Word: scoundrelism
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...essay included in this volume, she says the war in Vietnam is a serious error, not because it represents American aggression, but because it is not the best way to stop the Red Menace.) Trilling refused to comply with the publisher. She justifies her argument that Hellman's Scoundrel Time will mislead younger readers into thinking liberal support of the House Unamerican Activities Committee was an inexcusable aberration (rather than a legitimate response to the Communist threat) with a long series of attacks on Hellman's own conduct during the '50s. In a long and turgid footnote, Trilling implies over...
Trilling, one of many unwavering opponents of both Communism and McCarthyism, objects to Hellman's 1976 memoir of the McCarthy era, Scoundrel Time, saying that it was widely but mistakenly received as a reliable record of the times and of the playwright's "virtually unique personal heroism in the midst of almost universal cowardice." A number of other critics, including Hilton Kramer, Irving Howe and Nathan Glazer, have also taxed Hellman with a variety of obfuscations and omissions in the historical record as well as in her own political life story...
Throughout her long monologues, Chiang Ch'ing carefully cultivates her image as a loyal follower ("a roving sentry") of her husband, Chairman Mao. Since her fall, Peking's official press has insisted that the infallible Mao all along knew that his wife was a scoundrel, an ideological renegade, a potential usurper of power. In fact, it seems quite clear that Chiang Ch'ing did reflect Mao's most radical tendencies, especially his willingness periodically to shake up the bureaucracy in "rectification campaigns" and even to plunge China into near-total chaos for the sake of ideological...
...This is not to suggest Tony Hiss has any doubts about his father's innocence; on the contrary, quite clearly he thinks a great injustice has been done. Rather than dredging up inconsistencies in the trial transcripts or excoriating the witchhunters and their allies (as Lillian Hellman does in Scoundrel Time), he tries to build a case for the implausibility of Alger Hiss betraying his employers, his family and his country. It is his hope that some pieces in the puzzle called the Hiss case will fall into place and lead us to the conclusion, inevitably, that Alger Hiss couldn...
...good spirits and impetuosity. Plantagenet, admirably played by Philip Latham, has a manner so arid that he seems to exhale dust, like an overloaded vacuum cleaner, every time he speaks. Gradually, however, they grow-and grow believably -into love. Glencora gives up any notion of running away with the scoundrel Burgo Fitzgerald. Plantagenet, for his part, relinquishes his dream of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer so that he can take her to the Continent. Eventually, however, he does become Chancellor, then Prime Minister, and inherits his dukedom; Glencora becomes a celebrated hostess...