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A review by notwellread
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
5.0
There is no way I will be able to write, now or ever, with the same level of eloquence as Hitchens employed, and it feels almost indecent to review someone’s dying words (or, words written as he was “living dyingly”, in a similar enough vein), but I suppose I am entitled to my own reaction nonetheless.
He manages to look at cancer, in general and in the context of his own experience, without the limiting sentimentality usually associated with it, but in straightforward and honest terms, but beautifully put across at the same time. The descriptions of physical disintegration are obviously imminent in the work, but the fragments that tail it off make the whole package increasingly solemn, especially given how clear it is that he held out and carried on with his work for so long. It’s hard to convey much of this here without my own experience of anything like it outside of reading it, but the work really speaks for itself and there is nothing really left to add. I had no idea that he was expected to recover, both in his own eyes and in the expectations of those around him – this made it all the more moving.
I remember him saying in one speech that there was no point to the argument that you could re-communicate with the great dead in the afterlife, saying “If I want to meet Shakespeare, I can meet him any time, because he is immortal in the works he’s left behind. If you’ve read those, meeting the author would almost certainly be a disappointment”, and as someone who, to some extent, idolised Hitchens for a long time but never met him or saw him in person, I obviously find this very consolatory. Fitting as well, perhaps, and for the best really, as his wife points out at the end from his leftover notes that she still finds – he will always have the ‘last word’.
He manages to look at cancer, in general and in the context of his own experience, without the limiting sentimentality usually associated with it, but in straightforward and honest terms, but beautifully put across at the same time. The descriptions of physical disintegration are obviously imminent in the work, but the fragments that tail it off make the whole package increasingly solemn, especially given how clear it is that he held out and carried on with his work for so long. It’s hard to convey much of this here without my own experience of anything like it outside of reading it, but the work really speaks for itself and there is nothing really left to add. I had no idea that he was expected to recover, both in his own eyes and in the expectations of those around him – this made it all the more moving.
I remember him saying in one speech that there was no point to the argument that you could re-communicate with the great dead in the afterlife, saying “If I want to meet Shakespeare, I can meet him any time, because he is immortal in the works he’s left behind. If you’ve read those, meeting the author would almost certainly be a disappointment”, and as someone who, to some extent, idolised Hitchens for a long time but never met him or saw him in person, I obviously find this very consolatory. Fitting as well, perhaps, and for the best really, as his wife points out at the end from his leftover notes that she still finds – he will always have the ‘last word’.