it is just under two hours. >> welcome to you all. i'm great and carter, and for more than 20 years i had a very good fortune of being christopher's editor and friend. i think we can all agree that in addition to being a brilliant journalist, christopher was a charmer, and above all, a bit of a scalawag or. ..

>> be hard pressed to find a writer today who could match the volume of exquisitely crafted columns, dispatches and books that he produced over four decades. he was an editor's dream, and he was a reader's dream. despite the sorrow surrounding today's gathering, there is much to celebrate. there was, for instance, chriser christopher's bravely. not just in facing the illness that took him. he didn't mind landing outside the cozy cocoon of conventional liberal wisdom, the most notable example be being his curious pro-war stance before the invasion of iraq. we will celebrate his elevated but inclusive sense of humor, and or for that legendary memory

that held up even under the most liquid of late night conditions. [laughter] we will pay tribute to the people he left behind, particularly his wife carol and his three children, alexander, sophia and antonia. to celebrate christopher's monumental legacy, the hundreds of thousands of words he put on paper, we have speakers who are blessed in knowing him both in friendship and in his work. two aspects of life that he was a master of. i would like to introduce the first of these speakers, james fenton. [applause] >> what would the dead want from us watching from their cave? would they have us forever howling, would they have us rave or disfigure ourselves or be

strangled like some ancient emperor's slave in none of my dead friends were emperors with such exorbitant tastes, and none of them were so vengeful as to have all their friends waste, waste quite away in sorrow, disfigured and defaced. i think the dead would want us to weep for what they have lost. ity that our luck -- i think that our luck in continuing is what would affect them most. but time would find them generous and less self-engrossed. and time would find them generous as they used to be. and what else would they want from us, but an honored place in our memory, a favorite room, a hallowed chair, privilege and celebrity? and, thus, the dead might cease to grieve, and we might make amends. and there might be a path

between dead friends and living friends. what our dead friends would want from us would be such living friends. [applause] ♪ ♪ when things seem hard or tough and people are stupid, obnoxious or daft, and you feel that you've had quite enough. ♪ just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour. ♪ that's -- >> i just wanted to get you in the mood for some science. [laughter] every time i left christopher and carol's place, usually late at night and always drunk -- [laughter]

i would stop outside and marvel and tell myself, i'm christopher hitchens' friend. what did i do to deserve that? shortly after his death i was interviewed by an annoying interviewer on cnn who introduced him by saying on the one hand he inspired the ideals of skepticism, free inquiry and rational thought by many, but at the same time has been called a bullying, lying, opportunistic contrarian. she said that as if it were a bad thing. [laughter] christopher was a beacon of knowledge and light in a world that constantly threatens to extinguish both. he had the courage to accept the world for just what it is and not what we'd like it to be, and for me that's the highest praise i can give to any intellect. christopher understood that the universe doesn't care about our well far and our lives only have the meaning that we give it. this came through the credo that

guided his life, the simple proposition that skepticism is the highest principle the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence. whenever i spent an evening with hitch, i came away saying when i grow up, i want to be an intellectual. it was humbling to witness a mind so capable of surrounding any subject, relishing it, exploring it, critically soaking up everything that's worth knowing. he was ever ready to incorporate this lifetime of intellectual exploration along with the playful and curious excitement of a child in a candy store. he embodied the delicious possibilities of existence and the profound satisfaction that intellectual exploration and integrity can bring, especially when confronting power with knowledge, even as he brave withly continued to do so with the full recognition that the possibility of a successful outcome in any such battle is slim, that stupidity, prejudice, superstition, hatred, power and

money will generally win. but beyond this it was his unadulterated joy of the human experience, the need for irony and humor combine with the the full banquet of human knowledge that set his apart. i personally remain guided by his example and often find myself asking the simple question that guides so many other people in other contexts, although i change one word and ask myself, what would christopher do? [laughter] the last time i saw him, our discussions ranged over subjects that included the nature of nothingness, quantum mechanics, the obscenity that is capital punishment, the madness that governs the religious fanaticism infecting both size of the middle east and the pretentious nonsense that encompasses so much of religious faith in our popular culture. christopher wasn't a scientist, and it may surprise you to know that he was fascinated by science, not merely because of its impact on human affairs, but more importantly, because of the

remarkable ideas that it generates. he was wise enough to recognize that the universe is far more imaginative than we are, and he was eager to learn from the universe as he was from the world's greatest writers. on the last day i was with him, someone came to the door, and i answered it for christopher, and the person delivered a manuscript and asked if i was his manager or agent. i said, no, i'm his personal physicist. [laughter] i can think of no greater honor. through his questions and reflections, he extended my understanding and implications of my own work. i described to him the remarkable discovery that distant galaxies are reseeding from -- receding from us faster all the time. the first picture a is a galaxy. it's not our galaxy, why? i just want to see if you're awake, we live in our galaxy. [laughter] likely future observers will be left with a kind of poet rick

symmetry to arrive at precisely the false picture of our universe that we had 100 years ago, that there are 400 billion galaxies in an expanding universe that's 13.be 7 billion years old. in return, as a result, he pointed out to me an argument that i adopted in my last book for which he was writing the forward before he became too ill. nothingness is heading straight towards us as tsa as can be. so if someone asks that annoying religious question meant to stymy us that don't believe in god, we can shut them up by saying, just wait. there won't be for long. [laughter] that idea didn't terrify him. he realized that knowledge is not to be gained for comforting our soul, but for enhancing the awareness of being alive. christopher now has hi own cosmic -- his own cosmic legacy, and i don't mean some new age sense. instead, out in the asteroid

belt, if you can look at the next picture, between mars and jupiter almost three times the distance between the sun and the earth orbits a small asteroid about the size of manhattan. be discovered in 2002 at the lowell observatory, it was named hitchens 57901. ch275 for short, and it was named after christopher. long after our own civilization has probably died and been forgotten, christopher's asteroid will continue quietly orbiting the sun until perhaps dwraffation kicks it out of a circular orbit, and it heads towards the sun, ending its life with a brilliant flame, much as christopher ended his. and speaking of cosmic legacies, before leaving christopher's company the very last time i saw him n one of those poetic accidents that makes life so unexpectedly enjoyable, i was reading the newspaper and a piece about an emerging effort

to insure young people at elite institutions preserve their catholic upbringing while in college. when describing the temptations, the author wrote: exposed to hitchens, coed dorms and beer pong -- [laughter] such students are likely to stray. [laughter] i reflected on what a remarkable tribute this simple sentence represented. to be so ubiquitous that you can be mentioned without mention is one thing. [laughter] perhaps the most appropriate way christopher would want to be remembered, so i'll leave it at that. [applause] >> hi.

i'm victor, and i think do reason i've been asked to read from christopher first is because i had the honor of initiating christopher's coming to this country to be, to join the nation. and i proposed to his then-editor bruce page that we have the first international editor's exchange in history and that an editor at "the nation" would move over there, and christopher would move over here, and if all four of us liked the arrangement, it could be extended from three months to six months, and they would live in each other's houses, they would stay on their respective payrolls, so we'd have no green cards to worry about. and that's what happened, and christopher then defected, and the rest is history. [laughter] i was going to read a brilliant review that christopher wrote about the goya exhibit in new york, but it occurred to me that -- it was at the met --

that it wouldn't be doing christopher justice if we stuck to the script, so i'm going to read from something else. having said that, let me tell you why i was going to read from the goya review, it was because there was one sentence that entranced me. his special achievement to be a radical pessimist to force our attention on the base of the ghastly aspects of human personality while not surrendering to them or ceasing to protest their official instatement. that, to me, was christopher at his most christopherness. instead, what i want to read you is just two paragraphs -- we were told to keep our readings to three minutes -- i'm going to read you just two paragraphs from an article he wrote ostensibly about rhodesia, but with it actually began with his telling why margaret thatcher, the occasion when margaret

thatcher famously spanked him. [laughter] so here we are. the article is called, he who got slapped: lessons maggie taught me," by christopher hitchens. i make up my mind about people in the first ten seconds, and i very rarely change it. that's a quote. so "the new york times" quoted margaret thatcher in saying on the day, as saying on the day of her resignation. i would be happy to think that the statement was truthful since within minutes of first being introduced to me, thatcher lashed me across the buttocks with a rolled-up parliamentary order paper. be -- it happened in the course of an exchange of views about rhodesia in the late fall of 1977 when she was still leader of the opposition and was pandering to the racists in her party and the electorate. influenced perhaps by the fact that we were meeting in the

rosebury room in the house of lords, i made the mistake of bowing as if to acknowledge some point of hers, and she took swift advantage of my posture by shrieking, bow lower! and applying the document above mentioned. like the british electorate now shaking itself after more than a decade of thatcherite pew story, i often look back wistfully upon that spanking in the hope of decoding its significance. thank you. [applause] >> i'm ben. schwartz, i'm the literary and national editor of "the atlantic." i'm going to be reading from one of christopher's and finest pieces for the magazine, a review of a volume of letters between phillip larkin and monica jones, a book that christopher said shows the

civilizing effect that even the most trying woman can exert on even the most impossible man. [laughter] d.j. enright gave larkin a rare moment of unmixed pleasure by saying, as larkin proudly reported to monica, that i persuade words into being poetry and don't bully them. a critic could not have approached more nearly to the core of larkin's gift. it is inescapable that we should wonder how and why poetry manages to transmute the draws of existence into magic or gold, and the contrast in larkin's case is an especially acute one. having quit belfast, he removed himself forever to hull, a city which in point of warmth and amenity runs belfast a pretty

close second. here he brooded vilelessly and even spitefully on his lack of privacy, the success of his happier friends, amis and conquest, the decline of standards at the university he served, the general bloodiness of pub lunches and academic sherry parties, the frumpy manipulativeness of womenfolk, and the petrifying imminence of death. many of larkin's expeditions to churches were, in fact,en in excuse to visit -- an excuse to visit cemeteries or memorials. in spite of his repudiation of the fantasy of immortality. and with an -- [inaudible] tomb, it turn out he had taken monica along as a companion. we might agree to find it heartening that in consequence of a dead, average middle english sunday stroll as the

other half of an almost passionless relationship, phillip larkin should notice the awkwardly conjoined couple on an ancient stone coffin lid, and without force -- forcing, let alone bullying the language, still be able to find our almost instincts, almost true. what will survive of us is love. [applause] >> hello, i'm max macguinness, and i'm going to read from christopher's 2004 essay entitled, "the acutist ear in paris." i have not been able to discover whether there exists the precise french equivalent for the common

anglo american expression, killing time. he later added in a footnote when this piece was republished in "love, poverty and war," i should have looked further. [laughter] the term is declared precisely that way, and if ever -- [inaudible] was gallant, it was christopher. it's a very crass and breezy expression when you ponder it for a moment considering that time, after all, is killing us. marcel contemplate inside way that transcended the moment, attempted to interpenetrate these two alternatives. when the monty python gang acted out its summarized prus competition, one of the madrigal

team was cut off by the master of ceremonies before it had got beyond the opening stage. one can readily appreciate the difficulty, yet if i were asked to summarize the achievement of proost, i should reply as dauntlessly as i dared that his is the work of par excellence that exposes and clarifies the springs of human motivation. through his eyes we see what actuates the canty and the lover and the grande and the hypocrite and the pose your with a transparency of examples -- unk356r78ed except in shakespeare or george elliot. and this ability so piercing and at times even alarming is not mere knowingness. it is not, in other words, the product of cynicism. to be so per perceptive and yet so innocent, that, in a phrase, is the achievement of proost. thank you. [applause]

>> i'm aimee bell, christopher's editor at "vanity fair", and this is from his three-part series on the limits of self-improvement. [laughter] i'd noticed a touch of decline here and there, but one puts these things down to the acquirement of seniority. a bit of a stomach ache position in society. a glass of refreshment, in my view, never hurt anybody. this walking business is overrated. [laughter] i mastered the art of doing it when i was quite small. [laughter] and in any case, what are taxis for? smoking is a vice i will admit, but one has to have a hobby. nonetheless, when my friends at this magazine formed up and said they would pay good money to stop having to look at me in my current shape, i agreed to a course of rehabilitation. there now exists a whole

microeconomy dedicated to the proposition that a makeover is feasible, or in other words, to disprove scott fitzgerald's dictum, that there are no second acts in american lives. objective: to drop down from the current 185 pounds, to improve the tone of the skin and muscles, to wheeze less -- [laughter] to enhance the hunched and give some thought to the hair and fur questions. [laughter] more emphasis perhaps in the right places and more in the wrong ones. [laughter] to sharpen up the tailoring, to lessen the booze intake and to make the smile, which currently looks like a handful of mixed nuts -- [laughter] a little less scary to children. [laughter] [applause]

>> my name is michael, and this is from christopher's final article for "vanity fair". it's on charles dickens. charming, is it not? the seductive even, the manner this which that somewhat overpunctuated victorian sentence suddenly gives way and yields a deposit of freshness and gentleness and capacity of being pleased. it is all that emphasized the one central and polar and critical point that dickens wishes to enjoy on us all -- enjoin on us all. whatever you do, hang on to your childhood. he was true to this in his fashion both in ways that delight me and this ways that do not. he loved the idea of a birthday celebration, being lavish about it, reminding people that they were once unborn and are now

launched. this is big-hearted, and we might all do a bit more of it. it would help me to forgive perhaps just a little the man who helped generate the hallmark birthday industry and who with some of his less imposing and more moistly sentimental scenes in a christmas carol took the greatest birthday ever told and helped make it into the near ramadan of protracted obligatory celebration now darkening our decembers. [laughter] but imagine the power that dickens had. by a few brilliant strokes of the pen, rerevived and restored a popular festival and made it into a common defense against the bound-to-bees and the men who had been responsible for the misery of the hungry '40s. for the first time, the

downtrodden english people were able to see a celebrity, a man of wealth and fame who was on their side. we have very verbatim reports, sometimes in letters from the author himself, of the speeches he made enthusiastic crowds in halls across the nation. just as we have the author's cue cards for the electrifying evenings in 1869 when he staged the murder of nancy by bill sykes. so it's clear that dickens had the sort of demagoguic power that could have been dangerous in others' hands. it's also quite clear that he can't have modeled a villain like sykes or a heroine like nell on his own character. no, he was drawing on much wider and deeper sources of poe poten. the main one was the shared stubborn existence of so many people whom the system had

disregarded. begin thinking about it, and you start to whisper a list to yourself, the pathetic crossing sweeper, smike, mr. mccorber, all of them with pain to feel and a life to lead, and many of them kept going like poor dick swiveller, only by a unique sense of humor in the absurd. dickens was able to mine this huge resource of london life, becoming its conductor and chronicler like nobody since shakespeare himself. and and be always remembering -- and always remembering as he noted in the last stages of the old curiosity stop to keep the child in -- shop to keep the child in view. [applause] >> i'm tom, i'm going to read

the first two paragraphs and the last paragraph of a piece christopher wrote for "the nation." christopher was much more often arresting than arrested, but this is a piece which comes off one of the latter occasions. it was in prague, and here he is knowing what was coming as he seemed so often to do. a year and a bit before the velvet revolution. i cherished only two modest ambitions for my visit to this capital of the mummified baroque. the first was to be allowed to attend the legal meeting of which men and women from the human rights movements of the east and the disarmament movements of the west would be attempting to establish a common

terrain. the second was to be the first be writer in modern history to compose an article from prague that did not mention joseph k. or his equally 'em perishable creator. you attend the meeting in a private apartment, an introductory statement was made by a man who was once foreign minister of the republic but who is now an un-person in czechoslovakia. there's a knock on the door. into the apartment come uniformed and plain clothes police led by a man with eyes is so close together that he could comfortably get by with a monocl. [laughter] while one of his underlings sweeps the room with a video camera, he issues instructions to depart. at my request the former foreign

minister inquires politely if we may know what law has been infringed and in what respect this law contravenes the helsinki accords. he further inquires on behalf of his foreign guests if they may telephone their embassies. neither request is exactly denied. instead, the police official simply refuses to say on what charge or for what cause the foreigners are being treated in this fashion. at dusk on the charles bridge, small groups of young czechs gather every night under the statues to play guitars and pass bottles of wine. they sing the forbidden 1968 songs of martyred -- [inaudible] and the police don't quite know what to do about it. the orders from the top and from

moscow are not as direct or as clear as they used to be. the castle still looms above the city on the hill, but it is inhabited by pygmies who were fished out of the dust bin of history and who whimper in their street at the thought of going back to it. thank you. [applause] >> i'm christopher buckley, and my text today from hitch 22, pages xiii through xiv.

[laughter] these are the final paragraphs from the preface that christopher wrote for the paperback edition to his memoir, "hitch 22." another element of my memoir, the stupendous importance of love, friendship and solidarity, has been made immensely more vivid to me by recent experience. i can't hope to convey the full effect of the embraces and vowels, but i can, perhaps, offer a crumb of counsel. if there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it. the difference made will almost certainly be more than you have calculated.

the cause of my life has been that of combating superstition which, among other things, means confronting the dreads upon which it feeds. for some inexplicable reason, our culture regards it as normal, even creditable for the godly to admonish those who they believe to be expiring. a whole tawdry edifice of fabricated death bed conversions and moist devotional literature on this highly questionable assumption. though i could have chosen to take offense at being silkily invited to jettison my convictions when in extreme mis-- what an insult and what a non sequitur too -- i was

actually grateful for the heavy attention i received from the faithful. it gave my atheism, if you like, a new lease on life. [laughter] it also helped me keep open a long debate to which i am proud to have contributed a little. to say that this debate would outlast me would have been true at think time. instead of attending prayer breakfasts in my own honor on what was actually designated on the web as pray for hitchens day, i have spent much of the past year registering myself as an experimental subject for various clinical trials and protocols, mainly genome-based and aimed at enlarging human knowledge and at shrinking the area of darkness and terror where cancer holds dominion. my aim here is, obviously, not quite disinterested, but many of

the experiments are at a stage where any result will be too far in the future be to be of help to me. in this book i cite mayor as mann's injunction: until you have done something for humanity, you should be ashamed to die. so this is a modest and slight response to his challenge, to be sure, but my own. the eruption of death into my life has enabled me to express a trifle more concretely my contempt for the false consolation of religion and the belief in the centrality of science and reason. not all my views have been vindicated even to me. i see that i write here in this book that i personally want to do death in the active and not the passive and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing

something when it comes for me. i cannot quite sustain this jauntiness in the light of what i now know. should the best efforts of my physician friends be unavailing, i possess fairly clear idea of how stage iv e soft deal cancer harvests its victims. the terminal process doesn't allow for much in the way of activity or even of compose od forewells -- farewells, will the alone -- let alone stoic departures. this is why i'm so grateful to have already a lucid interval of some length and to have filled it with the same elements of friendship and love and literature and the dialectic with which i hope some of this week is also -- this book is also animated. i wasn't born to do any of the things i sat down here, but i was born to die.

and this coda must be my attempt to assimilate the narrative to its conclusion. christopher hitchens, washington, d.c., january 20th, 2011. [applause] [background sounds] >> i'm james wood, and i'm reading from the last paragraph of "why orwell matters," proof, i think, that much literary criticism is self-descriptive. if it is true that --

[inaudible] then what we have in the person of george orwell is by no means the saint mentioned by v.s. pritchard and anthony poe. at best, it could be asserted even by an atheist admirer that he took some of the supposedly christian virtues and showed how they could be lived without piety or religious belief. it may also be hoped that to adapt the words of -- [inaudible] on the death of yates, time itself deals kindly with those who live by and for language. the time with this strange excuse would even pass for kipling and his views. orwell's views have been largely vindicated by time, so he need not seek any pardon on that score. but what he illustrates by his commitment to language as the partner partner of truth is that views do not really count, that it

matters not what you think, but how you think, and that politics are relatively unimportant while principles have a way of enduring as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them. [applause] >> i'm peter from berlin. reading from a hitchens piece, why bosnia matters. he had written that in '92 during the war, and -- [inaudible] '93 in spring. we met '96, so we were not meeting at that time but exchanging our experiences. we became friends. for now all these are not more

than efforts to show an affirming flame. but they may not be merely quixotic. post-communist europe is hesitating on the brink of its own version of balkanization, and yugoslavia gets an inkling of what could lie ahead for more than one region, to say nothing of more than one culture. bosnia matters because it has chosen to defend not just its own self-determination, but the values of multicultural, long-evolved, mutually fruitful cohabitation. not since andalucia has europe owed so much to -- [inaudible] which also stands as a perfect rebuke to the cynical collusion that brings the apparently warring fanatics.

if sarajevo goes under, then all who care for such things will have lost something precious and will curse themselves, because they never knew its value while they still had it. [applause] >> i'm leslie coburn. i've chosen one of christopher's tart political commentaries on our leaders. this is from slate in 2004. ronald reagan used to alarm his soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both ute against an invasion -- unite against an invasion from mars. ronald reagan used to alarm other constituents by speaking about end times. in to value office, ronald reagan told simon breesenal on

two separate occasions that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the nazi death camps. there was more to ronald reagan than that. reagan announced that apartheid south africa had stood beside us in every war we have ever fought. [laughter] when south african leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war. reagan allowed al sander -- alexander haig to green light the invasion of lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in beirut and then ran away from lebanon altogether when the marine barracks were bombed. then, unbelievably, accused tip o'neill and the democrats of scuttling. reagan sold heavy weapons to the iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them and hadn't traded for hostages in any case would, all the same, fit on a small truck. reagan then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an

illegal war in nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that too. reagan then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between two impeachable crimes. [applause] >> i'm thomas mallon, and this is from "visit to a small planet," an's cay of christopher's that was -- essay of christopher's that was published in "vanity fair" early in 2001. north korea is a famine state. in the fields you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. they look pinched and exhausted. in the few dingy restaurants in the city and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the pyongyang times through the soup or the tea or the coffee. morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as duck.

one evening i gave in and tried a bowl of dog stew which at least tasted hearty and spicy. they wouldn't tell me the breed. [laughter] but then found my appetite crucially diminished by the realization that i hadn't seen a domestic animal, not even the merest cat, in the whole time i was there. in a pyongyang restaurant, don't ever ask for a doggy bag. [laughter] nobody knows how many north koreans have died or are dying in the famine, some estimates by foreign aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone. but the rotund, jolly face of kim ill sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustarded to applaud him. kim jung-il, incidentally, has been made head of the party and

of the army, but the office of the presidency is still eternally held by his adored and departed dad who died on july 8, 1994, at 82. kim is dead, long live the kim. this makes north korea the only state in the world with a dead president. [laughter] what would be the right term for this? a necropsy? a more tock cra si? anyway, grimly appropriate for a morbid system so many of whose children have died with grass in their mouths. [applause] ..

it begins with a quayle from what house and then from the book. looking up, we perceived our sensitive barmaid dabbing at her eyes with a dishcloth. sorry you were troubled she said in answer to our concerned gaze that he has just gone over to india, leaving her standing tightlipped and dry-eyed in the moonlight. right beside the old manner and their little dog has crawled up and victor hand as if he understood and sympathized. this is from janet morgan's

biography. at half past nine that evening, edwina's body was brought to brought bonds. commander north had asked the staff to come to the house if they wished. everyone was there lying down, waiting. what were they to do? he fell back on naval discipline. he ordered as the car turned into the drive and the dog snippet ran out to greet the mistress. that was the worst of all. from the very first page of this book, larger than life to the very last truth is stranger than fiction that utter cliché is entirely culprit. janet morgan who used rather to dominate and that -- that revolves in has perhaps mr. --

in a biographic style that is wholly deferential. this could be more happily suited to a genre of ladies magazine where one reads of resolute women with secret sorrows who sacrificed part of themselves that passionate attachments to powerful men and janet herself is said to have done with caspar weinberger. [laughter] by one washington account making the critical difference in keeping the falcons occupy by the british. gets approach can be hilariously fatal. thank you. [applause] >> it i am some six and this is from the vietnam syndrome.

how many times can one pretend to interview the parents of a child or an with bright yellow skin? the cleft palates, the deafness, the muteness, the pretzel limbs and lowing heads in the terrible expressions on the faces of the parents, who believes that this horror can can sometimes skip a generation? there's just enough knowledge for agony and remorse. in other words, but not enough for any healing process. no answer above all did the inescapable question, when will it stop? a rain from hell began falling from about 40 years ago and to how many unborn generations flex a school full of children who made sign language to one another or who could not sit still or who could not move much at all or who could not see or who could not hear. i took the tour of the workshops for trades such as fishnet weaving or car repair and was

then asked if i would like to say a few words through an interpreter to the assembly. i quite like a captive audience. but i didn't trust myself to say a thing. the children in the front row were so shrunken that they looked as though they could be my seniors. i swear to you that they have taken photos as one of his few rivals philip jones griffiths also took photographs that simply cannot be printed in this magazine because they would in your sleep as they had poisoned mind. after such knowledge as ts elliott asked, what forgiveness? that is easy. the question of forgiveness just doesn't come up. the world is barel a simulated to the new term genocide which was coined only in the 1940s

before the united states government added the fresh hell of ecocide or mass destruction of the web of nature that connects human and animal. i think we may owe the words distinction to my friend orville shell who wrote a near faultless essay of coolheaded and warmhearted pros in the old look magazine in march of 1971. at that time even in a picture magazine there weren't enough photographs of the crime so his words had this advice which makes me faintly proud to be in the same profession. at some point, being naturally scrupulous about the evidence, you can only speculate there even reports of women giving birth to monsters, the most occurrences are not recorded because of nonexistent procedures of impelling statistics. what we know now these three no better. out of a population of perhaps

84 million vietnamese, it self reduce several million during the war, there are as many as 1 million cases of agent orange afflictions still on the books. of these the hardest to look at are the monstrous births, but we agree to forgive ourselves for this and to watch real monsters such as robert mcnamara and henry kissinger, who calmly give the orders and instructions as they posture on chat shows in and cash in with their memoirs. but hey, forget it. forget it if you can. [applause] [applause] >> i am salman rushdie and i'm going to read a little bit from god is not great.

a part of the chapter christopher called a short aggression on the pig, or why it happened hates hal. [laughter] i want to read it in part it has christopher always appreciated my story of my loss of. when i first arrived in boarding school in england on a day or i bought a ham sandwich and ate it and lightning failed to strike. thus proving to me once and for all that god did not exist. the oldest and most tenacious of all protéges is the hatred and even fear of the pig. it's emerged and primitive judea and centuries one of the ways the other being circumcision by which could be distinguished. muslims appear to see nothing ironic in the adoption of this

uniquely jewish taboo. the real horror of the pork kind is manifest all over the islamic world. one good instance would be the continued prohibition of george orwell's animal farm, one of the most charming and useful fables of modern times, the reading of which school children are deprived. i parilla some of their fallen prohibition orders written by a pair of education ministries which are so stupid that they fail to notice the evil dictatorial role played to the pigs and the story itself. cramps together in sties, pigs tend to act swine ashley. as it were, and to have noisy and nasty fights. it is not unknown for them to be their own young and even their own excrement. while their tendency to random and loose gallantry is often painful to the more fastidious i. but as has often been noticed that pigs left to their own

devices and grants its sufficient space they will keep theirs -- keep themselves clean, bring a families and engage in social interaction with other pigs. the creatures also display many signs of intelligence and it has been calculated that the crucial ratio between brave waves and body weights is almost as high with them as it is in dolphins. that the cloven oath or trotter became a sign of dybulism from the fearful and i dare say it is easy to surmise which came first, the devil or the pig. it would need idiotic to wonder how the designer of all things can see such a versatile creature and commanded as higher memo creation to avoid it altogether or risk eternal displeasure that many otherwise intelligent mammals effect the belief that have been hates hal. i hope you have now guessed by now what we now in any case, that this fine beast is one of our fairly close cousins.

it shares a great deal of our dna and there has lately been welcome transplants of skin, heart valves and kidneys from pigs to humans. if which i hardly trust it not happened the new dr. baroque could corrupt recent advances in cloning and create a hybrid, the pig man is widely feared as the most probable outcome. two press of the little for that one may note children if left unmolested by rabbis and -- are -- to pigs especially baby wants in firefighters in general do not like to teach roast pork or crackling. the barbaric vernacular word for roasted human in new guinea and elsewhere was long pig. i have never had the relevant experience myself but it seems that we do if eaten, tastes very much like pigs. according to many ancient authorities that attitude of early swine was one of reference

as much as discussed. the being of pig flesh was considered something special even privileged and ritualistic. this mad confusion between the sacred and profane is found in all faiths at all times. a simultaneous attraction and repulsion drive from an anthropomorphic route the look of the pig, the taste of the pig, the dying yells of the pic on the evident intelligence of the pig were too uncomfortably two uncomfortably reminiscent of the human. four phobia does probably originate in the nighttime of human sacrifice and even cannibalism as to which the holy text often do more than hints. nothing optional drum homosexuality to adultery is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting and exact the fierce punishment have a repressed desire to participate. as shakespeare puts it to king lear, the policeman who lashes the hall has a need to use her for the very offense for which he applies the lash. today, ancient stupidity is upon

us again. muslim zealots in europe are demanding that the fruit three little pigs and miss piggy and other traditional characters be removed from innocent games of their children. the mirthless cretins of jihad have probably not read enough to know of the empress of blandings and the earl of emsworth renewable delight in the splendid pages of the incomparable author, mr. whiffle, the care of the pig but there will be trouble when they get that far. an old statue of a wild or in arboretum in england has threatened them mindless -- in microcosm this trivial fetish shows how religion and faith and superstition restores our whole picture of the world. [applause]

>> my name is olivia wilde. the last e-mail that christopher wrote me said that he may have accomplished the two things in life, the most significant in life was surely having been my babysitter. he was a wonderful babysitter and he later entrusted me with the later antonia. i'm going to read far piece from the boston review about a subject close to my own heart, haiti. even though haiti is a colony of the united states and a client military the object of daily u.s. intervention and what could be called its internal affairs, there is tremendous squeamishness about the idea of using force to secure the rights of the haitian people. in turning pale before a single juntas tugboat in

mid-october 1993 and withdrawing a large u.s. navy vessel with a touching name harlan county without a shot being fired the defense department counted on a public opinion conditioned to resent foreign entanglements are good also counted i believe on a certain degree of subliminal racism. the junta organized demonstration for the cameras in which the prepared slogan, not another somalia, was chanted. before long robert dold had risen and ascended to say with maximum sentence just is that the cause of president aristide was not worth a single american life. dependent on spokesman and advance the mission had been scrupulous enough to say, one shot and we are out of there. thus tenderly apprising the junta of the low cost of defying the world's largest military machine. confronted with the haitian army of 7500 men, the empire backed off. a rule of thumb is turning out to be that when the military's

political barons call for intervention and shows its strength, they must be distrusted for the usual reasons but when they tell you how difficult and how complicated everything is, they mustn't be distrusted even more. [applause] >> i am douglas brinkley and i am going to be reading from one of the three biographies that christopher hitchens did. they are all very searing. this one is, no one left to lie to you about bill clinton and the other one was on mother motr mother theresa and henry kissinger. carol blue working with 12 has been able to reissue all three of the biographical trilogies now available and this is from triangulation chapter in the clinton book. it is told of viewing law contemplating a run for high office that the summoned the pig donors of the great state of louisiana and enlighten them

thus. those of you who come in with me now oversees a big piece of the pie. those of you who delay and commit yourselves later will receive a smaller piece of the pie. and those of you who don't come in at all will receive only good government. a touch of modern taste perhaps that but there is no start that the kingfish had a primal understanding of the essence of american politics. this essence when distilled consists of the manipulation of populism by gilead is some. that can lead his most successful which can claim the heartiest allegiance of the fickle crowd and can present itself as most in touch with popular concerns and can also anticipate the tides and pulses of opinion, can in canned in short be there less -- least apparently elitist. it's no great distance from

giving long's robust cry of every man a king to date incipient inclusivity set putting people first, but the smarter lead managers have learned it in the interlude that following measurable pledges have to be distinguished by a reserve tag that earmarks them for the bankroller's and backers. they have also learned that it can be imprudent to promise the voters too much, unless that is, the voters should decide that they don't deserve or expect anything. on december 10, 1998, the majority counsel of the house judiciary committee, david shippers, delivered one of the most remarkable speeches ever heard in the precincts. a leathery chicago law and order democrat, mr. shifter it represented the old-style big city, blue-collar sensibility

which in the age of democrats alike, it'd been a priority for mr. clinton in the sun belt's dixiecrat is to discard. the spirit of an earlier time, at the time before smoking materials have been banned from the white house, after pedantically walking his hearers very traditional prosecutors review of an importable purge his address could be used in a civics class in the nation, and there still was such a thing as civics classes. mr. shivers paused and said, the president has lied under oath in a civil position, lied under oath and a criminal grand jury. he lied to the people. he lied to the cabinet. he lied to his top aide said now he has lied under oath of the congress of the united states. there is no one left to lie to. poor sap i thought as i watched this in an unfazed crowd on the

screen at miami airport. what wheezing you'll did he ride into town? so sincere in and so annihilating and so free from distressing sexual graphics was his forensic recitation that when it was over congressman john conyers a democratic caucus, took leave from the chair to compliment mr. shippers for his efforts and that was that. mr. conyers went back to staying as he said from the first, that the only person entitled to be affronted by the lie was mr. clinton. eight days later the democratic leadership was telling the whole house that impeachment should not be discussed while the president and the commander in chief was engaged in the weighty task of bombing iraq. [applause]

>> kerry goldstein publisher of 12. i'm going to read a passage from page 22 called the short footnote on the grape and the grain. there was a time when i reckon to outperform all but the most hardened in vipers that now -- at about half past mid-day a decent slug of mr. walker's ambrose is stored if an ideal delivery system and to know ice. at lunch half a bottle of white wine, not always more but never less and then back to the desk and ready to -- no after dinner drinks and most especially nothing sweet and never ever any brandy. nightcaps depend on how well the day went that always but always the mixture as before, no mixing, no messing around with a gin here in a bucket there. hitch making rules about drinking can be the sign of an

ahca holick but savored that as well. of course watching the clock from the start time is probably a bad sign but here is a simple piece of advice for the young. don't drink on an empty stomach. the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. don't drink if you have the blues. it's a junk here. drink when you're in a good mood. cheap booze is a false economy. it's not true that you should not drink alone. these can be the happiest glasses you ever drank. [laughter] hangovers are another bad sign. you should not expect to be believed if he takes refuge in saying you can't probably remember last night. if you really don't remember, that is an even worse time. avoid all narcotics. these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed as are the grain to invite accompaniment.

never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. it's much worse if you are a woman drunk than a man. i don't know quite why this is true, but it just is. don't ever be responsible for it. [applause] >> i and john reshard and i'm going to be reading christopher on the arab spring. this is from the first page of this preface of his 2001 -- the three names on the dedication page belongs to a tunisian street vendor and a gentian restaurateur and a libyan husband and farmer. the tunisian egyptian and libyan martyrs were not trying to take life like mohammad ought to. they desired rather that it be lived on a higher level than that of a serf treated as an inconvenience by an oligarchy. they did not make sordid claims

about how homicidal actions would earn them a place in a gross fantasy of carnal afterlife. they did not wish to inspire hoarse yelling mobs tossing coffins on the sea of hysteria. preferring a life-affirming death to a living death of life. the harbingers of the arab spring hopes to galvanize their fellow subjects and make them aspire to be citizens. the landscape will turn brown and dusty again, but nothing can expel from the arab mind the example of take here. once again, it is demonstrated that people do not love their chains or their jailers and that the aspiration for a civilized life, that universal eligibility to be noble as saul bellow's

phrases it is proper and common to all. thank you. [applause] >> my name is steve wasserman. i am proud to say i was a comrade of 32 years to christopher, publisher of his first works here in the united states and for the last seven years had the honor to represent him in literary matters. and i have taken a bit from the introduction he wrote to his first volume of essays called precedent laid, prepared for the worst. nadine gordimer once wrote or said that she tried to write posthumously. she did not mean that she wanted to speak from beyond the grave, a common enough authority over the event by bush that she aimed to communicate as if she were

already dead. nevermind that ambition is axiomatically impossible in achievement and nevermind that it sounds once rather modest and rather egotistic to say nothing of rather gone to. when i read it, i still thought, gosh, to write as if editors, publishers, colleagues, peers and friends, relatives, factions, reviewers and consumers need not he consulted. to write is a supply and demand tied in place -- call no man lucky until he is dead. but there have been moments of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherence on subjects. they more or less inherit them

against us under and patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody einstein's injunction to remember your humanity and forget the rest. it would be a modest two claim membership in this fraternity or sorority but i hope not to have done anything to outrage and. despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are fashionable, the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism and solidarity that stand in need of a reaffirmation. i feel relatively confident that neither the demand for nor the supply for the well wrought -- will ever become exhausted. we are not likely to reach a tied when the need of such things as curiosity, irony, debunking, disputation and elegy will become satisfied. for the present we must resolve to sa, sa and sa again.

[applause] >> he i am stephen fry. one of the great pleasures of knowing christopher was having him disagree with you. his contrariness which is a word he disavowed was joyous and he gave writes perhaps to one of the most excellent author look shop exchanges there ever was. oh mr. hitchens thank you so much for letters to a young contrarian. i have tried to bring my son up as a contrarian just plain refuses. [laughter] christopher and i agreed on the most important things like the glory of pg woodhouse and we disagreed on others, opera and for example. as you all know graydon sent

christopher off to the waterboarded to see if it was indeed torture and christopher concluded that it was. i once invited him to be my guest for a test match at lord's ground and another occasion of -- he threatened to report my aunt he was right on many many issues. he once wrote that for most over-rated things in the world are champagne, lobster, and -- [laughter] three out of four there, christopher. [laughter] another matter on which i find myself in complete alignment with christopher is that of

marbles. this is from a 2009 "vanity fair" article. he had written a superb book on the subject. the illegitimate younger brother of the more famously illegitimate te of -- once remarked to the parliament that use the one building in the world which may the assessed as absolutely right. i was considering this the other day as i stood on top of the temple with a dedicated director of the acropolis restoration service and watch the workshop that lay below and around my. don't let my blast on too long about your absolutely heart-stopping brilliance of these people but did you know for example if you do from the sky at perfect intellectual triangle with the temples of fear on the island and the temple of poseidon at kate sue me. did you appreciate each column makes a very slight inward

inclined so that is projected upwards into space they would eventually steeple themselves together at asymmetrical point indian. and. it's located somewhere between the beauty of science and the science of beauty. the damage done by the ages to the building by occupations cannot all be put right but there is one desecration anticipation that can at least be partially undone. early in the 19th century, britain's ambassador to the ottoman empire sent a wrecking crew to the turkish occupy territory of greece where it sawed off approximately half of the adornment of the parliament and carried it a way. as with all things brief, there were three elements of this, the most lavish, beatiful's cultural treasury in human history. under the direction of the artistic genius, the temple had

to massive pediments decorated with the figures of poseidon and the gods of the sun and the moon. then had a series of 92 panels depicting a succession of mythical and historical battles. the most intricate element was the freeze carved in -- which showed the gods, humans and animals that made up the annual procession. there were 192 equestrian warriors pictured which happened to be the exact number of the city's heroes who fell at the battle. experts differ on precisely what story is being told here that the freeze was quite clearly carved in a continuous narrative except half the cast of that tale stood in london. the $2.2 million in today's

currency to pay off his many dead. >> original scheme was to use this sculptures to decorate his ancestral home in scotland in which case they might never have been seen again. i am proud to be able to tell you that i have known christopher's name and in his honor to host a debate on the subject of return later this year. it won't be the same without him but i shows shamelessly spew arguments from his book and i know previous occasions when we have shared the platform that only when things go with a hitch do they go without a hitch. [applause]

>> we won't ever know of course schubert or mozart for that matter that i come with my projection of what i think hitch may have done if he would have stayed with us a little longer. as many of you know, he took his counterblasts against religion, god is not great, not around come the bookstores of coastal cities of the north but across the bible belt and challenged clerics in every town he read to to debate with him and i think even he was astonished in assigning afterwards by the enthusiasm with which people greeted eloquent arguments for secular humanism. now he ended god is not great,

the chapter with the line above all, we are in need of a renewed enlightenment but he didn't really expand on this. that the introduction to the atheist which was written somewhat after god is not great gets just a hint of what was on his mind. all atheists can't live for long just being against something. they have to speak for what makes life worth living. and in a couple of conversations i had with hitch i felt that this was in his mind, just with this renewal could be dreams to be in the form of a book. though he says, there can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look at the facts squarely in the face. that this is -- this is not mean

that we must stare into the abyss all the time. religion oddly enough has never required us to do that. believing then that is this religious bridge action implicitly concede that human life is actually worth living, one can combat ones natural pessimism by stoicism and a the refusal of delusion. or embellishing the scene with any of the following. there the beauties of science in extraordinary models of nature. there's the consolation and irony of philosophy. there are the infinite splendors of literature and poetry, not excluding the liturgical and devotional aspects of these, such as those found in john dunn or george herbert. there is a grand resolve in art, music and architecture, again not excluding those elements that aspire to the sublime. in all of these pursuits any one of them to absorb a lifetime, there may be found a sense of

awe and magnificence but this does not depend of at all upon any implication of the supernatural. indeed philosophy and culture is likely to be anything by a ghost stories you about tales experiences or babblings from the beyond. one can appreciate and treasure the symmetry and grandeur of an ancient greek -- for example without needing any share in the comforts of athena or eustis or athenian imperialism just as one may listen to mozart or admire durham without any nostalgia for feudalism, monarchism and -- the whole concept may partly consist in discriminating between these things, religion to the opposite and to preserve the ancient dread of prohibition.

it is very often argued that religion must have some sort of potency and relevance since it occurs so strongly at all times and in all places. many insist that religion is so much a part of our human or animal nature -- animal nature that it is actually in a rather couple. we are unlikely to cease making gods are inventing ceremonies for as long as we are afraid of death and for as long as we exist himself centrism. that could be a lengthy stretch of time. however it is just as certain that we shall continue to cast a skeptical and ironic and even witty eye on what we ourselves have invented. if religion is -- then so is our doubt in their contempt for our own weakness.

[applause] >> i am frances collins and it's an honor to be part of this remembrance. writing to a fellow author in 1889, anton chekhov famously declared one must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it. in this instance, the loaded rifle, is the grand piano you see stage right but it is odd indeed in a way that only hitch could have arranged that i'm the one who has been called to fire the fine way gun. first and irony. amongst the literary giants assembled here i am a strange comrade indeed. a physician scientist, a geneticist, privileged to have

led the human genome project and now the director of the national institute of health and perhaps most ironic of all, a follower of jesus christ. the base about whether science and faith can be compatible first brought hitch in my together and as you can imagine we didn't exactly agree. but the emergence of a diabolically dividing cluster of malignant cells in christopher's esophagus brought us together in a very different way. i suggested to the man of words and letters that another language where the words are exxon, the letters are dna-based payers, might have something to offer in the search for a personalized therapeutic, a smart bomb instead of -- and so we embarked on a grand adventure together some of which he has written about brilliantly in his powerful series of essays on the topic of cancer.

the long and complex novel that was his cancer dna genome revealed a few secrets that provided hope of a high-tech rescue. the pioneers on the frontier do not always experience the ultimate methods themselves. we still have much to learn. christopher helped us learn. along the way, hitch and i became friends, sharing conversations about life, death, science, chesterton, lincoln, reverend martin luther king jr. and any other topics. are occasional jousting about matters of faith was invigorating. as it says in proverbs, 27, verse 17, so a man shall -- be a countenance of his friend. i'm not sure whether what please hitch or bugged the hell out of him to know that our jesting ultimately strengthens my faith.

[laughter] hidta knew i was praying for him angry stupidly accepted that gift from me and many others even though he was quite sure. no doubt he now knows the answer to whether there is more to the spirit then nucleotides in neurotransmitters. i hope he was surprised by the answer. i hope to hear him tell about it someday because he will tell it really well. after hitch's death i visited carroll and antonia in their home in dupont circle in washington bird of the wall seemed to be outgoing pages words for the many times we admit there. before departing i had the urge to sit at their steinway and call upon the memories and the spirit to create some reflections of hitch. i frankly expected something in a minor key to reflect our sense of mourning that we share that evening but that is not what happened.

as best as i can recall, and what i hope will be your forgiveness for my skills, this is what hitch had to say. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [applause] >> i am at one blue,

christopher's father-in-law, and this is from a letter to him contrary and. in a previous letter, christopher refers to a collection of arguments written in 1908 by cambridge academic. it's a collection, and this is a good example. quote, time is not right, he writes. the principle of time is that people should not do at the present moment what they think right at that moment because the moment at which they think right has not yet arrived. the title of the collection is called, microcosmic delia academic it. and that sets the stage iv his opening line in his letter. i am so glad that you like the

microcosmic delia that it is -- but as a reminder that many questions are actually quite simple. there is a small paradox here. the job of suppose it intellectual's is to combat the oversimplification of reductionism and to say well actually it's more complicated than that. a lease that is part of the job. however you must have noticed how often certain complexities are introduced up's vacation. here becomes necessary to apply with glee the celebrated -- disposed of unnecessary assumptions, proclaim that actually things are less complicated than they appear and very often in my experience the extraneous or irrelevant complexities are asserted in a

manner of elementary justice is that issue. the best illustration with me this case of my dear friend salman rushdie perky you would think perhaps when he was assaulted via theocratic fatwa in 1989, his fellow authors would have rushed to his defense. here was an open incitement for murder accompanied by the author of a bounty and directed that a writer of fiction who wasn't even a citizen of theocracy. but he would have been astonished to see the amount of mothering and hanging back that went on. had his novel been offensive or the feelings of pious muslims not been considered, was he not asking for trouble? surely he knew what he was doing and so forth. several senior western statesman

often of law and order and -- took refuge in similar evasive formulations. in public debates with those who worried about the blasphemous profane elements in the novel or who said they did, i would argue then by saying look, let's get one thing out of the way. may i assume that you are opposed to reservation of the murder for pay of a literary figure? it was educational to see how often this assurance would be withheld or offered in a qualified form. in most cases, i would refuse to debate any further, so i was a reductionist. in that instance, proud of my simplemindedness. [applause]

>> i am alexander. christopher was my father. he was in many ways my inspiration. i have chosen to read from a letter to a young contrarian is well mainly because of what it means to me and too many to many people of my generation and also mainly because it epitomizes one of the things he offered his friends, family and his fans which was showing us not what to think of how to think. this is from the press. my dear x, now that it's time to launch this little paper boat into the tide i thought it only right to do a closing letter by way of beginning. what the book is spent that the editors and printers that can ivan occupy then several others fronts as you know and a straight question of yours boated into my mind how do i respond when i see myself or

views misrepresented in the public prints? the brief answer is that i have become newer without becoming a different. i criticize people myself. i've no right to expect -- in return and i don't believe those answers who say they don't care about reviews or notices. however it does tire me to read time and again reviews and notices that are based on earlier reviews and notices. thus, there is always an early paragraph usually written in standard form that says, and this is in quotation marks, hitchens whose previous targets have included mother teresa and princess diana and bill clinton now turned to -- of course as you guess this is dispiriting for one thing it bores me to see my suppose that profession reduced to recycling. nobody ever even had the originality to say, hitchens hit

criticize mother theresa for her warm endorsement of the regime in haiti. this is a surreptitious way in which you can bank views are marginalized or patronize to death. however it wasn't that prompted me to write. let me tell you what happened to me in the course of a single month between may and june of 2001 and i will just give you one of those things have happened. i was invited to give evidence for the opposing side in the hearings on mother teresa's impending canonization. it was an astounding opportunity to play devils advocate in the literal sense and i must say -- [laughter] and i must say the church behaved with infinitely more care and scruples than my liberal critics. a closed room of tape recorders, and monsignor a deacon and a father, a deposition where i was encouraged to produce all of my findings. would tell you about that another time. the point is, that the record is

now not the monopoly of a fundamentalist. thank you. [applause]er hitchens. i'm goin r brother read at our father's funeral in our home county of hampshire in england almost 25 years ago. they are the epistle to the philippians. finally, brethren, what sort of things are true, what sort of things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are -- if there be any virtue and if there be any

praise think on these things. [applause] >> hello. i was going to read some poems but i think i'm going to scale back, so just a quick excerpt of christopher's words, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends. that is how he would have started and i am sorry i can't make the grade after that. this is from "hitch 22". a map is a world that did not show utopia set oscar wilde would not be worth consulting. i used to adore that phrase, but now reflect more upon the shipwrecks and risen islands to which the quest has led.

but i hope and i believe that my advancing age has not quite shamed my youth. i have actually seen more prisons broken open, more people in territory liberated and more taboos broken and senses flouted since i let go of the idea or at any rate the plan of a radiant future. those simple ordinary propositions of the open society, especially when contrasted with the lethal simplifications of that society sworn enemies were all i required. i began this highly selective narrative by citing auden on the unadvisability of the being born in the first place. a few from which he quickly waltzed to plan b, make the most of the dam or as dorothy parker also elsewhere phrased it, you might as well live.

ogden wrote dance, dance for the figure is easy, the tune is catchy and will not stop. dance to the stars come down from the rafters. dance, it dance, dance until you drop. in my better moments i preferred the lyrical stoicism of my friend and ally richard dawkins, who never loses his sense of wonder at the sheer unlikelihood of having briefly made it on a planet where crude extinction has helped sway and wary the chance of being conceived let alone safely delivered is so infinitesimal. thank you. [applause]

>> i am martin amis or little keith as hitch always called me. my dear little keith and i called him my dear hitch. the most salient and striking thing about christopher is how widely he was loved, not just by us family and friends but by you and one struggles to think of the public intellectual with the following half is passionate. i wonder why this is. there are several elements in it i think before he reached for the central one. first, very handsome. [laughter] in a phrase he used to use,

handsomer than a man has a right to be. [laughter] and we were both very fond of the self-description where he says, about halfway through the novel i wondered during the course of these tragic notes if i had sufficiently stressed the quality of my striking and perhaps somewhat brutal good looks. [laughter] his good looks were not brutal and they were so does -- and my middle daughter was once in the kitchen at the age of five and she said, looks like hitch and the man on the screen was the handsome actor, sam neill. i also think that his voice was very important, oppress and voice without any mannerism or any intonation that i can't

encourage my own voice of. [laughter] and as i said the charisma of the hitch. pitch has landed he is to say on the fern when he landed at heathrow and when he did charlie rhodes the other night, when he remanded him and others, charlie i think was surprised and a bit alarmed to learn that pitch hitch often referred to himself as -- in the third person. this is not a habit continent with cloudless mental health in most cases. [laughter] so the hitch was one of the sanest people i have ever known. not always rational and by no means always prudent but penetrating lee st.. sein. he knew who he was. he could also -- was also

somewhat of a self apologized. he would say, you would tell me that i am such a good friend of the people that when i arrive, in the morning posted says hitch flies in. i said, what does it say when you leave? he said, hitch flies out. [laughter] very early on in our early 20s i said, does that girl like the hitch and he said, she loves the hitch. she wants to marry the hitch and another time he said, martin you are always coming out with phrases like this. he said whenever there is injustice in mr. ration or oppression depend of the hitch

will flash from the -- [laughter] i have got several stories where hitch comes out with a great line and he did not like this one. he said it was anti-pragmatic but i'm very fond of this story and it seems to crystallize something, to what was perhaps the heart of the charisma of the hitch. he and i were in southampton in long island haven't driven that far from where he was staying in search of the most violent possible film on the islands. this was their idea of happiness come to, to take a bottle of whiskey to -- 30 beast or. nothing tops that. we were prophetically reduced

to -- and trudging towards the cinema and i said, no one has recognized the hitch for at least 10 minutes. .. [laughter] >> and as we approached the cinema, there was an elderly

party rather awkwardly perched on a hydrant. and as we were entering the cinema, he said, do you love us or do you hate us? now, what he meant was america and americans. he didn't mean him and his wife. and hitch said, i beg your pardon? he said, do you love us or do you hate us? and hitch said, it depends on how you behave. [laughter] and went straight into the cinema. [laughter] rather than sort of curling up with him for half an hour. i thought that was very good, but also slightly misleading aswhat hitch did was calmly appraise american behavior or whatever reality you presented him with and give it his sort of judicious appraisal. but he wasn't like that. and we wouldn't have loved him so much if be he'd been like

that. there are plenty of people who had been like that. it was more i think that he was bored by the phrase "contrarian," but what he was was an autocontrarian. he contradicted himself, and as if christopher felt the only person worth really arguing with was the hitch. [laughter] so we see him tie himself up in knots with supporting ralph kneader, bush/cheney in 2004. collusion in the impeachment of bill clinton. what people -- and iraq, of course. and what people i don't see but i think sense is that he suffers, he suffered very much from those isolations that he brought on himself. after the clinton business, i rang him up, and i'd seen him on

television looking not well, and i said how are things? he said, man, i'm living in a world of pain, he said. this is two or three weeks after it had broken, and he suffered very much, i think, about iraq. he didn't talk about it, but you watched him watching the news, and when the vote, when the first democratic election took place in iraq, the excitement, suppressed excitement he showed and the misery during the civil war period, 2005-'6. he was like, he was like a houdini where he's right host of the time, but every now and then he would go out on a limb and shackle himself so dramatically that, you know, had he escaped or partial escape would have been all the more amazing. and that was his, why he was loved, i think. he made inte election dramatic

with his argument with himself. one of his favorite -- i understand now, one of his favorite phrases was what could be more agreeable, he used to say. it was one of his very english remarks. he would say it while he, i and others settled down for 16 or 17 hours of food, drink, tobacco and conversation. and i just want to ask, who could be more agreeable than the hitch? and to end on a wishful note, what could be more infinitely agreeable, imagine what it would do to your heart if the hitch had landed, and he was on his way the join us here. thank you. [applause]

>> in 2004 a man wrote to christopher complaining about a column, a bullshit column in his words, that chris had written for the nation. the fellow included his address and telephone number with the letter. christopher received the note and called and left a message on the man's answering machine. for some reason, the man then wrote to me to complain about christopher's message. [laughter] which was as follows: it's christopher hitchens calling you here. i get a lot of letters from uncultured idiots. [laughter] as i dare say you can imagine. and i normally toss them. but i'm obliged to keep a list of letters that might be menacing or from people who are unstable or in some clinical condition. [laughter] one way i decide this is if they resort to four-letter words and then sign it themselves. [laughter]

and you've just made the cut. [laughter] i hope this is our last contact -- [laughter] but it might not be. [laughter] good-bye. [laughter] [applause] indeed, good-bye. thank you to our speakers, to frank sis and alex, to all of you, to carol and the kids and to our dear friend christopher for everything he gave to us. as christopher and carol's own answering machine still says, you've riched hitchens and blue, you know what to do. good-bye, thank you, and and as christopher would say, may you all thrive. thank you. [applause] >> all this week watch c-span

for live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the year's republican national convention in tampa, florida. among the speakers this evening, former presidential candidate rick santorum, south carolina governor nikki haley, wife of the nominee ann romney, and new jersey governor. chris: tee will deliver the -- chris christie will deliver the keynote. here on c-span c-span2 it's booktv all day every day with highlights of nonfiction authors and books from this past year. and on c-span3 also throughout the conventions, 24 hours of american history tv with a look at historical american sites and arfacts. tonight on booktv, john gertner talks about his book, "the idea factory," examining the history of bell laboratories and some of the company's 20th century scientific achievements. >> one of the most interesting aspects, i think, of the cell phone effort was some of the

people who solved these problems came from the bell labs' military work, and one guy in particular who i spent a lot of time talking with had done a lot of work on radar, something called discriminatory radar in the south pacific where bell labs had a very small facility working with western electric x. at the time he'd come back from this tour of duty where he had worked on these highly sophisticated microwave systems, came back to bell labs, and then bell labs said they were going to discontinue the kind of thing he was doing. somebody suggested, hey, why don't you go talk to these guys working on cellular. and it was, again, maybe part of the serendipity of bell labs that he was the guy with the kind of knowledge that maybe very few people in the world had at that one particular time. and they drafted him into the project. his name was jerry, and, yes, soon enough he had a band, and he was going down to philadelphia, and he had cleared out the van, ripped out the toilets and stuffed it with a

lot of electronic equipment, and they would test all the signals to try and make the working cell phone system go. >> you can see the entire interview with author john gertner on his work, "the idea factory," tonight at 8 eastern right here on c-span2. john kennedy once met with harold mcmillan, the british prime minister, and you read the pep or taj -- rep or taj of the day, they discussed arms control or whatever, issues between the two powers, they sure did. but only long afterwards did we get the notes to what they said to each other in private. kennedy spent a lot of time complaining about bad press coverage. and mcmillan who was a generation older said, jack, you know, why do you care? brush it off, you have other things to worry about, and kennedy quite heatedly said that's easy for you to say, how would you like if the press said

lady dorothy was a drunk, and i would have replied simply, you should have seen her mother. [laughter] it's the kind of thing later on, the fun things that give you an idea what these people are like that you just can't learn in realtime. >> historians and biographers use the advantage of hindsight to understand their subjects through a prism of time. sunday, your questions, calls, e-mails and tweets for presidential historian michael beschloss on the lives of presidents and wars, hot and cold. in depth at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv. well, here at bookexpo america the book publishing industry's annual trade show in new york city, another university press is represented, and that's the university of chicago press. carrie adams is the publicity manager for that press. we want to talk to her about some of the books that are coming out in the fall of 2012. and, ms. adams, if be we could

start with bea tradition hoffman's book. what is that? >> sure. she's the author of "health care for some," and the only right we have to health care in the u.s. is the right to be seen in an emergency room which is a relatively new law passed in 1986. as a result of that being the only actual right that we have, the rest of our health care system comes down to a series of rationings, and this is what ms. hoffman discusses, how our health care has been rationed by age, income and region, and the result is a sort of expensive, ran done -- random, bulky system we have today. she talks about how it's experienced on a human level from everyone from soldiers' lives to victims of natural disasters like katrina. >> does she look for policy solutions to this rationing? >> it's more of a history. i wouldn't call it to hem call, but i think anything that's going to give a history of health care is going to steer a little bit left or at least kind of talk about ways that we can make it a little less illogical

and a system that makes more sense to more people. >> does the university of chicago press have a point of view when you choose books? >> we try not to. we are a university press, so all of our books are vetted by readers and and by a board of university professors. so i think the board itself is often divided on different policy decisions, but we are looking for strong scholarship more than anything. >> are well, another book that's coming out this fall is michael landis draw bear's book. >> yes. that is a great revisionist history of the welfare system in the u.s. called "the sympathetic state." and unlike -- we often think that welfare has its origins in the new deal and progressive era politics of that time, but actually as dawber shows, welfare dose back much earlier -- goes back much earlier to 1790. and it was actually this law that they were drawing on when they drew up the welfare system during the great depression. and dawber says this reframes the idea of the great depression

as a disaster that befell citizens through no no fault of their own. and he traces out this history to show how this conflict continues to play out in our discussions about welfare today as we kind of debate whether we want to help those in need while we have the sort of skeptical suspicion that perhaps they are responsible for their own plight. >> how many books a year does the university of chicago press put out? >> we have over 250 titles in this new catalog, but then we also distribute for 50, 55 other publishers, i'd say there's about 700 titles altogether in our newest 320-page catalog. >> you act as distributer for such as who? >> we have many presses in the u.k. like the british library, bosnian library, but our reach extends even further. we have a great translator out of calcutta, so it's a real diverse range.

>> and finally, michael gordon's book. >> he's looking at the bell cough sky affair. he's kind of forgotten today, but in 1950 he published a fantastic bestseller that created quite a frenzy called "worlds in collision" which said that the biblical disasters you've read about there the reigns of fire to the cats pick flood were the results of a comet that settled into venus. it was immediately a bestseller, but it was attacked by scientists who said it was absolute bunk, and so gordon is looking at why science reacted to vehemently to it. usually, scientists let pseudosince pass on, but it kind of talks about how this reflects on our current debates in science of how we determine what is legitimate scientific inquiry, something that's often discussed in conversations about climate change and evolution.