Hitch

I can't recall when I first heard of Christopher Hitchens. I do recall being struck by his delivery and the way he could buttress his arguments with wit, charm and the occasional rapier. Although I generally disagreed with his commie bastard, atheist views, I admired his style. Harken back to William F. Buckley and the ability to toy with the English language. To use it as a tool to accomplish a goal and convey a point of view with a degree of grace. Hitchens had this ability. Now, due to cancer, he is losing his voice. The tool that he was able to utilize with such great effect is failing him. He writes of this struggle here.

Like health itself, the loss of such a thing can’t be imagined until it occurs. In common with everybody else, I have played versions of the youthful “Which would you rather?” game, in which most usually it’s debated whether blindness or deafness would be the most oppressive. But I don’t ever recall speculating much about being struck dumb. (In the American vernacular, to say “I’d really hate to be dumb” might in any case draw another snicker.) Deprivation of the ability to speak is more like an attack of impotence, or the amputation of part of the personality. To a great degree, in public and private, I “was” my voice. All the rituals and etiquette of conversation, from clearing the throat in preparation for the telling of an extremely long and taxing joke to (in younger days) trying to make my proposals more persuasive as I sank the tone by a strategic octave of shame, were innate and essential to me. I have never been able to sing, but I could once recite poetry and quote prose and was sometimes even asked to do so. And timing is everything: the exquisite moment when one can break in and cap a story, or turn a line for a laugh, or ridicule an opponent. I lived for moments like that. Now, if I want to enter a conversation, I have to attract attention in some other way, and live with the awful fact that people are then listening “sympathetically.” At least they don’t have to pay attention for long: I can’t keep it up and anyway can’t stand to.

Did I really write "harken"?