A Year in Books/Day 168: An Unfinished Woman

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  • Title: An Unfinished Woman
  • Author: Lillian Hellman
  • Year Published: 1969/This Edition: 1999 (Little, Brown and Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: The Children’s Hour. The Little Foxes. Another Part of the Forest. Watch on the Rhine. The lady knew how to craft plays strong enough to withstand not only their first march across the footlights, but so brilliant as to be timeless decades later. In An Unfinished Woman-the first of three memoirs written in her twilight years-she breaks off pieces of her jaded public persona until something of the real Lillian shows through. Exactly what is anybody’s guess, but the feeling of rightness is there. Her writing is so forceful and engaging, and seemingly forthright, that it is easy to forget that any writer’s autobiography is by nature (if to varying degrees) a study in fiction. Writers are their own best characters, after all. She weaves such a fine story that the ratio of unadulterated fact to pure fiction to soaring imagination is basically immaterial. Her tale, her viewpoint, is riveting. Facts may be found elsewhere; this book is where the entertainment is located. It won the National Book Award. The foreword to this edition is by the incredible Wendy Wasserstein.
  • Motivation: I love plays. Love love them. As in, I want to go steady with them kind of love. Got it? They are my second favourite written medium. I also love weird, strong, talented, crazy-ass smart, contrary women.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 43: “I would like to say these many years later that I remember his questions. But I don’t, and for a good reason: he had already decided on whatever he meant to write and the questions were fitted to his decisions. So most of the time we didn’t know what he was talking about.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

25 thoughts on “A Year in Books/Day 168: An Unfinished Woman”

      • Do you live inside a 1930s meller? That is some snappy, cynical dialogue. The sentiment behind it sucks, but it sounds good.

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      • Most writers mythologize their own inner narrative…and I’m happy to be a bum. Given the options it’s not such an ignoble tract.

        And it ain’t nearly as cynical as suggesting they’re all dead.

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      • Hey, now. I didn’t suggest that they are ALL dead. Just most of the great ones! That leaves a sliver of hope. Of course we all mythologize ourselves (I believe I said as much in this review), I was just particularly digging your presentation. Plus, it is not every day (outside of my classic film reviews, anyway) that I can use the slang term meller and get away with it.

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      • Hey, some of my best friends are thesbians. I’ve also acted a bit, stage and screen in my younger days.

        I grew up in the theatre. I was born on tour, my mother out of wedlock in small conservative town while the local preacher sat with her and told her she was going to hell. I was the first kid born out of marriage in that town for ten years. It’s was and is still called Christiana. “When fishes flew and forests walked, andn figs grew upon thorn, some moment when the moon was blood, then surely I was born.”
        How ’bout that for mythologizing.

        The dissolute vagabonds that have always been a touring company, left me with bumness I’ve grown to appreciate.

        Give Sliver my phone number, tell her I’ll try to make her laugh…even if it’s at me.

        (I gave a detailed response to fact/fiction, but WP swallowed it up, and I can’t conjure it back into existence.)

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      • Quite impressive! I, too, could (and occasionally do) mythologize my own non-traditional childhood. I’m too tired right now to have the wherewithal to do so here, although I would if I could. I feel that I should take the baton and run with it, but the lack of tea currently in my system would make mush of any attempts made in that direction.

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      • What’s the Keats line, “beauty is truth and truth beauty, that’s all you need know, and…” Something like that. You’d probably know.

        Nietzsche says, “The charm of knowledge would be small if so much shame didn’t have to be overcome on the road to it.”

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      • I ended up getting tipsy that afternoon, if that makes a difference. 4th of July here, etc. Home alone with ingredients for Margaritas.

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      • I can say the same thing, as I also love whisky/whiskey (bourbon/rye, etc). I’ll actually drink any alcohol, given the right circumstances. Except rum. Never, ever rum.

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  2. Haha! Laughing at MM’s comment! 😀 Another awesome review! The local theater in my town is strong for being so small. I’ll have to check out something they put on this summer!

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    • Thanks! I was an actress in my teens and twenties and still love attending the theatre. Cinci has a fabulous, little arty theatre in a semi-sketchy part of town. It has a distinct off-off Broadway vibe-$12 seats, a tacky basement bar, drinking during performances. Yet they put on excellent shows with stellar acting. We prefer it over the nicer, bigger venues with the expensive productions.

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    • Oh, I loved ‘Pentimento’, too. ‘An Unfinished Woman’ won the National Book Award but I enjoyed ‘Pentimento’ at least as much, if not more.

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