Going to a house of worship to see Christopher Hitchens is a bit like going to a house of ill repute to see a bishop. So naturally I drove to Temple Judea in Coral Gables last night to catch the literary journalist.
And I saw something I'd never seen before: Hitchens smile. It was before he took the podium, while standing next to Dave Barry - who introduced him and then led him in conversation (noting, at one point, that both their mothers committed suicide).
Hitchens was his usual curmudgeonly self, complaining about horoscopes in the Washington Post ("astrology in a journal of record") and suggesting that Ayn Rand's novels "are more difficult to read than they were to write." He answered the first question about his (anti) religious views - the questioner surprisingly compared him to Malcolm Muggeridge - but when more came he brushed them aside with a phrase that became a mantra: "Wrong book."
Even talking about himself (he was plugging his new memoir) he gave the impression of not just a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, but the rare individual with the mental capacity to accurately calculate that weight. At the same time, he was, occasionally, almost playful, and he ended the evening in a way that I imagine few evenings at the temple have ever ended: with a recitation of limericks.
13 comments
Lee,
Hitchens was promoting his new book, a memoir, and people kept asking him about his previous book, "God is Not Great." He wanted to talk about the memoir.
Tom
by Dan Bloom
When world hero artist Christopher Hitchens died recently, the global
television screens and newspaper headlines proclaimed "Christopher
Hitchens, dead at 62."
But the way we report deaths on TV and in print papers seems
out-dated, in some way. Why give in to the commercial death business
(as well as the religious death business) and even
use words like death and dies? Why don't we begin to use a better word
as a marker to mark a man or a woman's three score and ten here on
Earth?
This blogger made a list of some words that might fit better and he
wonders what you, dear reader, think of them. Perhaps you could add
some words or suggestions in
the comments section here (below) -- and not ''six feet under'' but
just a few centimeters below.
So instead of the TV announcers and newspaper headline writers saying
or writing "Christopher Hitchens, dead at 62," how about saying
something in the future as an alternative such as: "Christopher
Hitchens, transformed at 62" - 'Christopher Hitchens, morphed at 62" -
'Christopher Hitchens, matrixed at 62" - 'Christopher Hitchens,
returned at 62" - 'Christopher Hitchens, retrieved at 62" -
'Christopher Hitchens, reunioned at 62"-- 'Christopher Hitchens,
realigned at 62" -- 'Christopher Hitchens, hitched at 62"
--'Christopher Hitchens, sent off at 62" -- 'Christopher Hitchens,
reintegrated at 62" -- 'Christopher Hitchens, sayonara'd at 62" --
'Christopher Hitchens, atomized at 62" -- 'Christopher Hitchens,
starlit at 62" -- 'Christopher Hitchens, energized at 62" --
'Christopher Hitchens, archived at 62" -- 'Christopher Hitchens,
completed at 62" -- 'Christopher Hitchens, finalized at 62" --
'Christopher Hitchens, regurgitated at 62."
A friend in Canada suggests "Christopher Hitchens, composted at 62."
And she also suggests "Christopher Hitchens, angelized at 62" (adding
that Hitch probably would not have liked that one so much, but that he
might have seen the sense of humor involved in such a term).
What other words might fit in the future? Suggestions welcome, pro and con.
And remember this, or at least, this blogger does: ''Death be not
proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art
not so!''
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