A Memorial, Ribald and Reverent, for Christopher Hitchens

Mark Mahaney for The New York TimesChristopher Hitchens in 2007.

On Friday in the Great Hall of Cooper Union, friends and fans of Christopher Hitchens, the author and columnist who died on Dec. 15, will gather for “some highmindedness and some laughs,” according to Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair.

“Christopher was brilliant and incredibly funny, so I’m hoping the memorial will reflect that,” said Mr. Carter, who was both a friend and editor to Mr. Hitchens, a columnist at the magazine for almost 20 years. To that end, writers, including Stephen Fry, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Christopher Buckley will share some memories about the man many of his friends called “Hitch.” His prolificacy at the keyboard and at various bars will undoubtedly come up, as will the capers he pulled on his way to becoming one of the most provocative essayists in recent literary history. He drank, he said, “to make other people less boring.”

He never had that problem. Mr. Hitchens had no compunction about jabbing his pen into sacred figures, like Mother Teresa, or ripe targets, like Henry Kissinger. An atheist to the end, Mr. Hitchens did not find God on the way out the door, but continued to type and publish up to the end of his life.

His wife, the writer Carol Blue, helped organize part of the program, which will also include Francis Collins, the National Institutes of Health director who played a role in Mr. Hitchens’s care after he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and the physicist Lawrence Krauss. (Perhaps Mr. Krauss can explain how Mr. Hitchens ended up with an asteroid named after him.)

Mr. Carter said that Mr. Hitchens was the first person he called after starting (with Kurt Andersen) Spy magazine in the mid-1980s – “he turned me down” – and then when he became editor of Vanity Fair in 1992. “I could finally afford him,” Mr. Carter said.

“We want it to be a cheery occasion,” Mr. Carter said. “We certainly miss Christopher, but it’s important to remember that when he died, he was at the height of his career.”

The memorial is open to the public on a first-come, first-come basis, so you might want to drop a note to hitchens@vf.com just about … now.

Source & Image : New York Times