Famed Writer Christopher Hitchens Dead At 62
Dec. 15 2011, Published 11:00 a.m. ET
By Breaking Celebrity News Staff
Famed author and essayist Christopher Hitchens – whose journalistic career spanned more than four decades - has died at the age of 62, Breaking Celebrity News is reporting.
The controversial and outspoken British-American – whose often radical writings and opinions both engaged and enraged readers- passed away at a hospital in Houston, Texas Thursday night from pneumonia, a complication of the advanced oesophageal cancer he was suffering from.
Hitchens was diagnosed with the disease in June 2010, when his memoir, Hitch-22 hit the bestseller lists.
After his diagnosis, Hitchens often wrote about his declining health in his Vanity Fair column and was brutally honest about his life of excessive drinking and smoking.
In an August 2010 essay for the magazine he wrote: "I love the imagery of struggle.
"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."
When not writing about his own life, Hitchens – a staple on talk shows and on the lecture circuit - was well-known for taking no prisoners while targeting others.
He called Bill Clinton a rapist and "a cynical, self-seeking ambitious thug", Henry Kissinger a war criminal, Mother Teresa a fraudulent fanatic, and argued that women were less funny than men, which enraged female comics.
"I am programmed by the practice of a lifetime to take," he wrote, "a contrary position."
But Hitchens was also known for supporting the controversial opinions of others. He stood by the author Salman Rushdie during the uproar that exploded over his novel The Satanic Ver