Christopher Hitchens commenting in the Atlantic on Arthur Schlesinger’s memoirs:
Inded, Schlesinger’s good manners are almost masochistic. Of Vidal, he writes, “At least he knows me, which in a way legitimizes his right to attack me.” Self-deprecation could do no more; still, one might ask for a little more gin in the martini.
Alice Roosevelt once quipped to an unattached young woman at a dinner party, “If you don’t have anything good to say about anyone here, come sit by me.” That said, given the compulsive Hitchensian habit of poisoning every well that he jumps into, even Alice Roosevelt would read Hitch’s Schlesinger diss to as misery craving company, and feeling slightly uncomfortable in its absence.