Laura Kipnis in Critical Quarterly:
In 2010, when a book I’d written called How to Become a Scandal was going to press, my editor contacted Christopher to ask for a blurb. He sent back three choices, the first of which read, ‘Laura Kipnis promised me a blowjob if I endorsed her latest triumph, which I hereby warmly and devotedly do.’ I’m sure it says nothing good about me that I found this funny, especially since using it would have so perfectly – and devilishly – enacted the premise of the book. Though generally no prig, sadly my editor insisted we go with the more conventional third option (the second was a double entendre about a now mostly forgotten Republican senator caught in a clumsy men’s room encounter). She did forward me their subsequent correspondence: ‘Christopher – you are a scream!’ she’d written back, to which he responded, ‘Yeah? Well a lot depends on which one she picks.’
I can be as humourless as the next leftwing feminist but for some reason Christopher’s, what to call it – lasciviousness? antiquarianism? – amused more than offended me, though his public anti-abortion stance was noxious and, one suspects, hypocritical. Colour me surprised if that particular edict was upheld in practice. In any case, I never thought of him as someone you’d go to for instruction on feminism, and increasingly not on any political question, yet it was perplexingly hard to hold his bad politics against him.
More here.