>> give afternoon.

one of the last pieces christopher hichens completed was a review of a biography. the unapologetic atheist had much in common with the christian apologist. they were both prolifically outspoken, sharp tongue to the who had home libraries and of with irresistibly quotable style. the man who was thursday describe the character. he seemed like a walking destiny, a blend of the angel and the a. the same can be said. in his hybrid nature is a series -- seemingly irreconcilable highs and lows the site easy characterization, often to the consternation of his many friends and foes.

but alas he is gone. next month marks the first anniversary of his death. today we have assembled a panel to discuss mr. hichens posthumous work k-9, a collection of essays that describes his experience. he would have paid calling it a struggle for battle with stage for esophageal cancer. kelly gold steen was his publisher. reissued three of his infamous creeds. the trials of henry kissinger, the missionary position which it exposes the allies. carol bloom is his widow. married for over 20 years. contributed the lovely after

word like her husband, she inspired without succumbing to sentiment. most of your recognize. quite frankly to one of the best writers in the world. the latest novel, state of england. and also -- best friend, a brother and all the dna. about the four year long c-span2 said, it was always bright and sunny, always marry, even when it ended on that said december day. please welcome my guess. [applause]

>> and good afternoon. thank you all for coming. americans are like the u.s. mail , not rain, snow, gloom of night can prevent these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. and i would like to begin with an anecdote about christopher. i put it in a novel. and put it in on the basis of one thing he said, sort of incorporating him into the novel because i could not bear to leave this out. the basis, having dinner its

only big enough for one person. about to get going. 1975. two young man came into the restaurant and suits with long hair. they were sort of up to the upper classes basically. they began to talk, whisper among some cells and asking the waiter questions. have a big party come to the restaurant.. it went on and on. we could not get -- such a distraction. and demand did not work for a living but patiently awaited the debt of elderly relatives.

then one of them came up to us. pretty clear when he was going to do, ask us to move tables. he came up and crashed. after a flagitious pause he looked up, putting it through his french. he had had many successes in this way of bending others to his will, the pound, the french. it had all gone like a dream before. he said, you're going to hate us for this. custer said, we hate you already. [laughter] they sent over a terrified bottle about half an hour later. i have said and written that the extraordinary thing really is

the extent to which she was left , not just by us, but by you and the varied not the essayist, this is quite a distinction. i have often wondered. one must not discount super visual reasons. but is terrific of looks had something to do with it. and the phrase we like, by striking is, perhaps, somewhat brittle. photogenic. very memorable. also the perfect voice. which was sort of pops the

impression. sense of danger summed up in that sense of story. and also, always seems to be conducting a deep argument with himself. and the result of this was that he made intellectual very dramatic. i don't know why that should be because he did not deal in common sense. that was not his beat. and plenty of people who can do common-sense. that wasn't christophers a thing. it was saying something that went against the grain and then having to justify it. which was really debating with christopher have the time.

>> i think the empire building cut looks were part of it. and the argument with himself. he was always trying to refine his arguments by arguing with others. that's true. and he was hysterically funny. i don't know how one conveys that. >> i remember the first time in washington while he was collecting. as you might imagine, i was extremely anxious about introducing myself. and for all the puppet pugilistic posturing that he is infamous for, he was, in fact, this alarmingly sweet, polite, generous, quick to laugh and

never made a young man and publishing feel that he had to impress them in any way. he was much less interested in what somebody new that have they thought. definitely interested in whether not i could make him laugh. and he was just a very palm and appreciative writer. i have been lucky to work with some fantastic people. there is no single writer or person i have worked with in publishing and made the impression on me that christopher did. i can just say, on behalf of 12, this is absolutely the most personal book we ever published. an incredibly proud to be affiliated with it. >> mannered. beautiful manners. it was a reminder that in

manners begins morality. it's not nothing, manners. it's not a layer. the beginning of actually empathetic feeling. three democratic. he talked to the person you talk to. -- as an equal. but, again, always this -- always the possibility of something. that was very stimulating. >> but it was always deliver it. he was abrasive or argumentative or even somewhat cruel in his report lost. he meant to do it. >> yeah, but it was a habit of this to say something made people jolt back.

another story that i like very much, i was playing tennis with robert j. lipton, the nazi doctor. join us just as we were finished . and just be me six love. twenty-three and still is 23 years older than me. so he was feeling very pleased with themselves. having been introduced, very vigorous and manley, he said quite typically, so few areas of transcendence left open to us in these times. sex, sports, arts. mr. versus d'amato, and don't forget the mysteries of others.

[laughter] the language contemplation, this should be a transcendent pleasure. really quite daring. >> also, he just said it in a while @booktv away. he wished everyone well. the least competitive, most generous person really have ever met. i think he would really wallow in the happiness of others. >> we spent quite a bit of time traveling together for the various books that we were able to work on. he spend a lot of time on the road with somebody. there is a lot of down time. you begin to talk about your life. christopher was performing. he was working. he understood what his job was and what he was traveling for. and so i didn't think for a second that he had heard a single thing.

and then three months later he would bring up the most specific thing that i had said when the -- i didn't think he was listening. people talk about his memory, but it wasn't just the words on the pace -- page. it was for every detail. in specific questions about my life. >> as much as it might seem hard to up believe, that's because he cared. >> he could not get here and airport beceusevery single person would stop to say hello or to ask fabout themselves. >> what do you think you would think of this love fest we are presenting so far? >> any kind of interaction.

he came to be quite addicted to it. walking to a cinema. it was our habit. reduced. and i said to him as we were walking, no one has recognized for ten minutes. he said, 15 minutes. [laughter] and i said -- by the way. more and more passed off when they don't come up and salute me i can have a chat with them. and he said what they care? what do they feel if they don't

recognize? and in the first person, typical. and not always, doesn't always go with perfect mental health. for instance, he said, you're very famous. yes. my big friend. and i said, press. what is it when you leave? by. but on this occasion, the stroll to the cinema, we got to the cinema without in being recognized. as we approached, i could tell

he was going to say something. are going to be late. hill 110 minutes. but as we can pass some he is said do you love us or do you hate this. meaning america. he was speaking for a self and his wife. he meant americans. and h. slid into the cinema behind the doors, as he was going. he said, depends on how you behave. and a great remark. sort of perfect. he didn't anger. but it suggests a more logical kind of person that he was. and i don't think he did judge everything in utilitarian ways. i think he was, you know, the most famous, but he had a definite -- he supported ralph nader in 2000.

and bush cheney in 2004. >> barely. i can set the record straight on that. >> but that was his position. >> but also, i mean, if you want to get into it. >> all i'm saying -- >> because of making a different point. >> i am. this sort of -- he goes, and then what he loves, is justifying it, ex post facto. and he, you know, the one on earth wanted to debate him on any of these topics. he could be an absolute terrifying speaker, not just perfect sentences, but paragraphs and sequins. but anyway, i'm just saying that he is an odd fish, and he's not,

that is what was so stimulating about him. >> we just saw mitchell kaplan. and he remembered in a van we did in miami. 1,000 people. some of you may have actually been there. christopher was not in debate with one person. he was a debate with a rabbi, an evangelical christian, a buddhist nun, dr. islamic in one of the person i can't recall, and each of them made there case and christopher would get up and offers a bottle. the doctor of is lock happened to be in a wheelchair. in so he finished systematically taking down each of his opponents to the to the crowd and said, surely you must be thinking he can't go after the woman in the wheelchair, but i assure you, you're wrong.

>> is been pointed out that he should have had, he would probably live longer if he had the constitution. although about his untimely death i'll say that he died at the age of about 75. he never went to sleep. so the third longest hours. >> the choose me up a bit. except you think, well, what if he had kept barely sleeping and lived to 90. >> i know. he would metaphorically drink you under the table. and then will use staggered off and smashed her head open on the bathroom floor and got into bed covered in blood and thinking how many days this hangover with last committee would come down

having written a 5,000 word peace. and you had to think that he was, it in fact a different species it was not human, what he could do after that kind punishment. >> there is a lot of myth making and legend making with certain kinds of writers, like christopher. the problem is that everything you hear is only half as fast and as good as you wise. it was really something. it was literally of 5,000 words story on deadlines at for the morning turned in a seven commanded did not like people to know that. when he used to send by facts, he used to write the piece and then come back and join the company after dinner and his leader on the facts machine and send it the next morning.

he did not want them to know. but the time it took between when they called and assigned it and when he had written it was usually about 30 minutes. >> read people. and is being -- some amateur psychologist that they had pressure on the cortex, these people. eloquences pressing down on them they have to sort of release it as an underground will release a splash of water. they cannot do it. he wrote a hundred bucks in his life. and you just have to out and

hold their code. you can't compete. >> also surprisingly, when he would deliver a manuscript, his essays as well, various publications, sort of objective about it. he would turn in his piece and might be one are two things he would aggressively fight for, but would turn it over and let you do -- you know, there was nothing to do. >> there was nothing to do, but they say we need to cut a thousand words for ads are perfume or whenever it might be. he would say okay and find a thousand words and get rid of them. completely open to suggestion. anticipated values work, but that was part of the craft and the work. >> you and i have spoken before. there was this time were you and christopher, these pieces were being collected for the past and her 12 years. ..

he would write about starless for them at the last minute and he would write a long essay on philip larkin or the chesterton dimension which he wrote in the icu of the m.d. anderson hospital center.

an extraordinary range and there could be peachy woodhouse or james bond. or hagel or marks. >> we should not be morbid but we should talk about his courage and the fact that his good manners, his sincere good manners -- you would be sitting at his bedside and -- in the hospital district of houston and people would come in every half an hour and try to get them to do something novel and he never lost it. it stays with me that he was physically very brave and a physically very brave man and we would often be in desperately menacing park in london and

there would be some muttering and then a confrontation with five very useful looking young men of no great education and i would be saying come on you know and he would never take a step back. and we arrived one evening and e. and tells the story. christopher said no, he said a man roughing up a woman at the end of the square and he is going to deal with that. >> there was a woman being roughed up in front of our apartment and he ran down and ran out and saved her. he wasn't doing it to show off or to prove he was a hero. he was actually trying to help the poor woman.

>> carol at that same courage that allowed christopher to write so candidly about his own ordeal over those 18 months and you have spoken and maybe you want to speak a little bit now about sort of what relationship his work as a foreign correspondent had. >> i was thinking about it, you know. there are two aspects of it. one he went to many many dangerous zones over the course of his journalistic career and had a number of near misses. notably there was the time he was in afghanistan and he had his white suit and a bag of books and decided to go to a city outside of kabul and suddenly realized he was standing in the square. he was in the middle of a fight between two warlords and bullets were flying and bombs were exploding and no one was on the street. and he had a little card that he had been given by the american embassy and he called that

number, somewhere -- someone from the military came and rescued him. there was another time where he almost lost his life driving route 66 for "vanity fair" and a red corvette and they gave him a phone for that because he was terrified on the roads in america by himself. his tire blew out and that was the closest he came to dying but i can literally give you 50 stories of, from the romanian revolution to when he was in an event called zaire where he was in war zones and tricky situations and almost lost his life. and then he also covered areas of the world where few people had been. north korea. many people had been in iran but the time he went to tehran it was off-limits in the places he went and so on. what i realized is, he had been this foreign correspondent who

travel to places not many people went and came back, and he was able to bring a very unique perspective and bring his, his writing, his humor, his take on these faraway lands. and then, when he became ill, he basically traveled to this land of melody as he put it almost is if you are a foreign correspondent, reporting like a foreign correspondent on this new land he had arrived in. and they'll be coming very very and having a potentially terminal disease or even having cancer as commonplace, the land he traveled to as a foreign correspondent that he became in covering, and i think it makes it a very unique perspective on this illness. >> and, he always had his wit and sometimes needed it to get

out of, his brilliance to get out of difficult situations. a couple of months after september 11 he was in afghanistan, peshawar i think and he saw bin laden t-shirts on display and he wanted to buy some for his friend, so he bought half a dozen and then as he was doing this transaction, 500 furious young zealots but also the element of all of this very frustrated young men, came pouring out of the mosque and surrounded him. he said it was a foul atmosphere and it was sort of fanatical arousal and one of them pointed to osama bin laden, his village

on a t-shirt and he said, what do you think? do you like osama bin laden? he said well i quite like him. [laughter] and christopher said, he said osama bin laden is my brother. and they said, he is your brother? and christopher said all men are my brothers. now if you'll you will excuse me, please. [laughter] just right. >> in writing about his illness, what is striking about mortality, many people have written about illness and death and dying, but there is something, there is nothing in the book and there are no false notes and i think the responses i've heard from the people who read this book was one of great sort of, was very affirming and

it's a very positive book and is that a book as it is i think the odyssey in it is sort of inspiring to people. what is fascinating to me also when i look at your take on this, is how the writing changes over the course of the book. in the beginning he has the sort of objective look at what is happening and it's clinical in some ways and he's reporting on his illness and as his illness advances in the book moves on, and as his body begins to deteriorate, and he has limitations he begins to write in a way i haven't seen quite as much but it became very visceral and very physical writing because he was limited by phlegm and things like this. it's really stunning to watch this happen over the course of the book and he is so clear-eyed about it. >> i think when he was writing it, because you know this book

doesn't have a logical and. he was going to write a different book with a different ending. he always thought this was just another interregnum on the road to at least a long remission if not a cure. and the other thing is, i think you are right about how kind of cicero and physical his descriptions become. but you know martin, even though he might have been sitting in a hospital bed or the nurses were coming in, he was still keeping up his side of the conversation. he was still the life of the party, the cherry on top, really. and sort of the great hostess to all the visitors who came through. and it was a place he wanted to be because that is where he was. he would rather be in that hospital room with christopher and you'd be having as good and interesting and profound a time as you might anywhere else on this planet. better to be there with him then say at a bar at the bel air

hotel. do you think? i am not kind of revisiting that? >> no. one of his favorite, just time filling kind of tags was, what could be more agreeable? and who could be more agreeable. the best company on earth but i don't know if i'd set it to you carol but i've certainly said it before, that one thing that happens, i always thought his love for life was superior to mine and i respected it. but when he died, and i hope this is universal, when a loved friend dies, it seems to me that they bequeath you their love of life and certainly for many months after his death, the world looked sort of tingly, no

doubt a survivor of hallucinate -- elucidation and guilt that you have a solemn sacred duty to love life with the intensity that they did because they can no for mortality is one of my arguments. you had told me that and i had that experience and they i also had the kind of retrospective regret that i hadn't been even more life loving even though i'm pretty keen on life. but you think you owe it to them that i don't think we will ever measure up, which is not a condemnation of our ability to live life to it's fullest and love it. it's just the fact that he was just so extraordinarily good at it. >> could we have some time for questions? >> sure. do you have a question or two?

>> no, i want to open up to these people. if you have a question please go to the go ahead. >> yes, i was always quite grateful to him for going after -- like you did. but his need to be contrary, to be the bad boy seemed to me to have overridden his good sense. did he ever have regret for teaming up with the bully boy? >> i was -- he never was contrary just so that he could continue this image that you suggest is a bad boy actually. he was at the oxford union and he would argue one side but he could as easily have argued the other side.

he was trained that way. that is the way his mind worked. the dialectic is what mattered to him. the positions he took even though few don't occur with them, they seem to depart from a certain kind of left liberal position. in fact it took them because he believed them. he meant them, and he thought, and i agree with him in this, but it doesn't matter what i think, they were consistent. that is, say what you might about iraq. he saw that as a liberation movement. he was an internationalist. he believed in bringing democracy to the world and he thought the u.s. had been involved in iran and iraq and the in the most heinous and criminal ways from the 1953 overthrow although i don't have to give you the whole history in here. now there was an attempt to overthrow a terrible despot and liberate the country and bring a democratic movement. it may not have been executed well. it may have failed.

you may not agree with it but you really believed and that is why he supported it, it was not so that he could be contrary or to realign himself in a way that he would be perceived as you know, unpredictable. so i don't think he ever tried to cultivate the bad boy image and i don't think he was a bad boy. >> i will say that he did have a flair for showmanship and it wasn't lost on him with his reputation. >> he did say, the thought of preventive war is -- the thought of preemptive war is a -- oh yeah, i didn't remember that one. but as for kissinger, i don't think he is done with him because they reissued his book, the trial of henry kissinger and it's more relevant now than it ever has been a think because

the official biography of kissinger is about to come out by noel ferguson. i noticed the other day kissinger with stern to harvard where i guess the students have been all that thrilled to have them for some time. and ferguson wrote a piece in which he said it was so wonderful that students welcomed kissinger back. they applauded him. they didn't have them off the campus. this in the 60's didn't happen. it's so wonderful. keep an eye on of friedel book and trying get ahold of it if you haven't read the trial of henry kissinger by christopher hitchens which is a rebuttal to the authorized biography. >> hi. i was wondering for each of you if you could, if you could pick out a common threat throughout his body of work, he very much -- my impression is that he very much tried to be genuine and to be accurate about the human

condition and what do you think would be the common threat? >> we were asked this by charlie rhodes and i thought he was basically a street fighting -- and i think he was sort of lefty passion that led him to endorse iraq and the idea of liberating and he had a special passion and feeling for the kurds who had been true beneficiaries of the invasion. i have always thought he had sort of an impulsiveness in his thinking that made him that sometimes in his life susceptible to ideology and i always think that your ideology should be no theology.

until 1989 the collapse of the soviet union i thought that hitch was very constrained in his writing because he said to me, what is true you do get tired of racing -- to trotsky so he was susceptible to that. but basically the passion of a teenage boy with freedom and justice in that sort of street fighting way in the heat that he would generate in his talk. when i went to the occupy protest in tampa, during the republican national convention, i thought this is so tame. i thought, where's hitchens in this movement? where is that fire that heat at such a time in american politics

where democracy is being attacked by money and lies and voter suppression. it just wasn't there, the american youth. i remembered the sort of passion that hitch would get going when he felt justice was threatened, and that just wasn't there. >> i think also many people believed of all his talents, his oratory talents were perhaps his finest and he had been referred to as perhaps the greatest orator of our generation. i don't know who among you saw him speak, but he would love to have a room like this and he could probably get you to follow him anywhere. >> can i ask a question? what you think you never tried to write fiction? >> i often talk to my novelist friends all of whom were riveted

by -- and he certainly had, he had the phrase making ability. he could dream himself into another person and he had you know many of the prerequisites, but he said i think he just didn't want to spend his time doing what we do, which is making up and imagining things. making of people and telling these artful lies, which is what what -- he was too straight for that. >> i would also say you can see the gift that would naturally lend itself towards narrative writing and in the first three chapters of his 22 in particular where he writes about his family history standing alongside the finest autobiography i have read anywhere. >> also we work -- we wrote a couple of scripts together and

he didn't like doing that all that much. but he was very inventive and his dialogue was extraordinary. i think you're right, i think ultimately he lived a long time and he wanted to write about priest and who knows what else and he certainly was more interested in literary examination that just polemic sound politics. who knows if he would have gotten around to it but i don't think he wanted to spend that much time in happening and imaginary universe. >> and fiction makes nothing happen. it was always a possibility that what he wrote, his rhetoric, his oratorical brilliance would bring about change. a novel, something that has gone badly wrong in a novel sort of interferes with real life. "the satanic verses" is a categorical error when politics latches on. >> i want to pick up one quick

thing on the issue of the common thread that will run through the work. this idea that liberty was run straight through but it wasn't only just for liberal causes because he would have course defend people who had opinions widely opposed to his own, their right to profess an opinion. >> he love the bill of rights and that is why he became an american citizen. >> good afternoon. i am a local resident and i was -- at the temple israel debate. i am an attorney but i have never ever seen such blazing rhetorical skills. i just couldn't believe what i was hearing, especially when he talked about the wheelchair. on the other hand, i did see him on television one day and he was plainly less than sober.

he was really two sheets to the wind. >> i never notice that. [laughter] >> in i couldn't believe that he was able to maintain his train of thought. i certainly couldn't have. i just can't get no -- so i was just reading, this is just a comment. i was just starting to read his biography that just came out, the third volume of the church trilogy, think his name is paul reid and the first chapter deals with churchill plainly drunk most of the time he was working. he just kept drinking and drinking and working in dictating. it seemed to me that is what christopher did with quite a lot

of frequency. i just wondered if you wanted to confirm or deny that. >> i would deny it because he was almost never drunk. sometimes at 3:00 in the morning but almost never. recalibrated and he had it free lunch drink and some wine with lunch. he basically had a whole system for how much he would have. mine was quite -- he was quite sober when he was writing. >> i know, i think it was after one of his more controversial decisions which is to oust sid blumenthal and i rang him up. he was getting a lot of pain for that and i rang him up and i said, how are you? he said i'm living in a world of pain he said. he believed it was right and he defended it.

but again, this is part of his greatest fear i think, not being drunk. i saw him drunk, in 40 years i saw him drunk twice. i was drunk a lot of the time and i had been drunk several hundred times but he was never drunk. >> i have probably noticed two or three times that night in 25 years. >> i don't want to comment about these rhetorical skills, he is very churchillian. >> i think better than that. see what is your relationship to this person? >> i am and thought he had many things in common with churchill including courage. i inverted that nabokov in thing. i will write like a distinguished man of letters and i talk like a child and hitchens is the other way round. he talks like a genius, writes like a distinguished --

and thinks like a child. they often said of churchill that he thought like a child and his mind was around all over the place. he had rhetorical skills in the courage. >> i really do miss him. he was one of my heroes. >> thank you very much.