MORTALITY

New York City, NY: Twelve Press, 2012. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Twelve Press, 2012. Hardcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 110 pages. The author's last book, published posthumously. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out within the first few weeks of publication. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Christopher Hitchens' "Mortality". "End-of-life" essays and a Coda of Last Notes that appear in published form for the very first time, the best book of its kind since Susan Sontag's "Illness As Metaphor" (1978). All seven pieces first appeared in gripping monthly installments in Vanity Fair Magazine. They show the terminally ill Hitchens to be unsentimentally witty, insightful, and funny until the grim end. The single most reflective and poignant piece is on the idea of voice: Hitchens permanently lost his speaking voice during aggressive treatment, prompting him to write what is surely one of the most original meditations on the (deadly) literary cliche, "the writer's voice", and what it means to a famously eloquent public intellectual/writer like him to lose the ability to speak. Another brilliantly sustained piece on the aphorism by Nietzsche, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger", which has permanently entered popular culture as a truism, is challenged by Hitchens from the largely-unheard perspective of a terminally sick man: For every cancer patient (and there are millions of them, on whose behalf Hitchens vehemently writes) who has undergone chemo "therapy", radiation, and most harrowing of all, bone marrow transplant, whatever doesn't kill you makes you weaker. Then it kills you. Christopher Hitchens died of esophageal cancer on December 15, 2011, "the greatest essayist in the English language" of our time. An absolute "must-have" title for Christopher Hitchens collectors. This title is a great book. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. One of the greatest writer/intellectuals of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS AND GORE VIDAL TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1455502758.