murder.booklocker.com

[Had a great time at Jeff's blog yesterday! Thanks to everyone who visited and to those who left comments.]

I thought that I’d give you a heads-up about tomorrow’s interview by Michael Burke. Anyway, Mike gave me 10 questions to answer. This is number 7:

7. Who would win — and why:
     Ernest Hemingway vs. F. Scott Fitzgerald
     Lillian Hellman vs. Mary McCarthy
     Gore Vidal vs. Gore Vidal

I wrote back:

I have a confession to make about the authors you mentioned (this can be on the record or off).

The only thing I know about Mary McCarthy isn’t about her but her novel, The Group. Devoured the book, was thrilled with the movie.

I’ve heard of Hemingway. Who hasn’t? But the only thing that I have read of his is a short story, “A Clean, Well-lighted Place.”

I saw a PBS documentary on F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I recognize the name Gore Vidal and might guess that he’s a writer if someone asked me what he did.

Lillian Hellman rings no bells. At all.

Feeling embarrassed, I did, however, do some research into these folks. Would I be wrong in stating that they all wrote social commentary?

I realize that at the very top of your blog you use the words “social commentary.” In some sense of the phrase, I believe that my book falls into that category, perhaps stumbles into it would be more accurate.

I don’t have an English degree — my master’s is in writing (DePaul). They took any bachelor’s degree as a prerequisite. Mine is in Pastoral Theology.

I also have serious gaps in my reading as your questions pointed out. That said, I’m a fan of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. However, I only just discovered them in my fifties.

My partner is a mystery reader and I occasionally sneak one from her bag of library books. My own preference is for biography or autobiography, like A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett.

I’m writing a biography of Theodora Van Wagenen Ward, one of the few women involved early on in bringing Emily Dickinson to the public. Trained as a musician, then as an artist, Teddy taught herself to read Dickinson’s peculiar handwriting and used the discrepancies to date manuscripts which she had in her possession. Based on the level of skill which she had acquired, she was invited to help date the Poems, garnering credit as Tom Johnson’s associate. By the time the Letters came out, she was billed as Assistant Editor.

Sorry, I guess I was rambling. All that just to say this — I can’t answer your question #7 because I haven’t got a clue.

You might not have a clue on question 7 but you’ve introduced me to Theodora Van Wagenen Ward and made me realize I don’t know anything, really, about Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman. And I even spent a good hour in the Walt Whitman exhibit last year at the Library of Congress in D.C. so I have absolutely no excuse!

The upshot? To hell with question 7. A cheap attempt at cleverness, anyway, and cleverness — as opposed to true wit — is always the writer’s enemy. (Oh, that’s good. I’ll have to use that somewhere.)

Please feel free to answer the other questions — and even add a few, if you’d like. Certainly mention Teddy somewhere … Hey, this is fun. Thank you for finding ChicagoWriter!

P.S.: You might really like Lillian Hellman, playwright and memoirist. “The Children’s Hour” was her first play, about lies and lesbianism, a scandal in its time but it reads rather stiffly now. A better play is “The Little Foxes.” Her two most famous memoirs are “Scoundrel Time,” about her refusal to testify during the McCarthy era, and “Pentimento,” which contains a recollection titled, “Julia,” which Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave appeared in when it was made into a movie called “Julia.”

Hellman was also mystery writer Dashiell Hammett’s long-time lover … Hellman and Mary McCarthy had a famous feud that goes back to old lefty politics but boiled over when McCarthy was on the old Dick Cavett television show and said something like, “Every word Lillian Hellman ever wrote is a lie — even and and the.” Hellman sued. Lots of fuss. In the end, McCarthy died broke, I think. But it did come out that Hellman fabricated a lot of her memoirs, including much of “Julia.” Ah, the literary life …