Scoundrel Time
by Lillian Hellman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lillian HellmanIntroduction: Garry Wills
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-07-01
ISBN: 0316352942
Number of pages: 155
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780316352949
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Scoundrel Time
Book Review: "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
Summary: 5 Stars
Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) originally came to public attention as the author of THE CHILDREN'S HOUR and would go on to create a number of other landmark plays for the stage, including WATCH ON THE RHINE, THE LITTLE FOXES, and TOYS IN THE ATTIC. She is easily among the great American dramatists of the 20th Century--but even so she is perhaps more famous for the events of 1952, the year in which she faced the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of its dark powers... and the committee blinked.
In 1969 Hellman published the autobiography AN UNFINISHED WOMAN; in 1973 she continued writing of her life with PENTIMENTO; and in 1976 she wrote an account of her encounter with HUAC in SCOUNDREL TIME. All three books were controversial, and writer Mary McCarthy famously stated "Everything she writes is a lie--and that includes 'and' and 'the!'" It was true that Hellman shaded the truth more than just a little, especially where her own support for Soviet Russia was concerned; it was true that she also had a distinct tendency to ignore her own failings and excesses even as she zeroed in mercilessly on those of others. All the same, no one can deny a singular fact: unlike a long line of others, she neither crawled nor self-destructed before HUAC. In the process she became among the first to show up the committee for the lawless, headline-hungry entity it had become.
As more than one biographer has noted, Hellman actually behaved with the courage and dignity we hope we would possess if confronted with a similar situation. It cost her a great deal: blacklisted and unable to work, Hellman would spend more than a decade counting pennies and struggling to rebuild her life and career. SCOUNDREL TIME, which presents Hellman's confrontation with HUAC from her own clearly biased view, is a fascinating portrait of both the "red scare" and the various figures who swirled through it--from then-congressman Richard Nixon to director Elia Kazan to writer Clifford Odets--and of how she herself saw her own place in a moment that would come to define mid-20th Century America. Flawed? Shaded? Yes, indeed. But nonetheless involving and revealing for that. Recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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