the manuscript of
To Have and Have Not
to read and critique in Paris or anywhere else? The stories effectively display Hellmanâs memories of panic, her self-doubt, her need for courage, and, finally, they speak to one womanâs capacity to overcome terror and prevail. They are not the first or only occasions when she tells us how fear immobilized her but that she did the right thing in the end. Some stories seem to stretch credibility and to back-fire. In
Pentimento
, Hellman tells us that she delivered $50,000 to a friend in the Austrian resistance, Julia. This story was made into a film starringJane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. At first âJuliaâ served Lillianâs purposes well. It positioned Hellman as a courageous anti-fascist, a person of principle. But when a woman whose story resembled that of Julia came forward, Hellman was accused not merely of enhancement, exaggeration, and self-aggrandizement, but of theft: of appropriating someone elseâs life. That cast a light on Hellmanâs character that ultimately reflected on everything she touched.
Lillian Hellman was, if nothing else, a controversial figure. During her life and after, she was the object of adulation and anger, love and hate. When I started work on this book my friends and colleagues told me that this was a subject that had no rewards. They attached adjectives such as
evil, cruel
, and
vindictive
to Hellmanâs name. She was, I was told, a Stalinist, a liar, a self-hating Jew, at best a second-rate playwright, already forgotten. She was said to be a polarizing and dishonest person. There would be nothing but misery in tackling the life of this hateful person. Besides, there were already several accounts of her life, most of them negative. 7 Why write another? I took all of these comments seriously, thinking at first to avoid this pythonâs nest and to go on to another, less controversial, project. But I am one of that generation of 1970s historians who have taken it upon themselves to examine gender as an ideological force, and Hellman appealed too strongly.
By the time I started to work on this project in 2001 Hellman had become deeply embedded in negative mythology. Those who had already come to damaging conclusions about her had done so less out of knowledge about the woman than from commitment to particular ideologies. Their own sense of themselves as liberals, Zionists, or feminists infused what they âknew.â Several biographies about her reinforced the negative images, each slipping into, and confirming, the already-existing descriptions of a wicked and evil woman. If the biographer dared to provide a more empathetic view of Hellman and her politics, she was taken to task by reviewers whose imaginations could not transcend an accepted public picture. Minds were made up. And yet this too tells us something about a century in which what was remembered was often conditioned by which side you were on.
I discovered this early on when I began to speak publicly about this book. The events routinely attracted large and lively audiences and produced open and helpful discussions. But their aftermath provided unexpected insights. On one occasion, after I addressed a forum of academics, a participant went home to tell her partner about the talk. An e-mailmessage the next day described to me how âhe laced into Hellman attacking her for being an apologist for Stalin and never repenting, for her self-righteousness, for her lies and self-aggrandizements.â On another, I gave a talk to a small seminar of women biographers in which I averred that part of what I wanted to do was to examine the meaning of calling Hellman a liar, of labeling her as âugly.â Hearing of my effort, a young personânot present at the seminarâprotested that I was being too kind to Hellman. In a message to a colleague, he asked, âDid anyone say, at any point, in these agreeable proceedings, âhold on, Hellman WAS a
To Have and Have Not
to read and critique in Paris or anywhere else? The stories effectively display Hellmanâs memories of panic, her self-doubt, her need for courage, and, finally, they speak to one womanâs capacity to overcome terror and prevail. They are not the first or only occasions when she tells us how fear immobilized her but that she did the right thing in the end. Some stories seem to stretch credibility and to back-fire. In
Pentimento
, Hellman tells us that she delivered $50,000 to a friend in the Austrian resistance, Julia. This story was made into a film starringJane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. At first âJuliaâ served Lillianâs purposes well. It positioned Hellman as a courageous anti-fascist, a person of principle. But when a woman whose story resembled that of Julia came forward, Hellman was accused not merely of enhancement, exaggeration, and self-aggrandizement, but of theft: of appropriating someone elseâs life. That cast a light on Hellmanâs character that ultimately reflected on everything she touched.
Lillian Hellman was, if nothing else, a controversial figure. During her life and after, she was the object of adulation and anger, love and hate. When I started work on this book my friends and colleagues told me that this was a subject that had no rewards. They attached adjectives such as
evil, cruel
, and
vindictive
to Hellmanâs name. She was, I was told, a Stalinist, a liar, a self-hating Jew, at best a second-rate playwright, already forgotten. She was said to be a polarizing and dishonest person. There would be nothing but misery in tackling the life of this hateful person. Besides, there were already several accounts of her life, most of them negative. 7 Why write another? I took all of these comments seriously, thinking at first to avoid this pythonâs nest and to go on to another, less controversial, project. But I am one of that generation of 1970s historians who have taken it upon themselves to examine gender as an ideological force, and Hellman appealed too strongly.
By the time I started to work on this project in 2001 Hellman had become deeply embedded in negative mythology. Those who had already come to damaging conclusions about her had done so less out of knowledge about the woman than from commitment to particular ideologies. Their own sense of themselves as liberals, Zionists, or feminists infused what they âknew.â Several biographies about her reinforced the negative images, each slipping into, and confirming, the already-existing descriptions of a wicked and evil woman. If the biographer dared to provide a more empathetic view of Hellman and her politics, she was taken to task by reviewers whose imaginations could not transcend an accepted public picture. Minds were made up. And yet this too tells us something about a century in which what was remembered was often conditioned by which side you were on.
I discovered this early on when I began to speak publicly about this book. The events routinely attracted large and lively audiences and produced open and helpful discussions. But their aftermath provided unexpected insights. On one occasion, after I addressed a forum of academics, a participant went home to tell her partner about the talk. An e-mailmessage the next day described to me how âhe laced into Hellman attacking her for being an apologist for Stalin and never repenting, for her self-righteousness, for her lies and self-aggrandizements.â On another, I gave a talk to a small seminar of women biographers in which I averred that part of what I wanted to do was to examine the meaning of calling Hellman a liar, of labeling her as âugly.â Hearing of my effort, a young personânot present at the seminarâprotested that I was being too kind to Hellman. In a message to a colleague, he asked, âDid anyone say, at any point, in these agreeable proceedings, âhold on, Hellman WAS a