68 Leon Friedman, interview by author, June 3, 2007.
69 Telford Taylor to Thomas Eliot, Dec 23, 1970, TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.
70 Stephen Gillers, interview by author, October 12, 2007.
71 Norman Dorsen and Roger Wilkins, “Memorandum,” June 19, 1970, TTPCLS: 11-0-8-108.
72 LH to Telford Taylor, June 23, 1970, TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.
73 Frances X. Clines, “F.B.I. Head Scored by Ramsey Clark,” New York Times (November 18, 1970): 48. Clark had previously published a book in which he described FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as having “a self-centered concern for his own reputation.”
74 Karl Meyer, “Clark Scores FBI Over ‘Ideology,’ Lack of Diversity,” Washington Post (November 18, 1970): A3.
75 M.A. Jones to Mr. Bishop, FBI memorandum, “Members of the Committee for Public Justice,” November 19, 1970, box 75, folder 2, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL. Guilt by association still remained a key tool in the FBI’s arsenal. Jerome Wiesner, for example, was acknowledged to be an “internationally known scientist,” but the file noted among other things that “Several of his associates at MIT were publicly identified as having been affiliated with the CP.” Harold Willins was said to have signed a petition “appealing for executive clemency for Morris U. Schappes, Communist party member convicted of perjury.” That all these people were associated with Hellman in the CPJ was, of course, another mark against them.
76 Ibid.
77 “Panel Announces Inquiry into FBI,” Chicago Tribune (April 28, 1971): 6.
78 Robert M. Smith, “Hoover, in an Unusual Letter, Defends Operation of F.B.I.,” New York Times (Oct 17, 1971): 1.
79 J. Edgar Hoover to Duane Lockard, October 7, 1971, as reproduced in Pat Watters and Stephen Gillers, eds., Investigating the FBI: A Tough, Fair Look at the Powerful Bureau, Its Present and Its Future (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 466–67. The press summarized the FBI’s stance as dismissive, repeating Hoover’s position that “If the FBI responded every time it was attacked somewhere, it would not have time to go about its normal business.” See “Hoover Defends FBI in a Letter,” Chicago Tribune (October 17, 1971): 9.
80 Tom Wicker, Introduction to Watters and Gillers, eds., Investigating the FBI, xiv.
81 Watters and Gillers, Investigating the FBI, 477.
82 Allan C. Brownfield, “F.B.I. Under Increasing Attack,” Roll Call (November 18, 1971). Brownfield suggested that the conference’s bias was illustrated by its effort to disguise the true identities of participants. The executive council of the CPJ, he reported, consisted of people like Ramsey Clark, known for his longstanding hostility to Hoover, Lillian Hellman, “who has for years refused to answer questions about her involvement with the Communist Party,” and Burke Marshall, “who was one of the first to rush to Chappaquiddick in an effort to assist his old friend, Edward Kennedy.” Martin Peretz, Brownfield pointed out, was a member of the CPJ to be sure, but he had also served on the executive board of the National Conference for New Politics … which collaborated with the Communist Party, U.S.A. (Peretz subsequently became owner of the New Republic, and much more conservative) in a 1967 Chicago convention. Brownfield sent the piece to Hoover, who consulted with advisers as to whether to respond. They advised against it after investigating his background. See G.E. Malmfeldt to Mr. Bishop, November 26, 1971, microfilm, FBI file on the CPJ (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1984). Thanks to Leon Friedman, for providing much of this information.
83 Jack Nelson and Bryce Nelson, “Zimbalist, Two Others Open Drive to Back FBI,” Los Angeles Times (June 15, 1971): 17. See also Robert M. Smith, “Friends of FBI in a Fund Appeal,” New York Times (July 21, 1971): 20.
84 This material provided by Leon Friedman and acknowledged with thanks.
85 Ken W. Clawson, “Monetary Support Is Abundant,” Washington Post and Times Herald (October 30, 1971): A2.
86 “Speakers Hit Bureau’s Power” Washington Post and Times Herald (October 30, 1971): A2.
87 Robert Smith, “The FBI Agrees to Hear Its Chief Critic,” New York Times (June 7, 1972): 17.
88 Tom Wicker, “A Battle Congress Could Win,” New York Times (April 5, 1973): 45.
89 Typescript, “Grand Jury Project,” December 10, 1971, TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.
90 Lesley Oelsner, “Grand Jury System Is Assailed Here,” New York Times (May 1, 1972): 23.
91 New York (October 22, 1973): 36–37.
92 “Lillian Hellman Keynotes CIA meeting,” CPJ Newsletter, June 1975, box 51, folder 11, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Early in 1975, Senator Frank Church launched a series of senatorial investigations into the domestic activities of the CIA. Arguable the CPJ catalyzed these.
93 Typescript of call for funds, February 8, 1978, courtesy of Leon Friedman, private collection.
94 “Bill to Bar FBI Wiretaps, Curb Probes Unveiled,” Los Angeles Times (February 15, 1977): A2.
95 James Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” Washington Post (July 1, 1984): 67.
96 See for example, “Lillian Hellman—Above the Fuss,” San Francisco Chronicle (November 14, 1975): 37.
97 Leon Friedman and Stephen Gillers, executive directors of the CPJ, agree on this point, as does chair of the Executive Council, Norman Dorsen. See interviews of Leon Friedman, Norman Dorsen, and Stephen Gillers by author.
98 William Wright, Lillian Hellman: The Image, the Woman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 339.
10. Liar, Liar
1 Lillian Hellman, Pentimento (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 23.
2 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1, Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
3 Typescript of reading, University of Michigan, April 1960, box 43, folder 2, 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
4 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1, Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 2–3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
5 Dan Rather, “An Interview with Lillian Hellman” in Jackson Breyer, ed., Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 298.
6 Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,” Rolling Stone (February 27, 1977): 55.
7 LH to Diane Johnson, October 11, 1978, box 72, folder 1, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.
8 Hellman, “Typescript, Harvard Lecture No. 1,” box 44, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
9 Lillian Hellman, “The Time of the Foxes,” New York Times (October 22, 1967): 117.
10 James Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” Washington Post (July 1, 1984): 67.
11 Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 55.
12 Doris Lessing, Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 (New York: Harper Collins, 1994).
13 Lillian Hellman to William Abrahams, June 30, 1971, box 51, folder 12, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.
14 Hellman, Pentimento, 3.
15 LH to Donald Erickson, May 23, 1973, box 124, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
16 Hellman, Pentimento, 10
17 Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” 67.
18 Mark Schorer, “Pentimento,” New York Times Book Review (September 23, 1973): 1. The word honest comes from James Walt, “An Honest Memoir,” New Republic (October 20, 1973): 27.
19 John Leonard, “1973: An Apology and 38 Consolations,” New York Times Book Review (December 2, 1973,): 2; Peter Prescott, “Leftover Life,” Newsweek (October 1, 1973): 95.
20 Edward Grossman, “Pentimento by Lillian Hellman,” Commentary 57 (1974): 88.
21 Martha Duffy, “Half-Told Tales,” Time (October 1, 1973): 116.
22 Hellman, Pentimento, 153
23 Ibid., 225
24 Schorer, “Pentimento,” 1.
25 Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “Seeing Others to See Oneself,” New York Times (September
17, 1973): 31L.
26 Muriel Haynes, “More on the Unfinished Woman,” Ms. (January 1974): 33.
27 Louise Knight, “Sibling Rivalry: History and Memoir,” Women’s Review of Books 24 (July/August 2007): 12–13.
28 Richard Eder, “Down the Rabbit Hole in a Story Book Memoir,” New York Times (December 12, 2006).
29 Joel Agee, “A Lie that Tells the Truth,” Harper’s (November 2007): 53, 57. Daniel Kornstein put it this way: “The facts could be lies, but the book could be true. Truth can emerge from a context of untruths, just as it does in fiction.” Daniel J. Kornstein, “The Case Against Lillian Hellman: A Literary/Legal Defense,” Fordham Law Review 57 (April 1989): 692.
30 John Simon, “Pentimental Journey,” Hudson Review 26 (Winter 1974): 748. At the end of the piece, Simon reveals that he had an axe to grind, concerning a brief unpleasant encounter he had had with Hellman when he was still a student.
31 Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” 67.
32 Bill Moyers, “Lillian Hellman: The Great Playwright Candidly Reflects on a Long Rich Life,” in Bryer, ed., Conversations, 154.
33 Hellman, Pentimento, 224–5.
34 Nora Ephron, “Walking, Cooking,” Writing, Talking,” New York Times Book Review (September 23, 1973): 2.
35 Hellman, Pentimento, 225.
36 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.
37 Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 39.
38 Rex Reed, Valentines and Vitriol (New York: Delacorte Press, 1977), 104–05.
39 Mel Gussow, “For Lillian Hellman, More Honors and a New Book,” New York Times (November 7, 1975): 28.
40 Hellman, Pentimento, 225.
41 Ephron, “Walking, Cooking,” 2.
42 Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 35, 38, 39, 82, 149.
43 Paul Gray, “An Unfinished Woman,” Time (May 10, 1976): 83.
44 Robert Coles, “The Literary Scene,” Washington Post Book World (May 17, 1966): 32.
45 Typescript of BBC interview with Philip French, “Critics Forum,” Radio 3, June 11, 1976, box 19, folder 2, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.
46 Murray Kempton, “Witnesses,” New York Review of Books (June 10, 1976): 22–25.
47 Exchange of letters, LH to Ephraim London, May 3, 1976; LH to Joseph Consolino, May 5, 1976, both in box 32, folder 6; Ephraim London to Joseph Consolino, May 10, 1976, box 32, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
48 William F. Buckley Jr., “Who Is the Ugliest of Them All?” National Review (January 21, 1977): 105
49 I am indebted to Bert Silverman for these insights. On the seventies, see also Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade, How the U.S. Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2010); Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: New Press, 2010); Natasha Zaretsky, No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
50 Nathan Glazer, “An Answer to Lillian Hellman,” Commentary (June 1976): 36–39.
51 Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 19, 2010.
52 Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 150.
53 Sidney Hook, “Lillian Hellman’s Scoundrel Time,” Encounter 48 (February 1977): 86, 82–91.
54 Ibid., 88.
55 William Appleman Williams, The Shaping of American Diplomacy: Readings and Documents in American Foreign Relations (New York: Rand McNally, 1956); Lloyd Gardner, The Origins of the Cold War (Waltham, MA: Ginn-Baisdell, 1970); Gabriel Kolko, The Roots of American Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Power and Purpose (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).
56 Nathan Glazer, “An Answer to Lillian Hellman,” 36–39.
57 Richard A. Falk, “Comment: Scoundrel Time,” Performing Arts Journal 1 (Winter 1977): 97.
58 Hilton Kramer, “The Blacklist and the Cold War,” New York Times (October 3, 1976): 1, 16, 17. Kramer preceded this comment with one that declared Scoundrel Time “as much a part of this re-examination of the 1960s … as they are an attempt to redraw the history of an earlier era along lines—often alas, fictional lines—that are sympathetic to the present climate of liberal opinion.”
59 Arthur M. Schlesinger’s letter appeared among others from Alfred Kazin, Eric Foner, Bruce Cook, and Michael Meeropol, New York Times (October 17, 1977): 12.
60 LH to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., no date, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Schlesinger’s reply, dated October 20, 1976, acknowledges their political differences and claims that they have never mattered because they are “such an inferior part of life that the more important things survive political disagreements.” He continues, “Though you may now hate me, I will continue to regard you with unrelenting affection and admiration for your charm, wit, inexorable human dignity and the passion that has produced so much including, I suppose, your letter to me.”
61 Arthur Schlesinger to Joseph Rauh, October 22, 1976, box 72, folder 10, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.
62 These arguments were well captured and expressed by Melvin J. Lasky, “Left-Wing America’s Martyr-in-Waiting,” Encounter (June 11, 1976): 56.
63 Ibid.
64 Sidney Hook to Norman Podhoretz, May 5, 1976, box 78, folder 19, Sidney Hook Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.
65 Buckley, “Who Is the Ugliest of Them All?” 105.
66 William Phillips, A Partisan View: Five Decades of the Literary Life (New York: Stein and Day, 1983), 174–75.
67 Buckley, “Who Is the Ugliest of them All?” 104.
68 Walter Goodman, “Fair Game” New Leader 59 (May 24, 1976): 10. See also Walter Goodman, The Committee (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1968)
69 Kempton, “Witnesses,” 22.
70 William F. Buckley Jr., “Night of the Cuckoo with Fonda, Hellman,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat (April 4, 1977): 11.
71 Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 81. A lengthy correspondence between the Trillings and Lillian extending from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies testifies to the friendship. See also Lionel Trilling Papers, box 3, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.
72 Diana Trilling, We Must March, My Darlings: A Critical Decade (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 41.
73 Diana Trilling to LH, October 8, 1976, box 32, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
74 Robert McFadden, “Diana Trilling Book Is Canceled,” New York Times (September 28, 1976): 1; Little, Brown’s executive director, Arthur Thornhill, confirms the story—taking full responsibility for the decision to ask Trilling to withdraw the offending words. See Roger Donald to Lillian Hellman, December 10, 1976, box 32, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
75 Michiko Kakutani, “Diana Trilling: Pathfinder in Morality,” New York Times (November 16, 1981): C13.
76 Rose Styron, interview by author, August 17, 2010; Annabel Davis-Goff, interview by author, September 2, 2010.
77 Greil Marcus, “Undercover: Remembering the Witch Hunts,” Rolling Stone (May 20, 1976): 97.
78 Buckley, “Who Is the Ugliest of Them All?” 101.
79 Alfred Kazin, “The Legend of Lillian Hellman,” Esquire 88 (August 1977): 28.
80 Buckley, “Who Is the Ugliest of Them All?” 101.
81 Lasky, “Left-Wing America’s Martyr-in-Waiting.”
82 Kempton, “Witnesses,” 2.
83 Walter Goodman, “Fair Game,” New Leader 59 (May 24, 1976): 10.
84 Kazin, New York Jew (New York: Knopf, 1978), 30.
85 Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 39
86 Mary Geisheker, “The Worst of Times,” Baltimore Sun (April 25, 1976): D1.
87 LH to William Schmick Jr., May 7, 1976, box 124, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
88 LH to George Will, April 18, 1978, box 77, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
89 Lillian Hellman, “On Reading
Again,” in Three: An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 9.
90 Ibid., 9.
91 Lillian Hellman, Maybe: A Story (New York: Little, Brown, 1980), 51.
92 This story comes from Dick Cavett, “Lillian, Mary, and Me,” New Yorker (December 16, 2002): 35.
93 Transcript of interview with Dick Cavett, October 17 and 18, 1979, box 258, 50, Mary McCarthy Collection, Vassar College Library.
94 Cavett, “Lillian, Mary, and Me,” 36.
95 Ann Terry, typescript “notes and comments,” October 16, 1979, box 258, Cavett folder, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL. McCarthy, at her deposition, testified that she could, “not recall having agreed to respond to this question.” Deposition of Defendant Mary McCarthy West, August 12, 1981, Hellman v McCarthy et al., Supreme Court of the State of New York, Index # 16834/80, 12.
96 Nan Robertson, “McCarthy Mellows as an Expatriate in Paris,” New York Times (July 31, 1979): C5.
97 Each also had a somewhat complicated relationship to their Jewish heritage. McCarthy’s grandmother on her mother’s side was born Jewish, a fact that McCarthy only belatedly and uncomfortably acknowledged. Note the number of references to Jews in McCarthy’s How I Grew (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 45; On the Contrary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1951), 66–67; and Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936–1938 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1992), 60.
98 Mary McCarthy, How I Grew, 1; Nan Robertson, “McCarthy Mellows,” C5.
99 Richard Poirier, interview by author, May 24, 2005.
100 Mary McCarthy on North Star in Town and Country (April 1944): 72, 12; Mary McCarthy, “The Reform of Dr. Pangloss,” New Republic (December 17, 1956): 30–31.
101 Mary McCarthy review of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh in Partisan Review (November/December 1946): 577.
102 Mary McCarthy, Intellectual Memoirs, 60; Typescript, “Lillian Hellman’s Comments on Mary McCarthy’s Answers to Plaintiff’s First Interrogatories,” December 8, 1980, box 78, folder 4/5, 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
103 McCarthy’s version of this story is in Joan Dupont, “Mary McCarthy: Portrait of a Lady,” Paris Metro (February 15, 1978): 15–16.
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