As We Forever, Read Hitchens and Stand Still

Posted by: Tom Keene on December 20, 2011

We are studying a man with very little sense of humor.

Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, 2005.

Cam Neely was the best hockey player I have seen play the game. I am most sure there were others, but Neely owned my experience. Ten would be “playing” in the Boston Bruins offensive zone and then…Neely would receive the puck. It was as if the others stood still.

That was what Christopher Hitchens did to me.

His craft was so good, so competent, so outrageously skilled that we read fully engaged as we agreed and simultaneously disagreed with his outrageous outrageousness.

At our interview in support of God is Not Great, I made every attempt to keep up. “We” were a triumph. We spoke of Orwell, Iraq (would you take your offspring to Northern Iraq?) and faith.

Near the end of the interview, I attempted to make the giant waiver.

“What was it like the day you became an American citizen?”

Christopher Hitchens waivered but did not miss a beat. He spoke of the honour/honor of being made a citizen of the United States of America at the Jefferson Memorial.

Read his Thomas Jefferson. And know, know for certain, that at that moment he stood still. As we, as we forever, read Hitchens and stand still. Discuss.