Recently, an article in Esquire (behind a paywall, of course), cited Mary McCarthy's infamous putdown of writer Lillian Hellman in a 1978 interview: “I can’t stand her. I think every word she writes is false, including ‘and’ and ‘but.'” Writers on the right and left love this line. What's better than a catfight, first of all? And what's more convenient than dismissing Hellman, a trenchant and powerful critic of alliances between liberals and conservatives and, ultimately of capitalism?
There's another piece to this story, as well. I was reading through the Federal Bureau of Investigations COMINFIL Radio-TV files ("COMINFIL" was shorthand for "Communist Infiltration of" and the Bureau initiatied COMINFIL investigations of wide-ranging organizations, from the LA Parent Teachers Organization to the Farmworkers Union and others). And who showed up in the files as a confidential informant? Mary McCarthy, who it turns out was providing information to the Bureau about alleged communists and fellow travelers. Not sure whether Hellman knew about this, but I can imagine her Scoundrel Time really hit close to home for McCarthy.