SCRIBE CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS PERISHES

Vanity Fair Contributing Editor Christopher Hitches dies at the age of 62.

Christopher Hitchens, the controversial writer and cable TV pundit who took aim at such targets as Bill Clinton, Mother Teresa and organized religion, died Thursday of pneumonia after a long battle with esophageal cancer.

EIC Graydon Carter quips: "There will never be another like Christopher......A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar. Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

He was a man of insatiable appetites—for cigarettes, for scotch, for company, for great writing, and, above all, for conversation. That he had an output to equal what he took in was the miracle in the man. You’d be hard-pressed to find a writer who could match the volume of exquisitely crafted columns, essays, articles, and books he produced over the past four decades.