{"id":8637,"date":"2011-12-16T08:26:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T16:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/?p=8637"},"modified":"2011-12-16T08:26:38","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T16:26:38","slug":"r-i-p-christopher-hitchens-1949%e2%80%932011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/2011\/12\/r-i-p-christopher-hitchens-1949%e2%80%932011\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens, 1949\u20132011"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cn<\/p>\n

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949\u20132011 | Blogs | Vanity Fair<\/a>: “Christopher Hitchens\u2014the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant\u2014died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.<\/p>\n

\u201cCancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic,\u201d Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last 12 months, he produced for this magazine a piece on U.S.-Pakistani relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden\u2019s death, a portrait of Joan Didion, an essay on the Private Eye retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a prediction about the future of democracy in Egypt, a meditation on the legacy of progressivism in Wisconsin, and a series of frank, graceful, and exquisitely written essays in which he chronicled the physical and spiritual effects of his disease. At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else\u2014just as he had been for the last four decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends,\u201d he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949\u20132011 | Blogs | Vanity Fair: “Christopher Hitchens\u2014the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant\u2014died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose … Continue reading R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens, 1949\u20132011<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4RRl-2fj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8638,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions\/8638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}