an occasional update. A nice sidebar for reporters covering the Greek debt crisis: a built-in mild tension of "will they, won't they?"; a cast of not very colorful characters but one we almost begin to feel we know personally. Such cheery and breezy slogans—"The Audacity of Hope" and "Free Gaza"—and such an easy storyline that it practically writes itself."

Read More (Slate)

1968 was an ending and not a beginning.

Hay Festival 2008, Sunday 25 May.
John Walsh chairs. Speakers include Rosie Boycott, Christopher Hitchens and Matthew Engel.
In 4 parts
 

The Rights of Man

Hay Festival 2006.
"The contrarian traces the history of The Rights of Man from the publication of Part One in 1791 in London and its rapturous reception across the Atlantic. He analyses the meaning it has acquired since its creation, and its significance as the cornerstone of contemporary debates about our basic human rights."
In 4 parts.
   

Christopher Hitchens talks to Phil Maynard about his biography of Thomas Paine, Iraq, and US politics: books.guardian.co.uk

Has Bachmann Met Her Waterloo?

The old parochialism meets the not-so-new isolationism in Michele Bachmann.
By Christopher Hitchens

"That was actually three dripping custard pies, rather than just the one, with which Rep. Michele Bachmann assailed her own face by bragging to Fox News about her small-town Iowa roots. Having hymned the incomparable Dairy Queen and Wonder Bread facilities boasted by the sturdy small town of her girlhood, she went on to claim that "John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa," adding, "That's the kind of spirit that I have, too."

Read More (Slate)

Christopher Hitchens Hay Festival 2008

Part 1


Part 2-4


Hitchens talks religion at Hay in 2008, with Q and A.

Christopher Hitchens talks to Ian McEwan 2007

Hay Festival 2006: Carter, Hitchens and Younge

I'll be posting older material in coming days, to expand the archive.

Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, Christopher Hitchens and the Guardian’s US correspondent Gary Younge discuss US foreign policy at Hay Festival 2006.
 

Think Inc 2011 Reminder

Tickets still available for the Think Inc. Science and Rationalism Conference in Melbourne, Australia. September 18, 2011.

More Info:
http://www.thinkinc.org.au/
http://www.facebook.com/ThinkIncConference
 

Atheist Convention to present Christopher Hitchens with Richard Dawkins award

"At the Atheist Alliance of America (AAA) Convention, held in conjunction with the Texas Freethought Convention, AAA will present the 2011 Richard Dawkins Award to Christopher Hitchens for his outstanding contributions to freethought. The convention, with a theme of “From Grassroots to Global Impact”, will be held from October 7-9, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston, Texas."

Read More (godlessgradstudent.wordpress.com)

Byliner - Discover & discuss great reads by great writers

Byliner.com Goes Live, Providing Readers with Deep, Rich Archives of the Finest in Nonfiction Storytelling.

"Wouldn’t it be great to have the best stories by Susan Orlean, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Lewis, Mary Roach, E.B. White, Mark Bowden, and hundreds of other nonfiction writers from the past 100 years available on one website? Now there is such a website: Byliner.com."

Read More (Business Wire)

141 articles by Christopher Hitchens.

David Mamet’s Right-Wing Conversion

Sunday Book Review - The New York Times
By Christopher Hitchens

"This is an extraordinarily irritating book, written by one of those people who smugly believe that, having lost their faith, they must ipso facto have found their reason. In order to be persuaded by it, you would have to be open to propositions like this: “Part of the left’s savage animus against Sarah Palin is attributable to her status not as a woman, neither as a Conservative, but as a Worker.”

Read More (nytimes.com)