Books, Arts & Manners

Lillian Hellman, by William Wright (Simon & Schuster, 507 pp., $18.95)

Lillian Hellman was the Stalinists’ dreamgirl. A pathological liar, she became the exemplar of truth to liberal society. A physical coward, she played the bold heroine. Avaricious herself, she flayed American society for its “materialism.” A despiser of liberals, she became the liberals’ darling. She never really criticized the Soviets. Except Khrushchev, that is, whom she detested for questioning Stalin. In 1967 she finally admitted that Stalin had committed “sins.” But she was not against sinning: During a 1966 trip to Moscow, she startled even her official Soviet hosts by telling a little story about Stalin’s being asked by Averell Harriman to order his troops to behave when they entered Germany. She related with relish that Stalin had laughed and said he doubted “men who had been fighting for years could be kept from rape and loot.”

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David Evanier

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Lillian Hellman, by William Wright (Simon & Schuster, 507 pp., $18.95)

Lillian Hellman was the Stalinists’ dreamgirl. A pathological liar, she became the exemplar of truth to liberal society. A physical coward, she played the bold heroine. Avaricious herself, she flayed American society for its “materialism.” A despiser of liberals, she became the liberals’ darling. She never really criticized the Soviets. Except Khrushchev, that is, whom she detested for questioning Stalin. In 1967 she finally admitted that Stalin had committed “sins.” But she was not against sinning: During a 1966 trip to Moscow, she startled even her official Soviet hosts by telling a little story about Stalin’s being asked by Averell Harriman to order his troops to behave when they entered Germany. She related with relish that Stalin had laughed and said he doubted “men who had been fighting for years could be kept from rape and loot.”