>> rose: tonight a conversation with writer and journalist christopher hitchens, about his memoir "hitch 22" and his struggle with cancer of the esophagus. >> what you have said before is the idea that you influence history is the most intoxicating of things. >> yes, it's a great temptation to think about legacy, a historic moment. they forget, you know, if you say you are changing history, you're probably not. you may be possibly changing your own. >> rose: hitchens for the hour next.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> rose: christopher hitchens is an english-born, oxford-educated writer and journalist who has lived and worked in washington for many years. he is well known for his wit, and opinions on religion, politics and the war in iraq. david brooks of the "new york times" says there are few people in this country who bring such a literary perspective to controversies. here is what his friend said on this program this week. >> when we met, it was a sort of-- like the lightning strike. >> rose: really? >> yeah. i thought here is someone who knows exactly what i think and feel about everything, and i think he thinks that about me, too, as if our sensibilities and our minds were somehow interchangeable. but very romantic friendship from the start. >> rose: also, here are some excerpts from his appearances on our program.

>> it's not for everybody. not everyone wants to always be against the stream. but if you do feel that the consensus doesn't speak for you, if there's something about you that makes you feel it would be worth being unpopular or marginal for the chance to lead your own life expr a life instead of a career or job, then i can promise you it is worthwhile, yeah. half the time when i was arguing with the so-called anti-war movement they would say the reason for opposing the war, it would obliterate huge numbers of americans and israelis and neighboring countries with weapons of mass destruction. in other words, people can be-- people have to take part in their own deception. the attempt to derive morality from the supernatural, all of that is

more, i think, than mistaken or irritating. it's becoming actually very menacing now. people who think they have permission of thought from the heavens are trying to kill us. or sometimes... that our children be taught nonsense in school or aids may be bad in africa but condoms are much worse or stem cell research shouldn't be done. wherever you turn, if you find this barbaric foe, you will find this person is giving himself permission. >> rose: in june christopher hitchens published his 11th book, a memoir walled "hitch 22." in the midst of a promotional tour for his memoir, doctors discovered that he has cancer of the esophagus. he canceled all engagements and is undergoing chemotherapy and other treatments. in a brilliant column in "vanity fair," he described the experience as taking me

from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady. i spoke with chris hitchens in washington in his apartment earlier this week. here is that conversation about his journey. you have lived a certain kind of life, engaged by alcohol, cigarettes, sex, politics, ideas, books. >> yes, i think i've been very lucky in that way. and i think it's-- you have to choose between your life and your work. you can be happy in the one or the other. there are a way of finessing that. if your work really is your life, and things like friendship and language and travel and boeheimia are also the work, then you really are lucky, because you have no real separation between the two. >> rose: when did you know this is what you wanted to do? >> oh, when i was very small, i realized that i wanted to

write. i didn't know that i'd be so lucky with it. but i knew there was nothing else i could do. >> rose: but this was before oxford. >> oh, yeah. it was the earliest decision i made. i don't know what it's like to say, "have a vocation." i'm sure people do. they know they want to be a doctor for example. i assure you couldn't do that, or any of the things my mother wanted me to do, like be a lawyer. i wasn't fit for any other kind of work so that helped make up my mind. i knew i wanted to write. incidentally, i wanted to move to the united states. i couldn't explain either of these two things very well, but i now realize and the book taught me the two impulses were the same. to matureas a writer i had to leave england and come here. >> rose: surely you're not suggesting you can't reach maturity as a writer without coming here. it only applied to you. >> to me, yes. >> rose: what is that all about? >> i can't be sure.

it had something to do with the scope of america, certainly, and the relatively limited character of english society comparatively. >> rose: in class structure and everything else? >> things like that. if you show any promise in britain, in london, that's fine and people will give you work and so forth, but you keep feeling you have to pass a series of tests and prove he's quite promising. you can die of that kind of encouragement. whereas in america, if you're willing to take a chance and say, "here i am, try this," people can-- you go through these stages of evolution, maturing like a fine old vintage. >> rose: tell me about your father's influence, called the commander. >> well, the commander is the conservative. he was a very gloomy,

pessimistic man who spent his life in the royal navy. he once told me it was the only time he felt like he was knew what he was doing when he had to fight very hard in a bitter war. >> rose: because there was purpose? >> yes. he understood what his job was. that was a very hard war at sea in the north atlantic against hitler. though, to his disgust, proving to him that life is unfair, the job churchill actually gave him was running guns to stalin, supplying convoys to the red army. a very arduous job fighting in the arctic, to help out the communist who he always hated all his life. >> rose: he died when? >> he died in 1988.

>> rose: so he knew what you had become and he knew some of your early revolutionary feshor. >> sure. and he would have still wanted to know when i was going to get a serious job. "when are you going to put down some roots?" >> rose: exactly right >> old man would have liked me-- i must have been a terrible disappoint to him-- he would have liked me to be good at games. i don't care about sports. >> rose: neither observing or playing. >> not good at the things he was good at. he was good at physics and chemistry and math. would rather go off to the library and read a book, that sort of thing. wasn't a conservative. to say the least of it. >> rose: your extraordinary wife sitting here in this room, once said about you that he's a warrior-- i'm paraphrasing badly-- and that he probably hungered

for battle, almost in a hemingwayesque manner. >> true. well dr. johnson says every man things of himself meanly if he's never been a soldier or to sea. i don't know if that's absolutely true of all males but something like that is true. it's certainly true if you're english born after the second world war, all the movies, all the television programs, all the reminiscences are about the finest hour which you missed and which your father had taken quite a fine part in. you'll always wonder how you would have shaped up and you're never really going to find out. i remember once when i had been in lebanon during a period of warfare there and writing about it. my father quite liked the article, which was amation. and second, before he hung

up he said rather gruffly, "by the way, that was brave of you to go to beirut." and i was amazed. i never expected that from the old man. i wondered if that is what i had been secretly, covertly wanting me all along. this is what first interested me about the writing of george orwell, there's a symbiosis about those who maybe don't like the empire or armed services but you were brought up in that milieu, as orwell was, and at least they admire the flinty values, the maurbl virtues, the thrift, the sense of duty and. >> rose: and you? >> these are virtues that can be useful in all circumstances. >> rose: you're saying that's you. >> absolutely. i won't say i exemplified them-- that would be a lie-- but i have a respect for them. and an interesting thing i noticed-- >> rose: including discipline. >> yes. and the willingness to stick

by a conviction as well. >> rose: churchill in fact said if you've never been shot at and missed then you've never lived. >> yes, actually he says there's no sense of exhilaration, the sensation of being shot at without result. and i think i mentioned that in my book. i was once with the great george burns who i think is the greatest war correspondent in our time. >> rose: bureau chief of the "new york times". >> he was showing me around sarajevo. somebody did take a shot at us. >> and felt that thing. you read about it, like a hornet thing past your ear, that close. you think i wouldn't have wanted it to be any nearer. and you think i'm very glad i have a return ticket out of here. but you then feel, briefly, an amazing sense of exhilaration. it's best not to get hookdz on it. >> rose: dexter fullkins can talk about the same thing, a colleague of john burns. >> yes. i've been to a lot of place where's that can happen. and i write in the book

about the number of times in afghanistan and beirut and also where i could have been killed. but what i found out about this was i could no more be a dexterfull kinz or john burns than i could be a full-time soldier or sailor. i could do it for a few days but i don't have the shand that is required to do it regularly, to expose ones to danger. i hugely admire people who do. >> rose: what's your evaluation of hemingway? >> the difference about hemingway is he never got over the fact that he could-- you get impression with hemingway he's trying very slightly too hard, but then the fiction and in the-- >> rose: but did you take-- >> i will say he had a "titanic" effect on me when i was 14. >> rose: "titanic"? >> yes, i never-- in america

when people think-- say no man is an island, they think they're quoting ernest hemingway. it fascinates me, the spanish civil war, at one time i was an expert and it was the default position for people on the left. there is such a thing as a just war, not all war is bad. there are great causes worth fighting and risking your life, if dying for. hemingway was a tremendous introduction to that, along with orwell. >> rose: what's interesting about these memoirs is that's part of what you say here. you tell us who has influenced you. >> yes. >> rose: you talk about friendship and influence and i don't want to leave without talking about your mother for a second. was she a more significant influence than your father? >> oh, much more so because

for the very cramped background that our family occupied, my father's father was a very strict baptist school teacher in a slum district, no radio no music. we never had any money, didn't travel much. everything was rather austere, thrifty. that was the way i knew it. but my mother was the great exception. she was a great splash of color in this rather drab world haspirations, was interested in fashion and beauty, was very beautiful and tried to run a dress shop for ladies without much success but always full of optimism. would have liked to go to london and go to the theater instead of being a navy wife on some rather grim base. she gave me the glimpse of another world, and she also-- i didn't know this-- but she was all the time providing me with a second

identity, they wasn't just good old anglo-saxon. my mother's family was from eastern europe. my ancestry was jewish. >> rose: did she tell you that at the time? >> no, she didn't want me to know, i don't think. she might have told me if she had lived. >> rose: she committed suicide with her lover in a hotel in greece. >> yes, in athens with an unsuitable lover she had taken when her marriage to my father broke down. >> rose: i would think how hard it would be to know she tried to reach you before she committed suicide. >> yes, it was in the days of switchaboards, and before, really, the days of answering machines. i had just moved-- >> rose: and you wouldn't have been in anyway. >> i wasn't in anyway, that's right. and i felt that rather keenly when i looked at the

hotel switchaboard records and saw that she was trying. i never lost the feeling that if i had picked up and i heard her voice or she heard mine she might have had a second thought or two. but she didn't want me exposed to anything unpleasant and in the 30s she and had a low-level prejudice. i'm sure she would have told me if she had lived. that's my guess. my surmise is it had to do with her class attitude as much as her ethnic one. she wanted me to pass for english, to go to a proper boarding school, to go to oxford. >> rose: you talk about oscar wild-- you talk about a whole lot of people you admire. is there a composite or is there one person? >> no, i think it's very wrong to have role models. >> rose: you do?

>> imagine what you think would happen to somebody who thought i want to model myself on oscar wild? we already know how that would work out. imagine how ludicrous it would be if i said i always thought of myself as the george orwell of my generation. >> rose: i agree, you can't say that, but you can think about it. i mean, you don't have to say it. >> you have to think about it. >> rose: that's my point. >> i read a whole book on george orwell because i had to get it out of my system. >> rose: you had to get it out of your system. >> yes, because i'd been so much influenced from the very early years of my life by not just the stance he took politically and the moral courage and intellectual courage that he exhibited, but also by the ways of proez, the vividness and spareness of the prose was a reflection of that integrity that i had to try occurrencely not to emulate him, if you like. i was so full of admiration i had to aim often away from it, which is easy for me to do.

after all, orwell never had a steady job. he never had any money. his health was always bad. he only lived until he was 46. he was always being censored, whereas i've been quite lucky. i traveled a lot. i've made quite a lot of money out of journalism. i haven't been perce cute for my reliefs. i never had to risk being shoot as he was in spain from both sides or censored. so it was all an education in learning how unlike my hero i was. >> rose: in fact, from at least the observation from my perspective, between your mother's suicide and walking into a doctor's office and hearing the results that you have cancer of the esophagus, it's been a pretty good ride. >> yes. but if i had known i was going to live this long, i would have taken much better care of myself. >> rose: if you had known that there was a possibility of getting cancer, you would never have smoked-- you would never have snokd a cigarette. you would have never drank or consumed the amount of liquor you consumed.

>> no, i think all the time i felt that life is a wager. and that i probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian life as a writer than i would have if i didn't. so writing is what's important to me. and anything that helps me do that, or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies arguments and conversations is worth it to me, sure. so i was knowingly taking a risk. i wouldn't recommend it to others. >> rose: but you would do did again. >> yeah, i think i would. >> rose: that's the question. >> well i've had to reflect on this, of course, a lot recently, and trying to imagine doing my life differently and not ending up mortally sick. but it's impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late night without

that second bottle and the argument with said could go on, but he would be drinking that much. exchanging limericks could go on for another hour eye wouldn't count any of that out. >> rose: if it was in part a product of smoking and drinking and you-- you would do it? >> yes. it is a wager. >> rose: i would assume the only thing that would make that a harder choice on reflection is family and especially children. >> indeed. that's true. >> rose: do they comprehend-- >> i used to think i would never do it, you see, because my father of a bit of a boozer, not a happy one. he didn't do it to cheer himself or or-- it's a terrible way of cheering yourself up. he did it when he was deexpressed he would get

more gloomy and i could tell my mother hated it. i used to hate even the smell of alcohol. it goes to show there must be something inheritable about it. and i my mother used to smoke like a fiend and i used to beg her to stop and i thought i would never start. my children do it to me, saying they really wished i wouldn't do it. >> rose: have you had a conversation with them about where are you in your life today? >> yes. >> rose: that's the hardest one, isn't it? >> very, yes. it's also the only reflection that makes me not bitter but wretched. i can take it for myself. i don't find myself breaking down. but i sometimes become morose when i think about not seeing them grow up-- look, i'm not resigned to going yet. i haven't checked out yet, either. i'm in the middle of the argument about that. >> rose: you're in the middle-- would you say

struggle? or argument. >> well, it feels like a losing struggle. you keep being told it's a battle. you wonder what you can bring to it. all you have to do is wait for the news and respond to treatment. it's appallingly passive. strug cell a favorite word. >> rose: i know. >> so i don't mind it. i don't have a very long life to live, i can be very surely of that. i could see--. >> rose: do you think you have five to 10 years? >> the lucky ones have hope for, that and i do have a strong constitution. and i-- >> rose: there's always the idea that things-- i mean, the interesting thing about medicine is that every day something is happening. >> and i've been very luck wesome wonderful physicians who have taken an interest in my case, and i know there are all kinds of expeedients that one can try, but still and all, it's a very bad starting point to get cancer where i've got it.

>> rose: the numbers are the numbers. >> yes. >> rose: the math is the math. >> that's right. and i already knew i was born into a losing struggle and now i say that in the opening of my book. now a thing like that has to be said completely and ironically. >> rose: there is an outpouring of affection for you, genuine affection. you see it everywhere. >> it could be embarrassing but it's been very effective, columns in the newspaper, pieces on the television, extraordinary stuff, and on the internet, too. it's as near as i'll get to reading my obituaries. >> rose: exactly. >> the favorable wons. i had already read an accidental reference to my death. this is as nice as that could get, and then i think, hang on. if i stick around, that's going to stop. people will move on to something else. >> rose: i went through a

bit of this when they thought i was dying in france, you know. everybody said he is dying and they'd have dinner parties and talk about it. >> i remember very well. discussing your condition. >> rose: when you look at writing this book, living with this disease, had you come with insights that are facinating about the living of a life. >> you don't sit there staring at the wallpaper wondering was it all for nothing? where did it all go? you're partially ensured against the feeling of waste. you're overwhelmed by the feeling of waste if you think you're going to die young. what's going to happen to that decade you planned, the next one, that was going to be even better. >> rose: when you were in favor of the iraq invasion. >> yes. >> rose: people have looked at that as some kind of crossing the bridge for you. did you see it that way? that you had come to some

new revelation about the way the world works? >> no. i thought i was-- i hoped a piece of very simple continuity with one's principle-- opposition to farb itch and totalitarianism, opposition to genocide, opposition to the one-party state, the one-leader fantasy. i thought anyone who knew me even slightly wouldn't ask what would christopher think about keeping saddam hussein in power? of course he couldn't. >> rose: i bet you found most of your friends were on the other side of that argument? >> no, i didn't. >> rose: is that right? >> but i found a good number of them were, and were, indeed, prepared to go to great lengths to make claims about saddam hussein that weren't true. >> rose: you think he was an islamic? >> he certainly over the years after the terb war

with iran, the last deck ode or so of the regime, he completed transformed himself into a jihadist organization and shifted from supporting the p.l.o. to supporting hamas and islamic jihad to take the most conspicuous example, had al qaeda people on his territory long before the united states got there. i'd been going to iraq since the 70s, and i knew quite a lot of the iraqi, arab, and kurdish opposition pretending to be then, as now, leftist. and i thought i had a duty of what would be called solidarity to them. you cant abandon your comrades and they were struggling unbelievably, vicious regime and i thought they deserved our support and i'm very glad they got it. >> rose: do you think history will judge the overthrow of saddam hussein and the consequences of that in what way? >> well, iraq now has a chance to have a federal constitution, where the

dispews between the federal constituents, roughly speak, the shi'a and kurdish, intellectual and parliamentary. to have a free press. to have autonomy for the kurdish minority, the largest minority in the arab world which was subject to a genocidal campaign. >> rose: could that have happened without the overthrow of saddam, and might it have happened as a natural flow of events? and did it come at a cost that was perhaps, on balance, larger than -- >> the cost is horrifyingly high, and i've described some of this-- there's a whole chapter on it in the book. but i think the cost of it comes from having put off the confrontation. i think hus hufs tolerated

for far too long-- saddam hussein was tolerated for much too long. it should have been taken care of-- we would have saved the iraqi people more than a decade of sanctions, misery, dictatorship. >> rose: you think it would have happened if the soviet union had still been strong? >> that's a very good question. i don't think huts hus would have invaded kuwait. >> rose: that was the first gulf war. >> incidentally, i have a feeling the soviet union might even have restrained milosevic. one of the consequences of the end of the cold war is a lot of small vicious local totalitarians become more powerful than we thought they would be. >> rose: the soviet union was exercising some kind of positive influence over the client states. >> i still say negative, but it was restraining. >> rose: restraining, okay.

>> it was their armor, their pay mast ethe trainer of the secret police. none of these things was positive, but in return tdidn't expect to launch mad adventures to upset international. >> i think he wanted to complete what he thought was the national outline of-- he thought kuwait was a missing province. also gave him control of an enormous amount of oil resources, and he was by then within measurable distance of the weapons. apart from the kurds in iraq, those are the people who saddam did use his weapons of mass destruction on. the persian enemy is the historic one.

>> rose: is the guiding principle here for you that's come out of the life you have lived freedom? >> that would be a rather grandiose thing for me to say for myself, but i'd rather say-- and i do say, to be consistently anti-totalitarian. >> rose: what's the difference? >> well, narrow but deep. in fact the utopian idea that humans can be hammered into another compulsory shape isn't a utopian idea. it's a fantasy. it cant actually be brought about. a terrible amount of damage and misery can be a result of the attempt, and the temptation has to be resisted in small ways as well as large ones. and thpossibility of coexistence between open societies and totalitarian ones doesn't really exist. there will be a fight. and i would rather it was

picked on our terms than theirs. >> rose: what do think of president obama? >> he makes one think, unlike some presidents, and one of the things he makes me think is i wonder how he thinks? i'd give a lot to know. he appears to be quite cerebral, and the-- that he's not really fueled by the emotion, that he solves the problems with his mind, that he's an intellectual. i like that, and i--. >> rose: you like that in a leader? >> yes, but it can be a big disadvantage in that he somehow gives me the impression that he thinks a lot of important disagreements arise out of misunderstanding, cultural misunderstanding. in fact, sudden we're talking about it, iran is one of the occasion where's i worry about that. it's as if he feels that our rather ragged and jagged history since the american interventions in iran in the 50s and so forth, the fact that we have different religions, that we have

different culture, these explain the difference between us on things like nuclear weapons. >> rose: what do you think explains the difference between us? >> the theocratic dictatorship in iran-- >> rose: the core beliefs. >> that want to teernize and own the iranian people, that it is the parent of all the iranian people. in other words, totalitarian system, which is fueled by this this ambition, which is also in its constitution, to spread that idea and push outwards by the export of violence. in other words, a regime with which a confrontation is inevitable. it's not to do with the fact that we don't fully understand the emotions of shi'a islam. >> rose: have you ever had a conversation with him? >> with the president? >> rose: yes. >> no, no. i've met some of his people. i think i know-- i think i know the sort of politics that he exemplifies.

i've read a lot of his stuff. i admire him as a writer, i have to say. i like his humor. i like the way he's self-deprecating. he understands he's been lucky. >> rose: on balance, the your impression of him? >> that he is possibly very weak guy, indeed. >> rose: weak guy, indeed. >> yes. if you wanted to maximize the likelihood of a bad outcome, i would say to ostensibly double the number of troops in afghanistan and announcing the date they would withdraw would be the quickest way to make sure the afghan population makes other arrangements which doesn't include your continued presence in the country. >> rose: has time made you more or less amirg of bill clinton? >> certainly not more. i'm not sure it could have been any less. >> rose: really? >> yeah. >> rose: you had that much--

>> it's visceral. i interviewed some of the women's whose stories never quite made it who claimed he forced himself on them. i think they're telling the truth. i thought that his-- >> rose: that's unimaginable to you, isn't it? >> yes. yes, or that i'd have a friend who-- >> rose: it's unimaginable because-- the idea that you have been so lucky and fortunate or successful. >> well, now, i'm not sure i saw that coming. >> rose: i've been looking for an opportunity to express it. i had a better way-- >> i think even the most modestly equipped of men should get used to the idea that if they're going to enjoy female company it better be on their own merit. >> rose: what is the visceral attitude about

clinton. >> i thought george stephanopoulos was right when he realized the man was sociopathic, that he only cares about himself. i thought that was so obvious and so reptilian. and so damaging to the politics. >> rose: that seems to be, in the end, history is what fascinates you the most. the making of history. >> yes. a sense of what goes into making, that absolutely. >> rose: what you have said before is the idea that you influence history is the most intoxicating of things. >> yes, it's a great temptation to think about the legacies, the historic moments. they forget-- when the ethos is over that you can make any judgments. you say you are changing history you are probably not. you may be possibly changing

your own. >> rose: when you think about legacy yourself at moments of reflection here, where does it leave you? >> you know, i refuse to do it. i decided i'm going to forgo that. >> rose: forgo that in your own mind or in conversation? in both? >> yes. i'm not going to think of it. it's too napoleonic, it's too grandiose. >> rose: you have said throughout the conversation, there's a certain sense of modesty. >> i've got a lot to be modest about. i say in my book i'm very proud of having done a couple of things. one of them is sticking by the iraqi and kurdish opposition during some very bad years when they were being massacred, and they needed their friends, and i hear from them now, and they consider me to be one still. i'm proud of that. i'm not going to be-- i'm not going to overdo the mod

see, believe me. i am also very proud-- i have a chapter on this, too-- of having been a friend of salman rush dee when he was on the run, when not only did a friend need a friend but when a very important principle, the whole principle of free expression, needed to be defended against the most direct challenge-- a death threat backed by death squads. a lot of people didn't show too much stomach for that-- that was a very educational time in my life. >> rose: they were weak of spine. >> yes, or worse. they thought that it was rush dees fault for writing the novel, not khomeini's. >> rose: there are central themes here. your admiration of standing up for principle, your admiration for courage, and your admiration for

friendship. >> see, when you say these things, charlie, you force me to sit here as though i'm taking them more than my due. that's embarrassing. >> rose: i don't care if i embarrass you. i really don't. >> okay. >> rose: i'm interested in who are you-- who do you admire politically? >> i really think the people who are looking for heroism in politicians are probably look for love in all the wrong places, a thing to avoid. but at the risk of embarrassment, i would say very aware of a lot of his flaws i'm quite a strong admirer of tony blair. i think he was a man prepared to take risks to points of principle... i think he did two or three very important things on that othat basis. one was to save sierra leone from the liber an invasion, and the blood diamond merchants.

decided there was not going to be another rwanda. nobody was doing anything about it. he and said, already, we'll send the boys, and-- made a speech saying the next confrontation would have to be with saddam hussein, that was in 1999. repeatedly said we can't... the totalitarianism and lost his career and reputation on it largely. >> rose: it was principle. >> he could have row tired after 10 years. as a really's popular successful politician and retired and pursued to this day with the most unbelievable... saunder, that want him beyond the

grave. >> rose: here is something i admire deeply about you, too, is the notion of friendship. you form bonds with julian barnes, ian mcqun, and others-- >> i've been very luck wemy contemporaries. they taught me how to write. >> rose: they taught you how to write. >> more important, how not to write. i was a rather didactic writer when i first got to know them. i was writing for the cause, rather. i wasn't paying very much attention to style. they pointed out to me-- and it can be enjoyable to read and write things, as well as a duty to do so-- introduce me to writers i hadn't appreciated enough, broadened my outlook, deepened my feeling for language. as well as providing me with a wonderful context of, yes,

amusing friendship. >> rose: reparat a and dinner and common experience. >> yes. and commmm struggles as to the one to defend salman. here was a case of not just a good friend needing friends but a very important principle that needed to be defended and because my family background was rather small and didn't last very long. when i read the definition of friendship it's god's apology for relations. god's apology for family. yeah, i know what he means by that. it is family. >> rose: it is family. are you all equally close or are you closer to martin than others or is it just-- >> well, you know we're all english originally so it's considered extremely embarrassing to talk about ininmacy. one doesn't-- if you have to say it, probably there's

something terribly wrong. >> rose: here you write your memoir, and you do not fail to put in a several sexual experiences with men-- none of the above. >> it's almost a cliche-- and many americans think it's more than that-- a formative thing with young english men-- >> rose: they do, exactly, i've been told that. >> it can be got over, i assure you. it can also be very powerful at the time emotionally. you're young. you're unformed. you're churning. guide by latin poets who write about homoerotic love, and pretty amazing if something doesn't kindle, and the point i think i wanted to make, i decided for that reason to include these things in the book is it isn't a form of sex as well. it's a form of love.

so at a time when there's a lot of attempts to criminalize or defame homosexual behavior, i thought i might speak up. >> rose: did you have any reluctance to do it in any way for any reason? >> no, no. i don't put in any names. >> rose: right. >> i don't-- >> rose: which leads me to the larger question. what is not in here? what is it that is part of who are you that is not here? >> i specifically say at the beginning i have a special little note, a warning to say if that's what you're interested in, you'll be disappointed. i have only copywright on myself first. i can't really commit other people's stores enhance my own. unless they're already public figures in some way. and the book is supposed to be about a journey of ideas and experiences and battles over ideology and principles. it's not a racy memoir of

myself. >> rose: it's in the a tell-all. >> maybe now would be the time to beguile-- >> rose: please, do. >> a chemotherapeutic evening. i can't toll you how little-- >> rose: back to living with cancer. >> yes. >> rose: what's the worst part of it? is it it puts some sense of mortality in your focus? >> no, because i think the focus on nortality is a useful thing to have and that's why i begin my book with it. >> rose: before you knew. >> you should always know that your time is very limited is and that you're lucky to live in a time and place where you can be healthy until you're 60 as i was. most people in history never had a chance to hope for a thing like that. so, no for the avoidance of hubris, i think it's good to have a sober feeling of the

presence of death. >> rose: but did you only get it when you got to 59 and 60? >> no, but you get more of it when you realize-- you're bound to feel a bit more retrospective. the worst thing about it is, i think the feeling that i'm boring. >> rose: when your mother said was the worst sin. >> people say can i come around? they really mean it. i'd love to see you. i can bring you some food. i say i'd love you to come but i don't think i'm much fulfilling company. i hate that feeling very much. there are days when i'm very afraid it stop me from writing. there are days i find it hard to write and writing was recreational to me. it's hard work, but i enjoy doing it. i wasn't happy not doing. and i was terrified it would kill my ability to do that because that would sap my will to live.

what else is bad about it? um... it makes you feel sick. >> rose: physically. >> yeah, time passes so you feel-- everything takes a long time. so you never get feeling done a full's day work. if you've done anything at all, you're pleased. >> rose: and bored. >> bother and impotent. none of these are attractive words. >> rose: and it goes exactly against the grain of the life-- >> you can go and look up treatments and you can read books about cancer, look up other prot kolz, feel you're trying to steal the march on the thing but i can't help feeling i'm fooling myself. you're not getting-- you know, you're not turning the tide on it. the initiative is still with the chemo. >> rose: do you think about how death happens? >> yes.

>> rose: what it's like? >> yes. in my book i say that i want to be conscious for it. >> rose: you want to be conscious? >> yes. it's an experience-- it's yet another experience, and i don't want to miss anything. the experience i'd like to see coming, have some remark, perhaps, to make. that's very qualified when you think of how painful... you might lose your ability to make an observation or really to be taking in the situation at all. >> rose: are you trying to find everything you possibly can about it, your cancer? >> yes, i'm now becoming someone who hasn't got anything else to do. most of my reading is not about that. i try to keep reading. i'm reading... they've just come out and never been collected before and because

i wrote-- and i'm reading mark twain "long delay." terrific. i read about the tiny resistance family in berlin in the 1940s wharchlt books have influenced you the most? >> receipt ones. i tend to go back to the old ones, i have to say. i'm not any more up on the new books than i am on seeing new films. keeping up to date seems less of a point now. >> rose: everybody wants to know the following answer: has any of this caused you to have any change of your ideas or opinions about religion? >> no. why could it possibly do that? >> rose: because of the old maxim that there are no

atheists in foxholes. >> well, there, i already know from my own experience and other people because i've sever times been in positions where i thought, ah, i'm not going to get out of this. i describe it, one in beirut. >> rose: right, right. >> it looks bad. never crossed my mind to resort to incantation or entreaties at that point. and i know a lot of soldiers and others who say the same. it's simply not true. no one seems to know where this silly adage comes from but it's definitely false. anyway, even-- even the small point that it contains is what? it's people saying maybe an exception to the general rule made my own case. well, that's pathetic, isn't it? no exception is going to be made in my case. >> rose: on the other hand-- >> and people who say, well, if you'd only give up the principles you've been attached to for a lifetime, you might impress god that

way. the likelihood of that intercessionary prayer or things of this kind are going to make a difference to you, whether you're healthy or ill, seems to be to be nil. >> rose: and you say about those people having prayer vigils and whatever they're going to do on september 20, one great united prayer, you say to them, if it makes them-- >> they have my blessing if it makes them feel better, absolutely. i don't want to be churlish about it. i've had a lot of very nice people who say, "since it is you i won't do it because they think i might mind. anybody kind enough to express sympathy. i upon not going to sneer at them. that would be cheap. but there is a long history, very unattractive history, of religious people going around claiming that nonbelievers reconsidered everything at the last and

will be received into the bosom. this is involves fabrication and telling lies of thomas pain, david hume. in the circulation-- i think it's a disgraceful advantage to want to take of people, too. why do you think a qerz made by someone whose body and mind is giving way is worth having? it seems like a horrible form of moral blackmail to me, on those conditions and terms. so i do find this and its history positively repulsive. in the soft form it's offered to me, you pray either that you get better or see the light, what's the harm? it's like holy water. it can't burn you. >> rose: any dylan thomas in you? >> no. no because what's to be--

what's to be enraged about? it's a very necessary thing. >> rose: the end, to be enraged about. >> anger i can't muster. really because it's necessary that people die. it would be terrible if people did not. people have to die in large numbers every day so as to make room. i'm leaving the party a bit earlier than i'd like. much earlier than i'd like-- or rather, it looks as if i might leave quite a bit earlier. and not only that, but the party will go on without me, a more horrible thought. why should i be enraged at that? that would be spiteful. >> rose: and the bottom line truth is, you know, that whenever that happens, whether it's next week or five years from now or 10 years from now or through some miracle of medicine that we do not yet know, general, you have to know that you have engaged it and you have engaged it with great sense of fierce

fighting for ideas you believed in, fierce commitment to friends, and fierce love of family. >> life is a terrible thing to waste. so i hope i haven't wasted too much of it. it's kind of you to put it like that anyway. >> rose: clearly, when you look at these book, "hostage to history" letters to a young contrarian, the trial of henry kissinger, thomas jefferson, god is not great, how religion poisons everything. essays, collaborations and pamphlets you know that it has been a fascinating time. thank you. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: it's a pleasure. >> thanks for coming. >> rose: the book is called "hitch 22," a memoir by

christopher hitchens. thank you for being with us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>08/13/10 08/13/10 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] >> from pacifica, this is