Stephen McGinty: Christopher Hitchens - a life well lived

He may have produced only one bestseller, but the death of Christopher Hitchens has left a gap that will be difficult to fill

THE NEW York Times helped to keep Christopher Hitchens alive. As a roaring fire is fuelled by logs, so the great contrarian, critic and essayist was driven on by irritation, and each day of his life Mr Hitchens was irritated by the banner that hung beneath the title of the old grey lady of Manhattan: “All The News That Is Fit To Print.”

In an interview he explained why the motto vexed him so: “It’s been saying it for decades, day-in and day-out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it’s as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse.”

Today the motto that so infuriated him is still there but, sadly, Hitchens no longer has a pulse. For a man who measured his life, not in grains of sand, but in printed words, this is a morning he long dreaded. “Whatever day came that the newspapers came out and I wasn’t there to read them, I’ve always thought that will be a bad day, at least for me.” Still, sticking to its maxim of delivering: “All The News That Is Fit To Print”, the New York Times reported the death of a “slashing polemicist” on the front page and compared him to Thomas Paine and his great hero, George Orwell.

Christopher Hitchens did not believe in the polite notion that one should not speak ill of the dead. When Mother Teresa died in 1997, he described her as one of “Hell’s Angels”, a women in love, not with the poor, but with poverty itself and a friend of tyrants. When the Rev Jerry Falwell, the American evangelist, passed away, he mocked “the empty life of this ugly little charlatan”. So, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I argued that, despite the millions of words he produced over a 40-year career, he failed to produce a body of work that will last. For all its grand industry, the typewriter and, later, the computer failed to print out a The Rights of Man or 1984. He believed in the immediacy of opinion and argument rather than the over-arching building blocks of an established literary career. Perhaps this fuelled a degree of envy towards his best friend, Martin Amis.

He did, however, enjoy a genuine bestseller, something that had previously eluded him. God Is Not Great, a book that set about systematically demolishing all the basic tenants of religious belief and which argued that no good can ever come of faith, was a smash hit around the world. Sales were assisted by his ability to out-argue anyone who had the courage to take to the stage with him. Last year, at an event in Canada, he debated the issue with Tony Blair, who, unfortunately for believers, illustrated how men of the cloth can assist a society by pointing to Northern Ireland, where they were helping to heal “the religious divide”. Hitchens didn’t have to say a word.

Yet the appeal of Christopher Hitchens for many was not only his way with words but the louche lifestyle he represented. He believed in burning the candle at both ends because it produced “a lovely light”. Alcohol, as with many writers (and plumbers, and builders and architects) was a regular stimulant. When he first visited Aspen and was asked what he would like to drink, he replied “a vodka and tonic”, and when the barmaid explained that at such an altitude the drink was more toxic, he said to make it a double.

In an ironic twist Christopher Hitchens died on the same day that the war in Iraq was finally declared over, with the lowering of the American army’s flag in Baghdad. He was among the few journalists to support the conflict and fewer still who sustained that support throughout the nine-year debacle, never once making a mea culpa. It was a decision that lost him friends and gave more fuel to his enemies. George Galloway, who is considered to have bested Hitchens when they debated the issue in 2005, said that the journalist’s transformation from opposing the 1991 invasion of Iraq to supporting that of 2003 was “something unique in natural history: the first-ever metamorphosis of a butterfly into a slug”. A line, I imagine, Hitchens secretly admired for its wit.

Yet the power of his prose was brought home to him when he learned about a young soldier who had been so taken by Hitchen’s defence of the conflict and the nobility of America’s cause that he signed up and was later killed in action. Hitchens met with the family and later wrote an article about the encounter that is among his best work.

For me, however, the measure of Hitchens’ life was in how he handled his impending death. He was struck down with oesophageal cancer at the zenith of his career, as he enjoyed a global book tour on the back of God Is Not Great. He felt ill just as he was about to go on live TV but stuck to his former mentor, Gore Vidal’s maxim never to miss an opportunity to have sex or appear on TV and fulfilled his commitment before heading to the hospital. His writings on cancer were clear-eyed, rigorous and stoic. The diagnosis of terminal cancer has an ability in men of letters to increase their honesty and eloquence. I still have a copy of the transcript of the famous interview on Channel 4 between Melvyn Bragg and Dennis Potter after the playwright’s diagnosis. Jeremy Paxman, an old friend, played the role of Bragg to Hitchen’s Potter in a Newsnight special.

Jeremy Paxman: “Do you fear death?”

Christopher Hitchens: “No. I’m not afraid of being dead, that’s to say there’s nothing to be afraid of. I won’t know I’m dead, would be my strong conviction. And if I find that I’m alive in any way at all, well, that’ll be a pleasant surprise. I quite like surprises. But I strongly take leave to doubt it. I mean, one can’t live without fear, it’s a question of what is your attitude towards fear? I’m afraid of a sordid death. I’m afraid that, that I will die in an ugly or squalid way, and cancer can be very vigorous in that respect.”

Jeremy Paxman: “That’s a fear of dying.”

Chris Hitchens: “Yes.”

Jeremy Paxman: “It’s not a fear of death though.”

Christopher Hitchens: “Well of death, no. Of dying, yes. I feel a sense of waste about it because I’m not ready. I feel a sense of betrayal to my family and even to some of my friends who would miss me. Undone things, unattained objectives. But I hope I’d always have that, if I was 100 when I was checking out. But no, I think my main fear is of being incapacitated or imbecilic at the end. That, of course, is not something to be afraid of, it’s something to be terrified of.” If collected and edited alongside the many other television interviews he gave on the matter, they could yet be a source of strength and courage to many others despatched by an unfortunate diagnosis to that blighted land.

He asked that those friends with faith not pray for him and made the valid point that expecting him to suddenly embrace religious belief was as tasteless as an atheist approaching a cancer suffering with the words: “I hear you’re dying. Well wouldn’t it be a good time to get rid of your beliefs?’ Try it on them and see how they would like it. Christian, right? Well, can I suggest you now drop all that tripe?”

I’d like to think that The Hitch as he was known to his friends, could yet become the Boethius of today. In the fifth century, the philosopher Boethius was imprisoned and would eventually be executed by King Theodoric the Great. Behind the stone walls of his cell, he began to write a text that has brought comfort and philosophical sustenance to millions and, in the 13th century, became the second most popular book after The Bible. What was novel about the text was that it was secular in tone. Reason and deduction was the key to a happy life, not faith, though Boethius was a Christian. The book was written in the form of a conversation between Boethius and Lady Philosophy, who advised that “no man can ever be truly be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.”

Hitchens certainly lived life by the beat of his own drum and despite the fact that cigarettes and alcohol would appear to have hastened his death, he would not have a bad word said against them on account of how they had aided his writing, which, after all, was the most important part of his life.

So it would be entirely wrong not, for the final time, to let Christopher Hitchens have the last word: “Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”