Christopher Hitchens: The Fifth Annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture

Christopher Hitchens speaks on Crucibles: Past and Present followed by a conversation with PEN World Voices Festival Chair, Salman Rushdie.
Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Orwell, Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and his No. 1 New York Times and National Book Award nominee , God Is Not Great. His next book,Hitch-22: A Memoir, will be released this June.

Пікірлер: 39

  • @LaplacianFourier
    @LaplacianFourier2 жыл бұрын

    Just appreciate what an amazing talk this is. He was simply asked to say a few things about Arthur Miller and his play The Crucible (which is rather mundane to those sufficiently impressed during middle school US history course), but Hitchens put it in a grander scope and struggle that even Miller himself may not have imagined, as evident by his almost skipping of "the appointment.” A person like him whose marvelous intelligence is only matched by his bravery is truly once in a century, at best. And to realize that his book God is Not Great was only a finalist speaks to the ignorance and frivolous nature the National Book Foundation conducted themselves with. Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke is but a fleeting fictional entertainment that at best may contain literary somersaults that wowed, whereas Hitchens book will be one looked back by our descendants few millenniums from now and wonder why his contemporaries were so thickheaded. The latter is if we can even muster some of the brilliance and courage displayed consistently by this man to not let civilization collapse.

  • @AFMMarcelD

    @AFMMarcelD

    2 жыл бұрын

    @ Boomerino, appreciate your statement, and concur 100% with it as well, intellects like Christopher Hitchens are scarce, as you well put it, once a century at best. I was very lucky I spot him in C-Span in the mid 80’s from there on my Christopher Hitchens library grew, pleased to say I have all his written works, proud to have in my possession “god is Not Great” first edition book # 9 hard cover from the first 1000 copies signed by the man himself, I treasure this giant of reason teachings, my books go to my son then to his sons/daughters. We must try to preserve his well researched ideas and thought provoking wisdom. Thank you for reading…Cheers! 🥃🥃

  • @Bajro97
    @Bajro97 Жыл бұрын

    Listening Hitchens anew on the subject of free speech always rekindles my rage at the cowards in publishing and politics who enable fascist bullies. A true jolt of inspiration that I find I need from time to time. One has keep one's anger cold, as Hitchens would say, and one's powder dry.

  • @joecurran2811
    @joecurran28117 ай бұрын

    Great speech by the Hitch!

  • @AFMMarcelD
    @AFMMarcelD2 жыл бұрын

    Oh, how I miss this man! incomparable/irreplaceable Hitchens. Every time I listen to this fantastic polymath even my English diction gets better and so does my grammar,..I love this gentleman.

  • @bjack7282
    @bjack72823 жыл бұрын

    a warning from the past and still nobody is listening

  • @dianahill7239

    @dianahill7239

    3 жыл бұрын

    Christopher Hitchens was intelligent enough to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court! Chief Justice Christopher Hitchens.

  • @AFMMarcelD

    @AFMMarcelD

    5 ай бұрын

    Well, unfortunately I am not a member of the senate nor anyone of importance to change any laws, but I have been listening to this man’s wisdom and thought provoking ideas since the mid 1980s … I love Christopher and sorely miss the gorgeous bastard.

  • @dianahill7239
    @dianahill72393 жыл бұрын

    Christopher Hitchens was intelligent enough to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court! Chief Justice Christopher Hitchens.

  • @Snafuski
    @Snafuski2 жыл бұрын

    Must-hear...

  • @SirKanti1
    @SirKanti113 жыл бұрын

    @erihan10 Yes his wife is jewish i believe as was his mothers side of the family.

  • @crixus
    @crixus14 жыл бұрын

    @MrAvenged He does not. It's a Kurdish flag. Either get your eyes fixed or read Christopher's articles. Or both. In any case, it might prevent you from posting stupid comments on youtube.

  • @PaulGilbertIsGod2
    @PaulGilbertIsGod213 жыл бұрын

    @erihan10 His wife a Jewish Greek. Christopher didn't find out his mother, Yvonne, was Jewish until long after she passed.

  • @BreakingUFC

    @BreakingUFC

    Жыл бұрын

    His first wife was Greek orthodox, his 2nd wife Carol Blue is of Jewish heritage

  • @joecurran2811

    @joecurran2811

    7 ай бұрын

    Wasn't there that comment to a Catholic Bishop we are both horrible bastardisations of Judaism

  • @MattSingh1
    @MattSingh12 жыл бұрын

    *This was just a month before Christopher was diagnosed with the cancer that would rob him of us.*

  • @LaplacianFourier

    @LaplacianFourier

    2 жыл бұрын

    Yes indeed, robbed us of him.

  • @crixus
    @crixus14 жыл бұрын

    @MrAvenged A palestinian flag might suggest that you agree he's a racist or antisemite (which would be ironic since Hitch is a Jew). Apart from that: it wasn't clear in your original post that you replied to someone.

  • @jamescarr4662

    @jamescarr4662

    2 жыл бұрын

    Perhaps an Israeli flag is by that logic suggestive of islamophobia...

  • @jamescarr4662

    @jamescarr4662

    2 жыл бұрын

    To his eternal credit Hitchens was an avid opponent of Israel's illegal and USA-underwritten occupation of Palestine; he was far too intelligent and rationale a man not to be. An obvious truism is that anti-zionism is not anti-semitism.

  • @recalcitrantrecidivist5927

    @recalcitrantrecidivist5927

    2 жыл бұрын

    Its a Kurdish flag.

  • @erihan10
    @erihan1013 жыл бұрын

    He just said he was married by a rabbi, did he not?

  • @stevennorton485
    @stevennorton485 Жыл бұрын

    the fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge proverbs 1 v 7

  • @billisaac326
    @billisaac3262 жыл бұрын

    Millers mother remarked" she pisses like a racehorse", what a vulgar thing to say I'm surprised Hitch found it funny and chose to repeat it.

  • @sendnoodles5437

    @sendnoodles5437

    2 жыл бұрын

    A bit puritanical don’t you think?

  • @billisaac326

    @billisaac326

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@sendnoodles5437 No just vulgar.

  • @sendnoodles5437

    @sendnoodles5437

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@billisaac326 What a dull life you must have

  • @Iyiouseismouse

    @Iyiouseismouse

    Жыл бұрын

    I don’t mean to patronize but did you get the joke? She was demure and didn’t want people, while she was in the bathroom that was near to the dining room to hear the noises that everyone makes when doing a “number 2.” So out of politeness she ran the faucet to cover those noises, and the mother took it as her doing a big “number 1” which when you hold it in forever and let loose is called “pissing like a racehorse.” It’s not obscene. Just a story about how her attempt to be polite about a bodily function ended up just reminding the mother in law of another.

  • @billisaac326

    @billisaac326

    Жыл бұрын

    @@Iyiouseismouse I am allowed an opinion and I thought the remark crass.