Walking through the bookstore only last weekend, I saw lying on a table display a cheap paperback edition of Christopher Hitchens’ short, posthumously published book Mortality. The man died last year after a year-long humiliation in the company of a metastasizing throat cancer.
Ah, how relevant, I had thought to myself. I purchased the book.
The book is not very long. I read the 8 essays collected there in spare moments – at bedtime, at wake-up time, waiting for things.
It’s well written and I’m deeply sympathetic to his curmodgeonly and materialist perspectives.
But… my gut reaction is jealousy: Hitchens had already attained his intellectual immortality, through his writing.
I, on the other hand, may die utterly obscure. There’s no finishing those novels I’ve been working on, now. I’ve been much too lazy with my alloted time on this earth.
I’m like the student waking up one morning and realizing the exam is today, but I’ve frittered away my time procrastinating, not studying, and now it’s too late.
