I’ve been hoping Katha would write something, because I knew she would have informed reservations. I remember her exchange with Hitchens when he left The Nation. I’ve been a fan of both of them for a long time, so their differences interest me. Katha suggests that “he was possibly the least troubled with self-doubt of [...]

Nick Cohen on Hitchens. In conversation he was the most intellectually generous man I have ever met. More writers than readers like to imagine are fretful and suspicious. They bite their tongues and hide their thoughts in case rival authors “steal their ideas”. Hitchens was too much of an enthusiast for life and debate to [...]

In the Guardian/Books, as is appropriate. The Guardian has its flaws but it does hella good book journalism. When I arrived from the airport on my last visit, he saw sticking out of my luggage a small book. He held out his hand for it – Peter Ackroyd’s London Under, a subterranean history of the [...]

Friends of Hitchens are remembering him for our benefit. Francis Wheen is. First there’s the unfathomably rude awakening – Waking yesterday morning to the news of Christopher Hitchens’s death, I was gratified to hear it given second place in the Today programme’s 7am bulletin. The gratification ended moments later when the BBC reporter described him as a [...]

And as twilight falls, a last goodnight…

Via Jim Houston in comments, a fitting valediction from Hitchens. To me, the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having.  

More on Hitchens, in no particular order. Michael Weiss at the Telegraph – The last few days had been, for those of us who knew he hadn’t much time left, a strange bundle of suffering commingled with the joy of recollection. We got to relive what endeared him to us from the start: the hilarious [...]

Another repost, this time of a repost – metametapost. I wrote it in 2002 or early 2003 when B&W was new, and reposted it last year, on July 1, 2010 I wrote this about eight years ago for “In the Library.” It hints at why I hope Christopher Hitchens stays around. Christopher Hitchens is a [...]

Update: a couple more. I didn’t include Salman Rushdie’s because it was more personal, but I see it’s also on Twitter where anyone can see it, so – Goodbye, my beloved friend.  A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops. Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949-December 15, 2011. And Richard Dawkins – Christopher Hitchens, finest [...]