A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman

A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman by Alice Kessler- Harris

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She was a literary icon and a groundbreaking figure as the most successful playwright in American history. She was also one of the few artists who stood up to the political witchunts of the 1950s, with her crisp declaration "I will not cut my consciousness to fit this year's fashions." Yet Lillian Hellman is today remembered as a toxic, unrepentant Stalinist and a literary fabulist -- the author about whom Mary McCarthy said, "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" In A Difficult Woman, the historian Alice Kessler-Harris undertakes a feat few would dare: a reclamation of this combative, controversial woman who crossed so many political and cultural fault lines.

Hellman was a bristling bundle of contradictions: a passionate political activist without a party; an artist immersed to the teeth in commerce; a writer whose plays wrestled with issues of morality, yet whose achievements were shadowed by accusations of dishonesty. Above all else, Hellman was a woman who made her way without apology in a man's world.

Kessler-Harris has crafted a nuanced life of Hellman, empathetic yet unsparing, that explores the varied contexts in which she moved, from New Orleans to Hollywood to the hearing room at the House Un-American Activities Committee. At the same time, she tenders a full-blooded portrait of a tough, witty, hardworking woman who forged life -- often bravely, sometimes selfishly-- on her own terms. A Difficult Woman is a major work of literary and intellectual history that illuminates the turbulent intersection of culture and politics in twentieth-century America.

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Bloomsbury, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 2nd Printing, 2012