Mortality

This short collection of writings done by Christopher Hitchens detailing his experience with cancer, dying and mortality reminds me in no little way of a 21st century Montaigne. While I was expecting Hitchens stoic materialism to jump off the page, I was also surprised by his gentleness. This is a man who loved life. He loved his family. He loved his friends. He loved to think, to write and to speak. Is there any greater testament to a life well-lived than to read or listen to a man's final words and walk away from that experience made better by his spirit and his strength. If "death is", to re-use Bellow's phrase, "the dark backing a mirror needs before it can give off a reflection," than Hitch's life and words were that same mirror's silver.

In contrast to what Richard Dawkins had to say about Christopher Hitchens as an orator (“he was the greatest orator of our time”), in my review of the Audible selection God Is Not Great, I referred to Hitchens’ mumbling narration. And then, the author literally loses his voice. I was angry. Angry at the poor production of the piece which might have had less to do with the narrator and more to do with the producer. But angry more that I could not literally or figuratively hear more of the wonderful voice that was Christopher Hitchens.

Mortality is a very short description of the diagnosis, treatment and last days of the author’s life. While incredibly sad for those among us who admired him so, in these last examples of his work, I believe we mostly hear joy and good humor. I admired the intellect of Christopher Hitchens more than anything and so many scholars of his calibre lack that sense of humor or at least do not include it as part of their literary works; not Hitchens. Here he is funnier than sh*t right to the end.

I often found myself comparing Hitchens in Vanity Fair with Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone. I mostly agreed with both politically up until the Iraq War. Here there seemed to be a dramatic shift in Hitchens’ politics. Most of us on the Left embraced him as one of ours till suddenly he seemed to turn NeoCon. Well maybe he didn’t really. Here we go pigeonholing him and I think a person of Hitch’s stature deserves better than to be labeled left, right or center. “God knows,” one could probably never label him any one of those. We all could embrace Christopher Hitchens as one of ours. It was humanity that he was really all about after all and not any particular politique. Hitchens remained a polemicist right to the end and these essays are here to prove it.

Sorry that you have left us, Hitch. You leave a hole in contemporary, scholarly debate that may not soon be filled.

The narrations! No question.

My mother was also, unfortunately, a resident of "TumorTown". So, hearing this amazing writer share his journey with such vivid clarity, in some strange way, it brought strength and courage to me. I suppose that is what I most enjoyed about this audiobook. The foreword and the afterword where amazing additions to this book. I can't help but think the book would be incomplete without them. The fact that they were narrated by their respective authors was a pleasant surprise and especially powerful. This is the first time I have ever cried while reading or listening to a book. I have listened to Carol Blue's afterword three times and it moves me if not to tears, nearly to tears, every time. Well done!

Simon Prebble is one of the best in the business.

Absolutely!

I would really like to know what song is being played at the end of the afterword. If any one reading this know what song it is or where the "credits" of the audio book may be found I would appreciate it.

Death is never a good thing, but Hitchens once again has spurred my motivation. Live life, and live it well is a good motto. But I don't think you'd ever reach the verve of Hitchens. I've never known of anyone so sure that they are correct, and that their path is the right one. While I didn't always agree with his points, I was never as sure about my opinion as he seemed to be about his.

As I listened on, while I already knew the ending, I could not help but think that Hitchens was too smart, too creative, and too boisterous to not find a way to change the course of this inevitable ending. He gave insight into the plight of cancer patients, and intimate thoughts of the terminally ill. Insights that I think you'd only receive from a dear loved one going through the same illness and treatments. In all of his writing, the one thing I took was a severe pride in humanity. We are but clever animals, and look what we have accomplished. And all of us do what we do while knowing this fate awaits us. What courage it takes to live life like we're not dying. He wrote this with that same unending pride and thoughtfulness that he chastised religious believers for forsaking. Spending life on bended knee for an idea that has been improved upon was not for Hitchens.

Dying while pretending he wasn't going to die was not his way either. He took all of the pain of death, and focused on it. He had to full appreciate what he was going through as he wrote about it. That takes some serious intestinal fortitude, and that was the way of Hitchens.

While my rambling review is not great, I highly recommend this book.

While I may not have always agreed with Christopher Hitchens, I always admired him. He was a light whose brilliance could not be denied, a writer and thinker whose unique voice resounded through the last 40 years of British and American culture. Mortality is a short collection of essays written by Hitchens in the last 18 months of his life, a clear-eyed view of his experience with esophageal cancer and the various treatments he endured in hopes of buying some time.

The thing I loved most about Hitch is that he was never afraid to say out loud or in print what other people were probably thinking but generally kept to themselves. Here, he has plenty to say about clichéed cancer metaphors and euphemisms (like "battling cancer," which comes with the built-in assumption that those who "lose the battle" just haven't fought hard enough). He's at his best telling stories about the hypocrites around him, like the woman in a checkout line who tells him about a relative who had liver cancer, beat it for awhile, then got it again and died--in her opinion, "because he was gay." Was this intended to give Hitchens--a staunch atheist--hope, push him towards a god who would be so feebly vengeful ("Why not a lightning bolt?"), or what? Hitchens is also brutally honest about the devastation of both cancer and chemotherapy--honest, but without wallowing in self-pity. It's as if his own body has become a subject of observation and investigation.

While it's sad, yes, to have lost Christopher Hitchens, Mortality isn't the depressing read you might imagine. It reflects the humor, brilliance, vitality, and clear-eyed realism that readers came to expect from him.

Very finely read by Simon Prebble, with a heartbreaking epilogue by written and read by Hitchens's wife, Carol Blue.

The book gives great insight into how one feels when they have an illness. The story is warm, funny, and very sad at the same time. I listened to the entire book in one day and then I listened to it again. I will miss his writings alot.

Yes. Well written, expresses the reality of the battle of the human spirit when faced with its mortality, specifically cancer.

Very factual and real. I could feel his pain and his anguish.

Very well done, cognicent of the late writer himself.

The afterward by Christopher's wife.. very difficult not to break down with her. My heart goes out to her.

I am in the medical field and was moved and enlightened by Christopher's ability to express and describe his emotions and consequences. He is a huge loss to talent.

This was enjoyable in an emotional way. I am a big fan of books that can bring me through a rollercoaster of emotion. This is 4 stars on that ability. I would put this on the upper half of all the great books I have listened to so far, but to give a number ranking would be meaningless to others reading this review unless they know how many of the books here I have actually listened to. I would rather just say it was great.

Christopher's animated style of writing.

The scene in the epilogue painted by his wife coupled with Hitchen's coloring offered shortly before his surmise.

This short, but enjoyable piece was successful in both of those endeavors.

If you are like me, and take the length of a book into your final decision as to whether you buy it or not, this is worth the money or the credit even with the short length.

Much shorter than I would have liked, but in the two hours of audio, Hitchens brings to life the struggle of a man in the throws of a losing battle with stage 4 Esophogeal Cancer. This is a particularly nasty cancer that leaves little doubt as to outcome, just a question of how long. Hitchens brings his brand of insight and eloquence to a situation that is in some sense hopeless.

In the course of doing so we will all be able to better understand what thoughts, what emotions have gone through the minds of all those whom we love but have struggled with some form of a serious hopital stay. I don't know, but perhaps this would have shifted the tone and topics of conversation I had with loved ones who didn't make it through. It is incredibly difficult to put yourself in their shoes unless you've been there. Having been there recently and having read this viciously short, eloquent and insightful bit from Hitchens, I don't think I'll approach sickness and hospitals in the same way.

I do wish that there had been some more of self-indulgence and/or self-pity, but he didn't want to revel in those feelings, yet clearly it is something with which all in such situations suffer. A man with such eloquence and insight would have certainly shed new light on this aspect of serious / terminal disease.

Much has been made about the "fact" that Hitchens didn't change his world view when confronted with the end of his life. Unfortunately the brevity and scope of the book I don't believe would have allowed any of these issues to be addressed. There was talk at the end of the larger book he had still hoped to write. He at some point rails against the Randy Pausch approach to passing, but at the end perhaps the book I had hoped to read would have been Hitchens' version of that approach. I didn't want to hear more argument about or criticism of religion and how others choose to live, but I wanted to hear about the beauty and virtue of Hitchens' secular humanism.

Nonetheless, this book will touch you and change the way you empathize with terminal disease / serious hospital stay patients and for that reason alone it is highly recommended.

I found Christopher Hitchens. I am searching for more of his works. He has an irreverence that I find fascinating. I would not have liked this material at any other point in my life, but today it was inspirational.

Hitchens ongoing humor in the face of a painful death is awe inspiring.

No.

I did listen in one sitting it wasn't very long, but neither was Hitchen's life.

It was eye opening. I hope to find many other of Hitchens insights and outlooks.