Lillian Hellman and The Feel of Candor

From Anthony Arthur's "Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe," re evidence that Lillian Hellman plagarized or invented parts of her autobiography:

"...some defenders have taken a different tack, one that relies on Orwellian doublespeak masquerading as sophisticated literary criticism. Marsha Norman simply denies that the truth matters, as she said in the New York Times (August 27, 1984): 'I am not interested in the degree to which Hellman told the literal truth. The literal truth is, for writers, only half the story.' ... Truth is impossible to determine, then: it requires, along with the words real and fictional, ironic quotation marks around it and complicated parenthetical modification by the adjectives selective and representational. Hellman was praised because she conveys "the feel of candor." If ordinary readers are taken in by "'the feel of candor" and disappointed to learn that "Julia" is not really Lillian Hellman's own story, it's because they don't know how to read sensitively. They lack the proper literary training."