“Mortality,” Jeff Sharlet writes of the late Christopher Hitchens’ small, posthumously published book of essays, composed while the author was dying of cancer, is death-writing “at its most generous and most human: just another man dying, making a joke and telling a story.”
It was like meeting a clown outside of his makeup, away from the hysteria of his profession, who appears lovely and handsome and noble, if only because he isn’t trapped in a spotlight at the center of a ludicrous pie fight.