Must have been extremely difficult for the oncologists to differentiate it from the rest of him.
The signature self-absorption of the aging cohort of "new left" journopukes is on full display in Hitchen's article on the subject of his imminent demise in, appropriately enough, Vanity Fair.
Oesophageal cancer is only one of nature's ways of telling you that the price of alcoholism and heavy smoking is greater than merely making you an unpleasant person to be around.
Furthermore, it's all so passée. The whole gitane-in-mouth, brandy-swilling pose went out with Albert Camus, who died in 1960. “In the depth of winter", he wrote, "I finally learned that there within me lay an invincible summer”. He also said: "I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than to live my life as if isn't and find out that there is."
By contrast, the self-styled soixante-huitard (no puns, please) Hitchens writes: " it occurs to me that if I didn’t have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far. Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill."
Tsk, tsk. That's straight out of L'Étranger. The anti-hero Meursault, contemplating his imminent execution, hopes there will be a crowd to greet him with cries of hate. Camus' fictional character murdered for the same reason Hitchens worked so hard at being an enfant terrible: to make a mark on an indifferent world.
In vain - nobody gives a shit. Hitchens should just shut up and die like a man.
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Vanitas vanitatum, hitching his wagon to a scar.
ReplyDeleteThe paparazzi live and die by their word-pics, but he has been remaindered to the glue-merchants. This bravado won't stick him together long. Most of us take the long walk alone, bud. Forget your audience, they will soon forget you.
Yeah - I had a couple of months when I thought, happily incorrectly, that my cancer op had failed to prevent matastasis. My only thought was what a drag I would become to my sons. Wouldn't have waited for it to kill me.
ReplyDeleteMake that metastasis.
ReplyDelete'mata' is the Spanish for killing - as in 'matador'(taur) although that isn't really a Spanish locution. But the meta-cell-perversion waits for us all. The body rebels against our own perversions.
ReplyDelete