Lillian Hellman

Emptying the cache of books stored in trunks in the garage- I have read, in rapid succession: Wake Up, Stupid by Mark Harris (the Boswell enthusiast), Paradise Postponed by John Mortimer, nearly half of Disraeli by Andre Maurois, a third of Tender Is The Night, half of Ian Fleming's Goldfinger. None of these were very well-suited to my tastes- I seem to be averaging one book I enjoy to three I do not.
My latest rediscovery is this marvelous bio on Lillian Hellman called "Lillian Hellman: The Image, The Woman" by William Wright
excerpts:

One of the most overworked devices of
the playwright is to fiU missing plot strands with servants telling
each other what has gone on before the curtain rises, describing
the characters we are about to meet, indicating which ones we
are to root for and which to beware of. Working on The Little
Faxes in the Tavern Island house, Hellman fell into this familiar
trap, and one night, after a long stretch at her typewriter, she
left a new draft of the first act for Hammett to read, then went
to bed. Among the play's characters were two Negro servants
who commented at length about the household.

The next morning Hellman awoke to find Hammett had left
for Manhattan, but had written a note that read:

Missy write blackamoor chit-chat.

Missy better stop writing blackamoor chit-chat."

The primary difference-and Hellman
stressed.this point in discussing North Star-was in the visual
aspects of the film, which were far from what she had envi-
sioned: the dirt-farmer realism she felt the subject matter de-
manded. The unwillingness to recreate meticulously a poor
Russian village was not surprising from a producer who once
complained to Wyler that his slum sets for Dead End "looked
dirty. " The prettified version of a Russian collective farm was
perhaps the most ludicrous aspect of the film and was best
summed up by the writer Irving Drutman, who was the film's
publicist; in a post-screening discussion of North Star's credits
he snapped, "And patches by Irene."

Mitford

Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford

Excerpts:

Invented Lives

F. Scott and Zelda- by James Mellow

Excerpts:

Diary of an Art Dealer

by Rene Gimpel

Excerpts:
"Cubism is decorative art, though the Cubists didn't suspect this at the outset; but what are we to call an art which represents nothing of what we see in nature? A confusion of planes, lines, colors automatically becomes ornamentation. Just as the Arabs, whose art is always decorative, employ nothing of what they see in nature.
The great merit of the group consists of having brought us back to volume, which is always a factor at the start of a great period."

"Proust insists on a constant temperature of eighty-six degrees."

The Ancestors come to Auction

Two austere portraits from yesterday's auction. The first, staring out with palpable hostility, proved difficult to sell. I tried to ameliorate her antagonism by saying that she "has an peculiarly pointed equanimity" She went for $50.
The second, "trussed up like a chicken leg" appears, I said, "as though she won't be convinced that WE exist." $170.

Refuge!

With the best of intentions, I decided to read something by a contemporary novelist: I had unwisely chosen "The Last Dickens", a meretricious historical thriller by someone named Matthew Pearl- a person bent on sequentially incorporating familiar and reputable writers- I believe Poe and Dante, now Dickens into beach and flight reads.
He was lauded on NPR, feted in every paper in the country, and has produced a very nearly unreadable pastiche of a novel, salted with tantalizing historical lessons, and composed unrelievedly of dialogue along the lines of: '"Pray Marjorie, thou should not venture forthwith in your new crinoline whose style has recently come into popularity when ladies of our social standing seldom leave unaccompanied by a chaperone," said Victoria who had been named for the current monarch.'
It faltered often, but nearly dissipated entirely in several passages thinly stretched through the middle. It might have been written from both ends with the intention of joining there, which is as good a plan as cutting a largish piece of fabric from one side and then the opposite.
I have cleansed myself by picking up Rose Macaulay's "Going Abroad" from which the following bits are taken:
"Madame was sobbing aloud as she clung with her tied hands to her mount's neck. Of all ways of progression she hated mule-back."

"the Church had long since, and probably wisely, decided that confession and penance should cease to be congregational. It had been found to make scandal."

"In some tribes... the beauty doctor is murdered, as a rule, very painfully, by the victim, or the victim's husband or wives, if the appearance is not thought to be sufficiently improved by the treatment.
And does that occur often?
Practically always.
Dear me! One would think the profession would lapse."

More from The Cunning Man

WHEN IRONY FIRST makes itself
known in a young man's life, it can be like his first expe-
rience of getting drunk; he has met with a powerful
thing which he does not know how to handle. Of course
I had been aware of irony in its superficial form, because
Brocky made great use of it; but he was not a master, a

sub de and gentle employer of mockery in almost every
aspect of life, as was Dwyer; it was something Brocky
had learned, not flesh of his flesh. Later, when I thought
I had become wiser, I tried to find out what irony really
is, and discovered that some ancient writer on poetry
had spoken of "Ironia, which we call the drye mock,"
and I cannot think of a better term for it: the drye mock.
Not sarcasm, which is like vinegar, or cynicism, which is
so often the voice of disappointed idealism, but a delicate
casting of a cool and illuminating light on life; and thus
an enlargement. The ironist is not bittei:, he does not
seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or seri-
ous, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker.
He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes
and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally
embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He
sPeaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the

:me nature as the wit, who sooften speaks from the

tongue and no deeper. the wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.

One must have a disposition for irony, but it does not
come without practice; like really good violin-playing, it
must be practised every day. It seemed to me when I
met Dwyer that I had the disposition, but I was an
unpractised hand and, like a beginner on the fiddle, I
suppose my squawks and screeohes were painful to those
around me.