A discussion about Christopher Hitchens [2012]

I think the focus on mortality is a useful thing to have and that's why I begin my book with it you should always know before you news of your time is very limited and that you're lucky to live in a time and place where you can be healthy till you're 60 as I was most people have in history never had a chance even to hope for a thing like that so no for the avoidance of hubris I think it's good to have a sober feeling of the presence of death Christopher Hitchens would have been 63 years old today the British author and journalist died in December last year due to complications caused by cancer of the esophagus Martin Amis once wrote he thinks like a child that is to say as judgements of far more instinctive in moral visceral than they seem and are animated by a child's eager apprehension of what feels just and true he writes like a distinguished author and he speaks like a genius it's not for everybody not everyone wants to always be an awkward cast or out of step or against the stream but if that's if if you do feel that the consensus doesn't speak for you if there's something about you that makes you feel that it would be worth being unpopular or marginal for the chance to lead your own life and have a life instead of a career or job then I can promise you it is worthwhile yeah half the time when I was arguing with the so called anti-war movement they would say their reason for opposing the war was a different if it began Saddam Hussein would obliterate huge numbers of Americans and Israelis and neighboring countries by his weapons of mass destruction that's what that was their case for peace he had sown out in other words people can be people have to take part in their own deception the only revolution internet which has a chance of being worth emulation worth studying from other countries was pluralism religious freedom separation secular separation and the right of anyone to try and make a living their own way worshipper and God it's not may not sound very grandiose but it's not bad and will serve and most of the countries I've been to in the past few years would all be taking a step up if they moved in that direction and most of them know it so to discover that after it's all shaken out that the American Revolution still has some life and purpose and meat and muscle in it is I think a rather inspiring thing for someone of my age I didn't think I'd have another chance to take part in a revolution and now in fact the United States is involved in combat but is Jeffersonian around around the world the worship of non existent entities the attempt to derive morality from from the supernaturally all of that is more I think than mistaken or irritating it's becoming actually very menacing up the people who think they have permission of that sort from the heavens are trying to kill us hich rose to prominence with books such as letters to a young contrarian God is not great in his memoir hich 22 but as much as anything he was famed for his love of friendship here is something I admire deeply about you two is the notion of friendship you form bonds with Martin Amis Julian Barnes he and McEwen and up I've been very lucky with my contemporaries I think they taught me how to write born born they wouldn't taught you how to write well more important person how not to write I was a rather didactic rather polemical writer when I first got to know them I was I was writing for the cause rather it wasn't paying very much attention to style they pointed out to me and it can be enjoyable to read and write things as well as a you know a duty to do sir introduced me to write as I hadn't appreciated enough like Nabokov for example broaden my outlook even my feeling for language as well as providing me with a wonderful context of yes amusing amusing friendship Michael Weiss once said friendship was his ideology as crystal liked to put it friends are God's apology for relations joining me now for friends very good friends who knew him better than anyone I know they are Martin Amos off of the Rachel papers money and the pregnant widow James Fenton former professor of poetry at Oxford Ian McCune author of atonement Saturday and solar and Salman Rushdie author of Midnight's Children the Satanic Verses and The Enchantress to Florence they have written more but if those is a list of some of them we refer to now I am pleased especially pleased to have them here to remember reflect appreciate talk about Christopher Hitchens one of the favorite guests here on this program over the last 20 years of our existence and I began with Martin Amis me a sense of who he was uh-oh that's difficult yeah all right hi he was the only friend I ever had I think this is a mark of friendship that isn't much explored that you can say anything to no matter how shameful how horribly revealing of yourself you can admit to all your worst impulses and you don't I didn't I never felt I had to tailor it to fit in with his idea of me it was a candor that established itself instantly and never wavered but how to sum up the hitch he's a very unusual man and he he flirted with ideology in a way I think that none no one else at his table ever had he was in fact strong the ideological and it was until not until the fall of communism in 1989 that he really blossomed as a writer I think and Eden man he was sort of looking out for other ideologies to to hitch his wagon to for a bit and that that's what gave us his peculiar stance on Iraq he wasn't the ample saw he wasn't very commonsensical that's why people loved him because he was he was he seemed to be having major argument with himself as if only the hitch was worth arguing with yes James well when I first knew him he was absolutely the leading figure one of the leading figures on the revolutionary left in Oxford and we are last year we shared a house together and he was a I have to tell you I don't think it's a secret he was a very bad Trotskyite he was on the lazy side I have missed it I was not getting up at 8:00 to go to the back the barricades were see well I said I can remember putting the mug of coffee besides instead going back downstairs and coming up knocking on the door again saying Christopher please get up and then realizing that when he did get up the coffee was going to be cold and he was going to go through that revulsion at the first mouthful of cocoa making the extra cup of coffee and so on and the first thing practically that we did together the first significant thing was we went to our revelry the his revolutionary group which I wasn't yet a member of and they used to meet in rooms above pubs you know rooms that were normally used by an organization called the Elks so that the elk horns around and we went to one of these rooms for the meeting and the plan was as a friend and I the we were going to we said the reason why Christopher hasn't been coming to the meetings is that he's been working so hard proselytizing and here we are as new members of the women prospective new members of the group so we got him we saved him from being thrown out of the trustees that was the first that was the first thing we did last time hich came to my house okay two and a half years ago two years ago in central London it's Ruane endless repetition and we've all experienced this the face the great hairy unshaved face and right into yours demanding that manly kiss and on the last occasion the carton was already in the house and I think your memory of this is not that was distinct as mine and he said before I come in before you pour me a drink there's a woman on the other side of the square being harassed by some yobs and we've got to go across and sort them out and Martin I look at each other great he said there's only seven of them come on they're three of us so we set off a course in square two of us very reluctant soldiers private this little private army and we got there thank God there was no one there that all gone yeah I think of this story because he was a street fighter I mean intellectually and also he's chased villains down the street he did it in Washington some mugger he pursued and remember years ago in Manhattan he pursued someone he gone where have you seen Hadley learn rescuing a woman from yeah an abusive friend that could have been you and me think I'm talking rough stop erasing graffiti absolutely and in Beirut it was rivers yeah ah no he was he was putting the graffiti up yeah he was writing some anti-fascist kaviti and then the fascists jumped him jumped him but like you know I remember I first met Christopher a little runyan later than Martin and James knew him I met him I met him at the Notting Hill Carnival in somebody's house and he was suspicious of me because I had friends on the left who were not the kind of left that Christopher approved of you know so he thought I was going to be what's he look friends do you mean I'm getting not damn it Terrica we had and he thought I would be there for unsuitably leftist and was relieved to find that I was more suitable than he had feared and but I the street fighter thing is true and I was very struck that when when when God is not great came out and he had to go on on tour for it instead of doing the normal book tour which all of us do he asked for adversaries to be provided everywhere he went you know he asked the publishers to set him up with with Christian opponents you know in every city local trees some local priests and etc of above an absolutely opposite position and he would take them on and and that was his nature he would want the debate and he knew his Bible he news yes I saw one of those with Tony Blair yes that's right you know that was late he took on Clarence but demolishing Blair not the hardest thing to do but he did it I thought that was very characteristic that instead of just going to read from his book and do a signing you know he actually want everywhere he went he wanted to take somebody on he had hundreds of people in book line saying to him thank God you've come with we are not just the Bible Belt there were plenty of secular each of you is defined by writing is he more defined by debate than writing well I slightly disagree with that Martin said about 1989 being when he when he sort of became a writer because I don't think it was something um premeditated and thought of in his in his scheme of things I think 1989 was something he would have welcomed at any time I the fall of Eastern Europe or communism but he would have welcomed it from a socialist point of view and I think that but I I do think that before he went to the states she wasn't really he wasn't really at his best as a writer as such he he was extremely political extremely good in conversation extreme he'd always been very very good in debate he was a marvelous public speaker but he was a bit on the sloppy side with the writing but then in the States he became more and more more and more of a writer and I I think this was and it was bad you know perhaps a slower development for him than it had been for other people around this table a George Orwell was his what Martin he was what Saul Bellow is for you maybe he almost used to stress that he's very important that to recognize that Orwell wasn't a genius that his his strength was a kind of exalted common sense but it's amazing how many our only to be right but to have said the best thing about any number of subject Christopher was very good hater when he started off really hating the sequence of people who were worth hating no he hated Henry Kissinger he hated mother Teresa and later on he hated Bill Clinton and I think those those those were vehement but they were just emotional they were highly articulated and thought out hatreds and I think he was he was very good at that and of course it would always remind you that I also have written about people like Thomas Jefferson dead that I didn't hate yeah that's true I mean he was really a member of the anti totalitarian left I mean and all of something certainly we three can remember during the Falklands War most of the country was for it but most of the people one knew were against except for hitch because his argument was and it turned out to be absolutely right that to wage war against the Argentinians would be to lead to the fall of the hunter and fall of Galtieri and that was a consistent theme that ran all the way through his Iraq Stan was really lined with can you say that what you just expressed is a direct line to why he took the position he did about Iraq yes well I think it I think it sort of is but on the way the this what what what what Christopher had to do beef just round about that time was he had to he had to change he had to change his mind publicly and in a way that for many people would be humiliating because he was completely realigning himself politically and so a certain amount of what that was with um at a high decibel level saying to the rest of all you you have changed you've all changed the left has changed so on and so making it seem less obviously that his position had changed his position had changed but it was but this this thing about him was consistent that interventionism was a good idea now insight in in the case of Iraq what he what he said was I remember him I remember him saying it to me over the phone he said he said what Iraq will become is a protectorate it's an American Protectorate and that will be the basis in the future and as a result of that we won't need that Saudi Arabia Iraq will be will be the basis from which we then export democracy democratic institutions and it was a mistake I mean I think one of the things to you were saying about friendship and but Martin recycles is that one of the things you could do it with Christopher is to radically disagree with him without harming the friendship know that that's a you could intervene you could you could take him on you know or be taken on by him yeah about whatever idea you had and and express yourself as vehemently as possible and it wouldn't really shake the basis of your fondness for each other at all but tell me about the story about john locke array which he you you were having a public spat with him oh thanks for waited in i did and waited 10 times worse well what had happened was it Licari it at the time of the Iranian attack on the Satanic Verses was one of the few I mean so few the writers who were not supportive that you could count them on the fingers of both hands and have some fingers to spare but he was one of those right and he accused me of various self-regarding acts like you know I'd done it on purpose to make myself more famous and make more money and be you know etc and how and said something about how one couldn't insult a religion with impunity thus thus suggesting that if you did it was okay for you to be attacked um anyway I let that go at the time because I had some larger fish to fry and then some years later he Licari got into trouble here in New York because he said something which the American Jewish community disapproved of and so he was accused in some way of having made an anti-semitic remark and he got very very upset and wrote a large rebuttal you know of his how dead how dare they called me anti-semitic and and so I just I don't know I shouldn't have done it but I sort of left it and I said well it would be more easier to sympathize with this writer under attack from this religious group if that particular writer had been more sympathetic to another writer being attacked by different religious group this this drove Licari rod the bed that he started abusing me and then I sort of abused him back and and this was very enjoyable for the English press who were running this this exchange of letters on the front page and then Christopher jumped in and wrote the rudest letter I think anybody's ever in evident What did he say with AB and he said something about he said that Licari reminded him of a man who urinate sit his owner in his hat and then puts the brimming chapeau on his head and the wedge that was just the first things anybody was table surprised no no no no like being rude to people did he also like to be liked so that said that there was paradox as a socialist a man that people how Rudy could be to cabbies I mean oh really oh my god Berra sings no you say to waiters if you're so smart what do you do doing dealing the multi-armed and the dump like this or you say to a taxi driver if you all so smart why are you steering this bedpan around but I'm completely amazed all get-out and you want to get out in one eat out when he was he was ill we got into a cab to go and hitch said we're going to Natural History Museum and the guy's Ukrainian and say well I don't know where it is he said well getting out you don't know you're living in this country you don't know where the Natural History Museum you don't deserve our fare and hitch got out and he almost fell over on the pavement he was so ill Caroline I got help to maybe get another cab with it an approved cabbie who knew where the natural history music wasn't there time also that you got into a little thing you wrote him a lovely letter say talking about the difference between being an atheist and being an agnostic yeah um what I I think agnosticism is the more rational position because since we know so very little about the universe it's it's um a bit previous to say that there's no higher intelligence since the universe is much cleverer than we are and we we have you know cosmology is almost going backwards we're just finding out more about our ignorant and hitch and I said in the piece that strict atheism is vulnerable to the accusation and hitch would never be vulnerable to this accusation of being Lynton of being a bit pinched and crabbed and we we did disagree about that but as someone says we had violent arguments about Trotsky and Lenin etc but then I never had a slightest wobble in my friendship with hitch it was and then I think a god thing oh I think you know in different ways one could have a different position to Christopher on that I mean I I used to feel that religion is a private matter was not my business you know that if there were people who found sustenance or moral strength or whatever it might be from from religious observance then it wasn't for me to tell them not to know and Christopher's view was more absolutist than that and was his sub title of his book had it the religion poisons everything you know that and that you can't make that private public distinction as he argues in the book because the trouble with those private beliefs is that people use them to justify attacks on people actual individuals you know in the public sphere so you could have that disagreement with with Christopher without without it affecting your thinking but I do I actually think the the religion moment the God is not great moment it's sort of the moment at which Christopher came back from his from if you like from the Iraq mistake you know and kind of regained his genuine intellectual ground I mean the things that he was the real I guess I'd accepted or thought of more as the real Christopher and I think that's when he got his audience back here people began to actually become very fond of him during the Iraq years I think there were a lot of people who were very disappointed or angry with his with his positions and then and then he regained this but ended up very beloved what about this idea that goes all the way back to a box for this notion that he there was a double life there was a double set of books what is that what do you mean that he had heroes had friends on the left and translator on here sort of conservative social friends on one side and and his ideological friends yeah where else well this is absolutely the case and people on the people on the Left saw it and they they saw it as a kind of treachery they knew that he was doing things like there is partying with one and preaching with the other that's right that yes that then they accuse him of being a Bollinger Bolshevik and all that but that's why should the rich people drink all the champagne it wasn't it was it there was there was a particular character in Oxford at the time who was a much disliked figure on the students because he seemed to represent everything everything that was wrong with Oxford he was the Bourdon of all souls his name was John Sparrow and Christopher seeing John Sparrow Christopher would just he was going to charm John Sparrow and he shot and they need any jolly did he jump Sparrow you leave his job over here he was he was the biggest flirt in the history of flirting I mean he he really was he could flirt he could flood and the flirting with men was absolutely you know as much for sweating flirting with women but at that time when he had to leave a party early and about 20 people there both sexes and he said I'll just make a brief pass and everyone here and then I'll be on my way so that double life extended to the books to him you think he's tasting poetry passionate about Chesterton right and Bello Kipling as well as non revolutionary yes yeah the fact that last piece he was trying to write dizzy as he was dying was on on a baggage Chesterton much so he did write it ya know and it's sort of know your enemy isn't it get get close to your enemy this is getting that close it's not an enemy yeah and it is having champion but it's having comes on both sides yeah he's very proud of the picture he has himself on a grouse more remember he came to a Friday lunch one showed us this picture he's in all fours and there's a gun and various sort of flunkies standing around and it was always one of the characteristics of these parties that he would have in DC for example he always had one around the time of the White House Correspondents Dinner and break you always go over there after them yeah if you looked at who was in the room I mean it was the entire spectrum of of political opinion and you know in in in the United States it wasn't just one gang you know it was really was everyone and he want stuff he didn't write fiction no he was we often wondered why yeah why I'm asked sometimes he wasn't he wasn't the literary time no he was yeah he wasn't it went like here well I I don't think he knew lots of poetry and so this wasn't it wasn't literary but he wasn't he read but it'll be read but didn't write is that really saying he would be interested in spending his day with imaginary people I think you're a really good Wilson and I think the reason he stayed in DC and you never came to live in a city like like this one like New York is that he liked to be in that in the bubble you know inside that world of what was what was going on and who was real the people who were making scenes made decisions and now then he would go places to find out what was going on then how do you characterize his influence on the political debates well I just think he became impossible to ignore you know that he could whether you agreed with him and I you had to hear yeah because he was so super articulate and and very very knowledgeable about he'd ever took on soft without knowing kiss without knowing his subject you know so so you could agree with them or disagree with him dramatically but it became one of the voices that you had to deal with but I think he wanted to be that person what happened to your friendship when you wrote why him why I embraced Islam well I mean you know he was a but I mean Christopher was an ally close as I say you know whether he agreed with you or not you know I mean that was a I mean as a weak moment for me and I think he understood the reason for the weakness but I think you're to go back up a little bit from that the other thing that happened to Christopher in 1989 other than the fall of communism was the attack on on my novel and and he is beginning to be aware of the threat as he saw it of of radical Islam and and and I think you know from there to the 9/11 attack you know there was a in him a growing sense that there was a real problem here that people weren't looking at straight you know and and and that became a growing part of his of his interest and so they brought us closer together but she doesn't get it yeah look what yeah yeah I'm also very proud I have a chapter on this too having been a friend of Salman Rushdie's during the time of the fatwa when he was on the run when not only did a friend need his friends but when a very important principle the whole principle of free expression needed to be defended against the most direct thuggish possible challenge I mean a death threat backed by death squads from the theocratic need of a foreign state and when a lot of people didn't show too much stomach for that that there was a very educational time in my life are we missing out just how funny he was you know well I want to make sure it mean the first time I met it was martin interest meet hitch he said you got to meet my friend so what did he say when martin said you guys only I can remember exactly first we went that night is rather disgusting little flat sure the word sock was born and then we went it was seem to specialize in those days in empty Greek restaurant the only customers and the two of you had a routine already worked out but jokes were referred to merely by numbers or sounds or yelps that referred to long stories that already been encapsulated the next morning I woke up I felt it for my ribs evening cares as you'd laugh so much not anything he was very there no question I can remember sitting in Barton's kitchen in in London actually weeping with wit laughter not very many people have actually caused tears of love in a run down my face but Christopher would do that he he once said about you though he said that the things lots of things he said about you but one was that he said that about friendship he said that your love of language took precedence over your love of friendship and I've been thinking about this when when he came from America to England on visits used to ring from the airport and say the hitch was landed he said he could jump when he call himself the hitch yeah oh yeah Allen self-conscious irony and I would feel great excitement but also the sense that I'm gonna lose a chapter here the chapters worth of work and you have it he's amazing long lunches followed by a debauch in the evening that would leave you completely incapacitated for three and three and 83 and but he would go off at just as you were sort of falling on your bedroom floor he would go off and write a piece and I and his generosity of a time was amazing that he would give time he was a person for whom the clock hands moved slower his day was longer than ours and his his energy on your behalf which I I've experienced to it was extraordinary and he'd get on a plane and young come and deal with engineer and and I just if you're a novelist you earn or a poet then you're going to spend a lot of time brooding and I think that's why hitch could not have been involved although he had the gift of phrase and of mimicry and all the rest but he wasn't a Buddha I don't think none of that determined stupid you know I mean he was he didn't Herman's duper obvious Prichard denounced Ford Madox Ford for not having the great novelist have the capacity for determined superior I always think Christopher was heed that since he was a journalist he had that yeah that to file your copy approach and you would he was as Martin says he'd go home after a long day of drinking and and Lutton and and you know and he'd write like 3,000 words and file them or he fall asleep in his apartment and they would not be incoherent they'd be extraordinary words that was one of his later utterances in writing with such he did burn the candle at both ends and he said and sometimes that gives off a lovely light but by Christ he did that in a sort of preternatural way and and I think knew that that it contributed to the illness that came upon him if you had known that there was a possibility of getting cancer you would never have spoke you've never smoked a cigarette you would have never drank that consumed the amount of liquor you consumed no I think all the time I felt that its life as a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer then I would have if I didn't so and writing is what's important to me and anything that helps me do that or enhances when prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument in conversation is worth it to me sure so I was I was knowingly taking a risk I wouldn't recommend it to others but he believed that the cigarettes in the booths gave him what he called the kind of junk energy a junk energy I and that and so in a sense he was under the impression that he needed that he needed those those two substances is not a prison as much if he had that a junk energy as boosters part of the tragedy was that he was so robust if it just been a little weaker physically could have taken all that drinking it's like all that woman yeah word is in Hindi that means drinking Specter it was Saint Romany yeah for all the drinking he had one of the best memories well in here here he did have the right above his head for drink and I don't think it did him that much good no he the body didn't give him enough warning signs I think he said about you James that somehow after that you awakened in him the far buried and dangerous lust for alcohol and nicotine it was your fault I know he ain't often accused me of of that Tim because I bought him a drink in the Kings on 1967 I mean that really seems a bit in excess of this and the facts I want to talk about today I want I would come back at this nature of friendship I mean you're not spoken about this before at this table the notion of a man I think there was a quote in which he visits something about he called relationship bed with you the most heterosexual relationship with the one young man could consumer have with another and you said at the same time it was an unconsummated gay marriage you know it was unconsummated marriage he tried to shoot this every night yeah he tried to consummate it around then well he was sort of pen affectionate um yeah he big kisses big yeah tongues yeah I know it was information no it's not this is a family show and an idea show you know you say that he sort of lays it in on Wolfowitz and he would perhaps do that for an hour or two but he was the most egalitarian of social are you changing the subject hmmm well and I have no case to answer and he he was he was very rude as we said and talented hater and all the rest but he socially his manners were impeccable and and completely democratic too but let me connect me out to stay with this for a couple what one was that he cast himself as the smaller fish swimming alongside a great white shark he did say that about you never had to do with you know the ladies did lake is a personal right he was a small fish casting alongside a great white shark speaking of you um well he was incredibly unpretty tree as a unpretty tour yeah right girls would often throw themselves at him and good reason eat well yeah trying to very attractive you know and ian has you know what he his what he would do to charm people with to turn his intelligence or on them and show his intelligence and that was his that was his his way of attracting people but he he was very different yeah but at the same time was he Nicholas in your novel yes he was yeah so there was Nicholas and you were Keith and yeah I know yeah up to a point yeah in as much as you know you once there in a novel there the character changes to fit the novel so it's it never is that the person himself but there was one story that that's in the novel and I thought was so great that I had to make a scene to give the punch line that hitch gave which was we were in one of these empty Greek restaurants and to very upper class young men came in and they were fussing around with the waiters and they had a terrible air about them as if they were directly awaiting the deaths of elderly relatives so that they could come into their patrimony and they were fussing around so much so that it was impossible for the Hitcher media to start a conversation and then one of them came in crouched down in front of us and pouted up through his frit fringe and said they're obviously gonna ask us to move table but he said said you're gonna hate us hate me for this and hich said i hate you already go ahead and we move tables quite jeanne lee and they sent sent over a terrified bottle of wine but but but if you just introduce him to your mother and your crazy arts and so on he would be absolutely impeccable and gentle socially I mean let me raise this question about America what did America mean to him because he obviously came here and became an American citizen if I found his he found his full voice I think here I think you know because I mean as as we heard in one of the clips you showed I think he was actually very admiring of aspects of America of its of its constitution and he became a naturalized citizen at the Jefferson Memorial yeah and he became an even more of an American post 9/11 I mean 9/11 was a turning point of revamping of his love for the United States if you went to see him in his apartment love to take you know strangers up onto the roof and point out the monuments as if he'd built them himself in Apia yeah he was very proprietorial as his Washington zoo and as he was saying on that clip he he was very moved by the American Revolution he thought this was a revolution that had worked and I think he loved the fact that it's an immigrant society and the diversity that follows in this book hich 22 he writes about you know first three chapters and he talks about actually in the edition what is in this photograph in which I think he was described enough I I should give credit to the photographer and Angela kogas you know yes you know um he was described as the late Christopher Hitchens which gave him a provider for him or was an impetus for him or forced him or linked him to consider mortality and and then he sort of talked about this in the first three chapters here um so let's talk finally about instead of the end and and how he handled death and and each of you visit him and so I haven't talked to him so did I in terms of an interview when I went to do the interview he was obviously not feeling well you know and I said hitch we don't have to do this we can come back another time he said no I want to do it now had a bucket next to him you know and he's talked about that too I mean it and the evolution of the conversation it seems to me and correct me because you were a thousand times closer than I was was from in terms of the illness was sort of metaphysical and then it became in his writing describing the physicality of it hmm you know and then perhaps somewhere else he approached dying well just to say at the very beginning of it I mean when pitch 22 came out its publication event was here at the 92nd Street Y and I had agreed to go and lob questions at him I you know and and so I did and he was at his best judy was that his kind of knocking him out of the park hitching his best exactly I mean I and and I mean I wasn't just throwing softballs you know there were a few curveballs in there but he was brilliant brilliant for for at least an hour and then a bit more with the QA and then afterwards there was a dinner for him and with a few friends and publishing people and so on and he continued you know - just hold forth and be at his absolute peak and then afterwards I discovered as we all did that that that was the day at morning morning they told about the cancer and I just thought how do you do that I mean I wouldn't be able to do that I don't think you know to go out there in front of a thousand people and just perform brilliantly when you've just been given you know possibly terminal knew that sentence my death said one way he dealt with death was to write so well about it I mean remember there's early pieces for Vanity Fair or for in his column described really in terms of crossing a border the border guards being the medics who greet you as you come across and suddenly you're in different clothes and the land of the healthy that you leave behind was beautifully done at the very beginning visiting him was well I mean we'll went it was not like visiting most others because he didn't want to talk about being ill he wanted to talk about reading and what was going on and everything else and then he would needed to sleep a lot and he'd like to find you there when he woke up so the deal was he went to visit the hitch take some books and some work so the foot of the bed and wait a couple of hours till he come round stir empty his lungs disgustingly and then resume incredible appetite he really did not want to die really I mean for all sorts of reasons but he really did hang on I think that going on writing till almost the very end you had you one of the ways of resistance there was a lot of the things that kept it going I took a picture of him writing that last piece on Chester's sort of drips and if you think about it it was painful to swallow very difficult to breathe his limbs ached his arm hurt like crazy and he was a facing eternal oblivion and he needed to get these three thousand words done it was he was determined to make it to make a good end that's right and he says decision that we had he had made a point of identifying himself as standing for a certain kind of rationality in that rationality in the in the face of death was the logical conclusion of what he said he would what he'd set himself up as and so it was I think it I think everybody learned about hitch that how extraordinarily large his audience was at that point and how extraordinary was that there was this audience that was concerned about like that part of the audience was saying you know will he repent yes of course that did delighted it delightful for Christopher what'd you say oh no you wouldn't there were people praying for him which was no that's right they were wrong for the wrong thing to do let's wheel to start in a loyal TV programs and really talk to him about back you know people pray for you that's what we talked about remember we were all in that linked up program I would say you were here and then there were it was some event in London in London but it was being piped to cinemas movie houses all across all all sold out from the hospital room yeah no it was looking on a stage it was well Stephen Fry Stephen Fry talked to various people installed in Pride he was opening it but Christopher was seen by you know still doctors room yeah but what was so extraordinary was that people they were camera moved across the audience the audience was mostly young they mostly would disagree with him violently on Iran but they were turning up in these cinemas to hear him or to hear talk about his own legacy and what he it at all the sense of our life lived a sense of you know somebody people talk about reading your own obituaries he must have read quite a few rather premature obituaries I mean there was water in New York Times could 18 months a year yes there are a lot of they came feeling further than that to write that that meant a piece I died but I think James is right that he that he was determined to die well and it's very hard to do and how is it done and who was it who said that it's it is very difficult for a sick man not to be a villain and he was determined to to buck that law not to be a villain or not to D we not not to be not I mean I saw him so sick sometimes that I thought I would just be whimpering with self-pity and he was determined not to do that to go there or not to go to regret or not to go to change my am and I am still Who I am that and just that there is no tougher than to to cope with death as Freud call it the complex symbol it's something that you know the reason we have religion is because of death and how very difficult it is to to come face to face with it and religion says you needn't do that we'll postpone all that and so it was a he was living up to his yeah sick arrest one of the things he most disliked about religion was the idea that if we are told that we have a life after death it makes us not value or pay attention to the life we have you know if if as it were our real life happens with our you know within our heavenly self when we are immortal then this life doesn't matter so it gives you to a diminishes the value of actual lived human life and I think Christopher very much wanted to show that the value is here you know it's here not afterwards it's here what was the last time you saw I saw exactly one year ago today I was I was in Houston Texas for his birthday I guess I saw him two or three weeks before he died we were actually having a conversation about Larkin and a couple of lines and with some weddings and I knew I was about to leave to go to the airport and we came to end our discussion and I went to kiss him and he said he said just go go he didn't want an emotional parting let's keep it that we will see each other soon which was devastating as anything sort of a go just go I know I saw there I saw him die yeah and it was I arrived and it was sort of already all over and he was unconscious and you know you go and hug him and talk to him but I I like to think he might have sensed my presence and then it became a with the family his children and wife and father-in-law and cousin we just sat there and five six hours and what you'd what happens as you look at him how laid that his breathing is then you look at the screen the monitor screen and you see the blood pressure changes every hour because you can hear that clasp coming on dropping in the and the oxygenation and breath the rate of breathing until it just sank into nothing and it was I think we were all sitting by the phone you know that was a moment in the middle of the night when the phone rang and I didn't wasn't necessary to pick up the phone you know it was very sad James right the first line of the bitumen to me he was the he was the spirit of 68 it was the revolutionary spirit that was so engaging and the source I suppose of many ridiculous things that were said and felt but many fine things too thank you Thank You Martin Thank You Jane thank you thank you Christopher Hitchin died aged 62 he would have been 63 today someone that loved him I hate him you could not ignore him because he said things with such brilliance and insight and gift of language never more powerful than when he was on stage when there was an audience and a connection a great program here time after time as we talked about many subjects thank you for joining us this evening an appreciation of Christopher Hitchens see you next time anger I can't master really because it's necessary appeal time would be terrible if people did not people have to die in large numbers every day says to make room I'm leaving the party a bit earlier than I'd like not showing that I'd like or rather I it looks as if I might have to do that quite a little bit earlier and not only that but the party will go on without me even more horrible thought but why should I be enraged at that that would be spiteful

Channel: CaNANDian

Views: 380,204

Rating: 4.9030957 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher, Hitchens, discussion, Salman, Rushdie, Martin, Amis, James, Fenton, Ian, McEwan, Charlie, Rose, friends

Id: HnVzWjmpilU

Length: 52min 20sec (3140 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 21 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/davebare]

I watch this about once a year. Great tribute. Hate that it is on Charlie Rose, but then, it was a slightly different time.