I am not interested in the degree to which she told the literal truth.
—Marsha Norman, in The New York Times (August 26, 1984)
I never took Lillian’s politics very seriously . . .
—Robert Brustein, in The New Republic (August 13/20, 1984)
Of the many remarkable things to be noted about the life of Lillian Hellman, who died on June 30, none was more remarkable than the quality of the sentiment that greeted its end. Even as the obligatory eulogies were delivered, they seemed to contain an unmistakable note of embarrassment—a grudging awareness that at the time of her death the reputation of Lillian Hellman was well on its way to becoming a shambles. Only in Robert Brustein’s bizarre tribute in The New Republic, however, was this note given explicit expression.
Previously characterized by enemies as a fellow traveler who continued to embrace Stalinism long after most other American intellectuals had abandoned it [Brustein wrote], Lillian was now being called a liar and a bully. Herself a victim of blacklisting, she was now thought to be engaged in muffling the free expression of others, leading some to say that she embraced the First Amendment only in her own defense. It was a miserable epilogue to what should have been a respected old age.[1]
Yet even Brustein found something to admire in what he called “her anger,” which in the end, as he described it, “became a free-floating, cloud-swollen tempest that
