Just Words

Download or read book Just Words written by Alan Ackerman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show" in 1980, the critic Mary McCarthy glibly remarked that every word author Lillian Hellman wrote was a lie, "including 'and' and 'the.'" Hellman immediately filed a libel suit, charging that McCarthy's comment was not a legitimate conversation on public issues but an attack on her reputation. This intriguing book offers a many-faceted examination of Hellman's infamous suit and explores what it tells us about tensions between privacy and self-expression, freedom and restraint in public language, and what can and cannot be said in public in America.