Mortality [Hardcover]

It comes as no surprise that one of the most remarkable troublemakers and polemicists this country has ever produced didn't leave without having a few important things to say. The late great Christopher Hitchens used the pages of Vanity Fair during his battle against a tumor in his esophagus to partly apply the maxim of Dylan Thomas to "rage, rage against the dying of the light". That said you sense throughout the pages of "Mortality", a book collecting those very special essays, that Hitchens instinctively felt that this was one argument he wasn't going to win. As such his tangle with death is a level headed but poignant dalliance with the slow degradation of a body which graphically charts the "wager" with chemotherapy taking "your taste buds, your ability to concentrate, your ability to digest and the hair on your head". He is painfully honest and reflective throughout about his predicament not least the "gnawing sense of waste" and the reality of becoming an early "finalist in the race of life". Yet it wouldn't be Hitchens if the opportunity for settling some old scores was not taken and in particular his restatement of his vociferous views on atheism despite the fact that September 20th 2010 was designated by one religious website in the States as "Everyone pray for Hitchens day".

Others were less charitable for in some quarters the onset of Hitchens illness produced a vicious form of schadenfreude not least amongst his many enemies in the US Christian right where his strong opinions on religion had provoked and outraged those not prepared to countenance any debate. He quotes an opinion from an American religious blog that viewed his throat cancer as "Gods revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him". Undoubtedly most Christians would find such a view repugnant but in any case Hitchens would have no truck with such nonsense. In his autobiography "Hitch 22" he was candid about a lifestyle that some described as "convivial" while others thought "excessive" a better term. He argued alternatively that a cigarette permanently locked in his hand and the love of a "second bottle" were as much sources of inspiration for his writing as his limited repertoire of heroes like Paine and Orwell. He knew the source of his problems but that's not the point of this book. It is in essence a slow diary of his journey through ""Tumortown" its excruciating levels of pain, the corresponding fatalism and resignation, its false hopes and eventual knock out blow. There are brilliant passages on figures as diverse as Leonard Cohen, and Nietzsche, a retelling of the waterboarding torture which Hitchens endured to attack the Bush administration with a searing polemic and finally the weariness at the offerings of possible cancer cures. `You sometimes feel that you may expire from sheer ADVICE", he exclaims in frustration.

This short book concludes with a chapter of fragmentary jottings which are in every sense the most affecting part of the book. The broken phrases and quotes show a mind that thinks deeply, still questioning, still at work and debating until the very last. This is despite of "Chemo-brain. Dull, stuporous" and fears that this "lavish torture is only the prelude to a gruesome execution". Hitchens also brilliantly unearths a quote from Saul Bellow which argues with simple insight that "death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are able to see anything". Christopher Eric Hitchens was a man who did his fair share of seeing not least on his many travels to chart despotism and dictatorship and to rally against it with clarity not heard since George Orwell. He also always had the right words even when he was fundamentally wrong and the best of his writings are furiously brilliant, deserving the widest readership whether you agree with him or not. Hitchens died on 15th December 2011, and this the book concludes with a tender "Afterword" from his widow Carol Blue. At one point in "Mortality" the author quotes Horace Mann's observation that "Until you have done something for humanity you should be ashamed to die". In the case of the sadly lamented and much missed Christopher Hitchens there was no need to worry about this, he did more than enough.

I agree with Red on Black's review in its entirety and though the final thoughts and musings of CH have already been provided in Vanity Fair and in interviews he gave during his last months, Mortality is a dignified, reflective and enriching literary coda to the life of one of the most stimulating writers/columnists/polemicists of the last thirty years and more.

To those drawn to this slender volume, perhaps mainly, as a result of the recent articles/obituaries about CH - and who have not read much of his voluminous output, buy this book; it will whet your appetite for more of his stimulating and enriching works.

Reading Mortality I was again struck by an abiding sense of loss, a sense of bereavement that has endured since his passing in December, last year. Such was his uniqueness and his unfailing courage that, together with his intellect and literary talents, it is doubtful that any other writer or columnist will fill the void.

One last point, for the sake of accuracy, Amazon needs to amend the product details of Mortality. This slim volume is 106 - and not the claimed 240 - pages in length.

Mortality is a slim and sober volume, and one that gets harder to read as it nears its (and the author's) conclusion. Christopher Hitchens gladly took on the role of public intellectual, and it is one in which he effortlessly excelled. His erudition was remarkable, his essays managing the tricky combination of being nuanced and pugnacious, eloquent and funny. And it is these qualities that he brought to his valiant and very public crusade against esophageal cancer, the final and unwinnable conflict waged in the theatre of his body.

The present collection of essays starts with a touching Foreword by Graydon Carter (Hitchens's editor at Vanity Fair), a Foreword in which he describes the convivial and controversial character Hitchens embodied. But despite political differences of opinion, the Iraq war being foremost among them, Carter conveys how hard it was (is) to dislike Hitchens, a sentiment extending to his large readership. For that was the thing about Hitchens: it didn't matter how much you disagreed with what he was saying, and there was quite a lot, he was still one of the most insightful and ruthless essayists around, a true contrarian.

Primarily, the essays begin with Hitchens being diagnosed in June 2010. The openness with which he relates the news is brave, the mixture of shock and motivation palpable. But he controls the pointless rage and favours curiosity instead. This was an aggressive cancer, and one whose encroaching malignity robbed him of his two main attributes: his voice and the energy to write. The measured reflections on these two aspects of his illness are the most poignant, as he keeps responding to the cancer in new ways, undertaking a dialectical approach to the disease that will kill him. The humour, however, is still there, and despite this being an irreversible trip through 'Tumortown', Hitchens is still the best guide you could have.

The final jottings and fragments are followed by Carol Blue's Afterword. Hitchens's widow shows the private side of her husband, the side his readers did not see. And it is devastatingly personal in tone, the few tiny triumphs of his illness recounted with an admirable honesty.

But it is the industriousness, both on and off the page, which grabs the reader's attention, as Hitchens, even in his final days, didn't seem to stop: he kept on thinking and evaluating ideas in his mind, an unimpeachable example to us all.