In a dust-jacket blurb, Gore Vidal says he has been asked if he wishes to nominate a successor, "a dauphin or delfino", and names Hitchens. It's a wise choice, no doubt, but is it appropriate? Hitchens is far warmer, far more ruggedly alive, than the Doge of Ravello, who, as he enters what he once wittily called the "springtime of his senescence" - he was speaking of Ronald Reagan, the "acting President" - has taken to repeating himself with wearying regularity, in many forums, and often in exactly the same words, as if in his aristocratic jadedness he believed that no one nowadays reads more than one newspaper or journal or listens to more than one radio or television talk show.It's usually interesting to learn what one writer I admire thinks of another's writing. Now, Christopher Hitchens wouldn't be someone whom I, a...
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