PEN Festival Panel Gives Christopher Hitchens Mixed Grades The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature kicked off Monday night with a panel discussion about the life and work of Christopher Hitchens. Billed as a "tribute" to the writer, the promotional materials for the event said it would engage with this question, among others: "Did the man and his methods overshadow his ideas?" But even that wasn't full preparation for a decidedly mixed evaluation of Mr. Hitchens's legacy, which prompted a firm defense of the writer by a famous friend to cap the evening. Mr. Hitchens's erudition, wit and prolificacy were taken for granted by the five participants: Katha Pollitt and Victor Navasky, his erstwhile colleagues at The Nation magazine; Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair; and George Packer, a staff writer for The New Yorker. The question initially posed by the writer Ian Buruma, the event's moderator, was whether Mr. Hitchens's work and ideas would stand the test of time. Mr. Navasky said Mr. Hitchens didn't have "original theories," but rather offered "original takes" on things. Ms. Pollitt said that no magazine writer who "weighs in" so regularly on the issues of the day can expect their work to age well. She went further - since, she claimed, it was probably "the reason" she was invited to be on the panel - and called Mr. Hitchens a "tremendous misogynist" who didn't have "a lot of serious, professional respect for women writers." She also chided his habit of greeting her with a kiss on the hand, a habit she called "grotesque." Ms. Pollitt expressed several points she made in a piece she wrote days after Mr. Hitchens died. Mr. Carter visibly knitted his brow during some of her remarks, and he and the rest of the panel eventually defended Mr. Hitchens's kissing of hands and his other "courtly" behavior. The participants expressed the most concern about Mr. Hitchens's famously stubborn methods. "He was like a lawyer who could defend any client, and he was his own client," Mr. Navasky said. Mr. Packer said he would "assume a position, and dig in." Then, "the less ground he had, the more [his position] would get fierce . . . and false." He added that Mr. Hitchens "could always argue with others, but couldn't argue with himself," and that it would have been nice to see him grapple with his own doubts on the page. But they also pointed to some of his vital work, both serious and comic, like the time he was voluntarily waterboarded, or his series about self-improvement, for which he had a seaweed body wrap and dabbled in yoga. Mr. Packer singled out Mr. Hitchens's performance in a debate with Tony Blair about whether religion is a force for good, and he also praised Mr. Hitchens for speaking out strongly and often about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie when no one else was willing to "stick out their neck." Mr. Rushdie, the festival's founder, was sitting front and center in the crowd. During the time allotted for audience participation, he approached a microphone and said he wanted to pay tribute to Mr. Hitchens, "which is what I thought we were doing tonight," he added, with an edge in his voice. He championed his friend's best works as "masterpieces of style," called his book "God is Not Great" an "extraordinary polemic," and said he fit comfortably in the tradition of great essayists going back to the 18th century and his work would undoubtedly endure.