Just Words: Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy, and the Failure of Public Conversation in America
Alan Ackerman
Abstract
In an appearance on The Dick Cavett Showin 1980, the critic Mary McCarthy glibly remarked that every word author Lillian Hellman wrote was a lie, “including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” Hellman immediately filed a libel suit, charging that McCarthy's comment was not a legitimate conversation on public issues but an attack on her reputation. This book recounts details of the McCarthy–Hellman case, and demonstrates how the idiom of libel and the autobiographical impulse became intertwined in twentieth-century America. It offers a many-faceted examination of Hellman's infamous suit, exploring what it tells ... More
Keywords: Dick Cavett Show, Mary McCarthy, Lillian Hellman, libel, privacy, self-expression, freedom, public language, America, reputation
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 | Print ISBN-13: 9780300167122 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: October 2013 | DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300167122.001.0001 |
