A Difficult Woman (74 page)

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.

104
Typescript, “Lillian Hellman's Comments on Mary McCarthy's Answers,” 8.

105
Stephen Spender to LH, September 15, 1983, box 259, Spender file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

106
LH to William Alfred, August 19, 1963, The Papers of William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library.

107
Dupont, “Mary McCarthy: Portrait of a Lady,” 16.

108
LH to Ephraim London, December 10, 1980, box 78, folder 4/5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

109
Hellman never much liked Hardwick, referring to her as “Madam” in her letters to Lowell.

110
Arien Mack, interview by author, June 10, 2010.

111
Typescript, “Lillian Hellman's Comments on Mary McCarthy's Answers,” 10.

112
This history is recounted by Javsicas in a letter to Mary McCarthy, October 28, 1979, just a few days after she taped the Cavett interview. It is one of a long series of letters, all of them in the Javsicas file, folder 203.7, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

113
Gabriel Javsicas to Nancy MacDonald (punctuation and spelling corrected), November 10, 1978, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University Libraries, New York, NY. The reference to censorship concerns the Diana Trilling controversy.

114
Nancy MacDonald to Dearest Gabriel, November 4, 1978, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

115
Mary McCarthy to Nancy MacDonald, Nov 28, 1978, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

116
Gabriel Javsicas to Nancy MacDonald, June 26, 1979, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

117
Mary McCarthy to Javsicas, October 10, 1979, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

118
Mary McCarthy to Javsicas, December 18, 1979, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

119
Mary McCarthy to Carol Gelderman, November 12, 1980, box 259, Gelderman file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

120
Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” 67.

121
Mary McCarthy to Ben O'Sullivan, August 23, 1980, box 259, O'Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

122
Mary McCarthy to Carol Gelderman, November 12, 1980, box 259, Gelderman file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

123
These and more details in Carol Gelderman to Mary McCarthy, February 6, 1981, Box 259, Gelderman file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

124
Carol Gelderman to Mary McCarthy, February 6, 1981, box 259, Gelderman File, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

125
Mary McCarthy,
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
(New York: Harvest Books, 1972), 11

126
Mary McCarthy to Mrs. Hale, August 18, 1980, Hale file, box 259, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

127
William F. Buckley Jr., “The Honor of Lillian Hellman and her pro-Stalin Past,”
New York Post
(May 22, 1980).

128
Mary McCarthy to Cleo Paturis, June 19, 1981, box 259, Paturis file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

129
Lillian Hellman, “Baggage of a Political Exile,”
New York Times
(August 23, 1969): 26.

130
Mary McCarthy to Walter Goldwater, August 7, 1980, Goldwater file, box 259, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL. Mary McCarthy made inquiries to this effect to James Angleton, a former CIA agent. Angleton had no information that would confrm her suspicions. Mary McCarthy to Ben O'Sullivan, box 259, O'Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

131
Robert M. Kaus, “The Plaintiff's Hour,”
Harper's
(March 1983): 14.

132
Mary McCarthy to Ben O'Sullivan, August 23, 1980, box 259, O'Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

133
Mary McCarthy to Ben O'Sullivan, November 29, 1980, box 259, O'Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

134
Diana Trilling to Bill Jovanovich, November 16, 1980, box 259, O'Sullivan files, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

135
Cleo Paturis to Mary McCarthy, c. June, 1981, and Mary McCarthy reply, June 19, 1981, box 259, Paturis file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL. Paturis was the wife of James Farrell.

136
Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, August 15, 1980, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

137
Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, August 30, 1980, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

138
Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, September 25, 1980, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.