Required Reading for the Art of Memoir & McCarthy Era, October 5, 2000
Reviewer: Debra Di Blasi "fiction writer and artist" (Kansas City, MO United States)
Lillian Hellman was one of the most gifted memoirists in the history of the English language. (I am an published author, produced screenwriter, and creative writing teacher, thus these words do not come as hyperbole.) It is not merely the historical, racial, and personal content of her autobiographical works that elevates them to classics, but her unique, and dexterous command of language. The fact that she was a brilliant playwright has much to do with her gift. There is some question regarding the "truth" in her memoirs, as there should be in any memoir, for memory is fickle and cannot be trusted--as Hellman herself admitted. Read them as works of art, as explorations of the nature of memory, as historical documents.
Reviewer: Debra Di Blasi "fiction writer and artist" (Kansas City, MO United States)
Lillian Hellman was one of the most gifted memoirists in the history of the English language. (I am an published author, produced screenwriter, and creative writing teacher, thus these words do not come as hyperbole.) It is not merely the historical, racial, and personal content of her autobiographical works that elevates them to classics, but her unique, and dexterous command of language. The fact that she was a brilliant playwright has much to do with her gift. There is some question regarding the "truth" in her memoirs, as there should be in any memoir, for memory is fickle and cannot be trusted--as Hellman herself admitted. Read them as works of art, as explorations of the nature of memory, as historical documents.
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