He said Vidal had a funny first name

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago, among other books, was born on this day in 1918. He wrote:

"Freedom! To spit in the eye and in the soul of the passerby and the passenger with advertising!"

Fellow novelist Gore Vidal said of Solzhenisyn: "He is a bad novelist and a fool. The combination usually makes for great popularity in the U. S."