A Nihilist Who Cares

A Man I Loved to Love

I submitted the following to the Globe and Mail a week ago to share my sense of loss for the man monikered Christopher Hitchens (he died you know). However, he died when I was overseas and I fear my letter did not reach the Globe letters desk in a timely fashion (I have an issue with timing in many parts of life, it seems). I still want to share this, even if the paper does not publish it.

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Christopher Hitchens was a man that some loved to hate, some hated to love, and some few (myself included) loved to love. It’s perhaps too soon to say that we will never again witness such tenacity, wit, intelligence and mastery of language. However, his writing reminded us that how something is said is often as important as what is said - a rare trait. Hitchens held many views - powerfully argued - in contrary to conventional thinking. He recognized that most opinions had a seed of truth to them, but that these seeds were often mistaken for fully ripe fruit. But this was often his point: clear thinking and reasoning is within the faculties of most, and prophets and heroes of ideology are unnecessary. Hitchens summarized the fear of death as follows: the party will go on without us. I fear the party has lessened with the exit of Christopher.

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Goodbye Christopher. We never got to meet in life, but I still have many books and articles of yours (your legacy in many respects) to read. Even without an animate body, you’re not quite dead yet.