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| Malbon |
on Sat 17 Dec 11, 11:01 AM to Malbon's blog.
By all accounts a courageous death, writing and discussing books with his friends till the end.
Waspish, sometimes cruel, fiercely opinionated, Hitchens must have made many enemies as well as those loyal friends. I read "God is not Great" recently and enjoyed it, though I detected a whiff of the sixth form debating society in some of it. I suppose if you are going to be a great polemicist you can't spend too much time sympathising with conflicting points of view.
A lack of empathy with those who did not possess his intellectual gifts? A lack of compassion for those who at the end will prefer some comforting fiction to go with the morphine? If you live so publicly and adamantly as an atheist then you can't really cut and run at the end, can you? You have to face up to oblivion, without the soft soap. Perhaps you just make up your own kind of comforting fiction.
A brave man, I think, with the courage of his convictions. And a good way to go perhaps, not lying down, defeated, to wait for death, but insisting on being wrestled to the ground by it, still speaking your mind, refusing to be silent.
Edited Sat 17 Dec 11, 12:32 PM by Malbon
| 17 Dec 11, 12:19 PM angellover UK(CM), 3 yrs |
I admired this brave man who spoke his mind even though it didn't fit into the norm... as some would say. May his soul rest in peace. The highest fences we have to climb, are those we have built within our mind |
