Missing Hitchens

Vanity Fair Slideshow July 2012

Family, friends, and esteemed colleagues gathered to celebrate the life and career of award-winning journalist Christopher Hitchens at the Cooper Union Foundation Building, in New York City.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/07/christopher-hitchens-memorial-photos#slide=1

Christopher Hitchens Memorial

By Vanity Fair

In part one of the April 20th memorial service for Vanity Fair contributing editor Christopher Hitchens, Graydon Carter welcomed attendees and speakers James Fenton, Lawrence Krauss, Edwin Blue, Patrick Cockburn, Max McGuinness, Aimée Bell, Michael Zilkha, Victor Navasky, and Tom Stoppard. 

UPDATE: More parts added. Watch the videos here.

Christopher Hitchens’s Memorial

By Vanity Fair

Christopher Hitchens’s Memorial: Sean Penn, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and Others Pay Tribute

 “To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off,” wrote the late Christopher Hitchens in his June 2011 column, “Unspoken Truths,” for Vanity Fair. Today, at a memorial service in the Great Hall of Cooper Union, in New York, many of Hitchens’s friends and admirers did just that.
Read more
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/04/christopher-hitchens-memorial-vanity-fair

Related links

Christopher Hitchens' wit and warmth remembered as New York pays tribute http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/20/christopher-hitchens-memorial-new-york

Christopher Hitchens Memorial: Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Olivia Wilde Remember Writer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/christopher-hitchens-memorial_n_1441508.html?ref=new-york&ir=New%20York

Christopher Hitchens Is Memorialized With an Irreverence That Would Please Him http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/20/christopher-hitchens-is-memorialized-with-an-irreverance-that-would-please-him.html

Christopher Hitchens remembered at memorial service in NYC http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/post/christopher-hitchens-remembered-at-memorial-service-in-nyc/2012/04/20/gIQA1usIWT_blog.html

Hitch remembered with wit http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/hitch_remembered_with_wit_6q4Tmuvhb8rZsSZRPqEggL?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Page%20Six

REMEMBERING CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/remembering-christopher-hitchens.html

Vanity Fair to Host Christopher Hitchens Memorial

Vanity Fair will host a memorial for the late Christopher Hitchens this Friday, April 20, at noon in the Great Hall of Cooper Union. Scheduled to pay tribute in New York are Stephen Fry, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Christopher Buckley, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins, and physicist Lawrence Krauss.

Read more http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/04/christopher-hitchens-memorial-april-20-vanity-fair

Read also "A Memorial, Ribald and Reverent, for Christopher Hitchens" http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/a-memorial-both-ribald-and-reverent-for-christopher-hitchens/

Birthday, Memorial and a Tribute

It's April 13th. Some want to call it Christopher Hitchens Day. I agree with Staks Rosch: "While some atheists will be raising a glass of Johnny Walk Black in his honor, I think the time for that solute is over. Now is the time to share his wit and wisdom with others in celebration of his life. So pick up your copy of God Is Not Great or your Quotable Hitchens and share a quote or three on your social networks and with your friends and family on his birthday. Read more (examiner.com)
Then again, why not do both?

There's also a Hitch day facebook event http://www.facebook.com/events/328324723893296/

Ephraim Hardcastle asks "What would Christoper Hitchens make of his Vanity Fair memorial arrangements?" It's an invitation-only event at Cooper Union school in New York, on April 20.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129092/What-Christoper-Hitchens-make-Vanity-Fair-memorial-arrangements.html#ixzz1rtRRmk94

Then we have the PEN World Voices Festival, New York City, with a Christopher Hitchens tribute on Monday, April 30.
With Graydon Carter, Victor S. Navasky, George Packer, and Katha Pollit. Moderated by Ian Buruma.
http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/6380/prmID/2206

No word yet on a possible London, UK memorial.

Arrangements and petitions

Funeral and Memorial arrangements
By Peter Hitchens
Some people have asked me when and where my brother’s funeral took place. In fact, as Christopher donated his body to medical science, there has not been and will not be any funeral. He took this decision partly because of his religious (or rather non-religious) opinions, and partly because, much influenced by his friend Jessica Mitford and her book ‘The American Way of Death’, he disliked what he regarded as the excesses of the American funeral industry.
Read more (http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk)

and..


Hitchens Monument Petition
Please help get a statue of Christopher erected in London (and, after so many comments rightly suggesting it, we’ll try for DC too) by signing the e-petition. Sign it here (atheist-reference.org)

Take it seriously or not, there is a 'Award a posthumous Knighthood to Christopher Hitchens' petition with 273 signatures here. (ipetitions.com)

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."