British-American writer Christopher Hitchens— the combative and caustic critic, intellectual, atheist and self-defined “conservative Marxist” — died Thursday at the age of 62 at a Texas hospital.
The cause of death was pneumonia, a complication of oesophageal cancer. He died Thursday night at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, surrounded by family and friends.
Vanity Fair magazine, which announced his death, said there would “never be another like Christopher.”
The magazine’s editor, Graydon Carter, described Hitchins as someone “of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar. Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls.”
Hitchens disclosed in June 2010 that he was being treated for cancer and would be “a very lucky person to live another five years.” He continued to write even as he temporarily lost the use of his voice.
In an August essay for Vanity Fair, he wrote, “I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.”
His passions included words, alcohol and cigarettes. He once wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was “enough to kill or stun the average mule.”
A 2010 interview with USA TODAY was conducted on a New York sidewalk because Hitchens needed a cigarette. He said then he had given up smoking for two years but resumed as he was finishing his memoir, Hitch-22.
“I figured one cigarette isn’t going to kill me, which is stupid,” he said between puffs — shortly before he discovered he had cancer
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