A Few Thoughts

I'm always a little disheartened to near the end of one of Christopher's little tomes (can this one properly be called "little"?), but I am saddest to see this one go of any I've so far devoured. Dozens of essays, some 850 pages, and not a bad page crossed my line of sight. Virtually every moment was a fresh undertaking in some new and interesting topic that was littered with his classic penetrating insight and vicious wit.

The very idea is absurd; that the same man could write one essay detailing the argument that North Korea has evolved into a Right Wing extremist state and another in the same collection defending the use of "like" among the young. Well, perhaps not defending it, but certainly urging it's rescue and rehabilitation. The mind reels at the span of it all.

There's no way to read one of his books and not end up missing him terribly, but with that comes a the surging delight at having ever encountered such a singular human being. In Hitch's work, one collides with a fantastic mind bearing a genuine gift for language that takes nearly every contrary position one can muster up the mental processes to contemplate and spits them back at you.

There really is nothing quite like reading Hitch when he's pulling out his arguments and tossing them about.