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Postscript: Robert Bork, 1927-2012
Robert Bork, who died Wednesday, was an unrepentant reactionary who was on the wrong side of every major legal controversy of the twentieth century.
- Jeffrey Toobin. Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/WsJ5XE
Photograph by CNP/Getty.
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Postscript: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011
Over the course of his heroic, uncomplaining eighteen-month battle with the cancer, I found myself rehearsing what I might say to an obituary writer, should one ring after the news of Christopher’s death. I thought to say something along the lines—the air of Byron, the steel pen of Orwell, and the wit of Wilde.
A bit forced, perhaps, but you get the idea. Christopher may not, as Byron did, write poetry, but he could recite staves, cantos, yards of it. As for Byronic aura, there were the curly locks, the unbuttoned shirt revealing a wealth—verily, a woolly mastodon—of pectoral hair, as well as the roguish, raffish je ne sais quoi good looks. (Somewhere in “Hitch-22,” he notes that he had now reached the age when “only women wanted to go to bed with me.”)
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