MAYBE: A Story

by Lillian Hellman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 1980

In the three memoir books I wrote, I tried very hard for the truth. . . but here I don't know much of what really happened and never tried to find out. . . ."" This tiny, aptly titled book, then, is something of a meditation on iffiness--floating fragments of memory, things that Hellman never really got quite straight over the years. Her first lover Alex, for instance: he told her she had ""an interesting but strange odor."" Was he right? Or did he have a hang-up about all women? (In any case, Hellman became a compulsive bather and self-sniffer.) Or why was there that one open break between Aunt Jenny and Negro cook Carrie--who usually hated each other in silence? But most of the maybe-ness here centers on sometime friend Sarah Cameron, though ""she is of no importance to my life and never was."" Beautiful Sarah would appear from time to time in Hellman's cosmo-politan life, and she'd tell some news (a meeting with Lady Ottoline Morrell, the witnessing of a gangland murder). . . which would nearly always turn out to be a fabrication. And years later Sarah's iffiness became a family trait: Hellman had a nice affair with Sarah's ex-husband, but when she ran into Sarah's son ""Som"" (""son of many""--Sarah slept around) at an amusing counterculture wedding, he told her that Sarah was dead--which wasn't so. . . or was it? And when Hellman called Sarah's husband to sort out the whole thing, she got a housepainter on the phone: ""He said he'd never heard of Mr. Cameron. I said the house belonged to Mr. Cameron. He said he'd never heard of Mr. Cameron. I hung up."" End of book. . . . True, life's maybe-ness is a resonant premise, but Hellman's gift is for pinning-down, not draping veils; so most readers' reaction here (especially since Sarah remains faceless) will be so-what? rather than oh-wow. Still, fans will get a few more glimpses of life with Dashiell Hammett and--mixed in with some arch run-on sentences--several stretches of clean, sharp Hellman prose.

Pub Date: May 29, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION