Good Night, Bright Prince

I've been thinking about Christopher Hitchens frequently these last few days.  I should start by saying I haven't read but one article by Hitchens--that on his own physical decline from esophageal cancer that defies the maxim and does not make him stronger--plus a review of his last compendium, then the NYTimes obituary and a eulogy and a few other reminiscences (and here and here and here and here).  He seems a brilliant man, and not just because I neither recognize authors he quotes, speak languages he dissects, nor grasp history as broadly or deeply as he does.  There is a wit about him, a clarity, a frankness.  Or I should say was, for he died earlier this week at MD Anderson in Houston, aged 62.  It is a loss I didn't fully realize until after the fact.  I'd say requiescat in pace, but as he was a renown atheist, I'll hold his surviving family in my thoughts.  And perhaps best of all, read more of his works (a selection of his Vanity Fair columns is here).