Christpher Hitchens, R.I.P.

[yendi]

Christopher Hitchens has died. I agreed with some of the things he said, hated some of the other things he said vehemently. I first encountered his writing in a 1991 college course called Anglo-American History since 1850, in which his writings about Churchill's potential complicity in the sinking of the Lusitania was something that fascinated me. I've since found myself loving (his assault on the classist Shakespeare naysayers) and hating (his claim that woman cannot be funny) various things he's written, often within a sentence or two of each other. But whether writing or speaking, he's always been fascinating, and it's hard to not imagine reading his opinions any more, whatever I feel about them.

Comments

sic semper drink-soaked former Trotskyite poppinjay

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Part of me is never going to forgive him for his cheerleading the war, but when he was on my side, I always did find the man quite canny and amusing. I think the fact that I am ambivalent about his passing would please him more than if I missed him.