Just Finished Hitch-22

So I just finished Christopher Hitchens’ memoir, Hitch-22. It was an exhilarating read that left me with one overwhelming thought:

I don’t know anything. Every page of his book had ten references that could keep me reading and learning for 3 months without interruption. What you get most from reading Hitchens is the feeling that you are morbidly uneducated and clueless about history and literature.

One could posit that this is precisely the effect he was hoping to have on the reader, i.e. “Look how smart I am.”, but I don’t think that’s it. I think he is, more than anything, saying “look how interesting the world is”.

And I agree with him.

I certainly hope his cancer does not turn out to be as deadly as everyone is saying it is. He supposedly has less than five years to live, at which point he’ll succumb to esophageal cancer just as his father did before him.

If that does happen I will be very sad. I want to see far more from Christopher Hitchens. ::