When the modern reader thinks of Lillian Hellman, if he or she thinks of her at all, the image that presents itself is likely to be of a wizened old doll marooned in a gigantic mink coat, a still bigger hairdo — and wreathed in the smoke emanating not only from a cigarette but from her smouldering pants.
Her enemy Mary McCarthy said in a 1979 television interview that ‘every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the” ’. That memorable zinger — and the lawsuit that followed, still ongoing at the time of Hellman’s death — all but did for her reputation. Chuck Palahniuk’s novel about the golden age of Hollywood, Tell All, has as a running joke the eye-stretching lies told by Hellman.
Her reputation as a liar has almost eclipsed her reputation as a playwright. Among the most stinging things McCarthy said in that interview, because true, was that as a writer she ‘belongs to the past’.
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