Translating lives Book

Fascinating account of the romantic and professional relationship between Dashiel Hammett and Lillian Hellman. Hammett was the Hemingway of crime novelists and Hellman a playwright and memoirist. Their works were made into Hollywood films, such as Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON and THE THIN MAN and Hellman's WATCH ON THE RHINE and THE LITTLE FOXES.

In Mellen's joint biography, neither writer fares well as a person. This is a not just a "warts and all" retelling, it is a warts IS all casting of Hellman and Hammett. Hellman is a life long liar who often fabricates incidences in her life, privately and publicly; she is deeply insecure about her unattractiveness and apparently compensates through sexual aggression. Hammett is the classic drunk, sometimes charming and sometimes not, and a womanizer without conscience.

Mellen does not spare either party. Hammett always avoiding responsibility and always blindly championing Joseph Stalin and soviet communism. Hellman became a favorite of the left and feminists largely because her fabrications were believed true. Their lives ended badly with Dash penniless, sick and dependent on Lillian in his last years, and Lillian alone in her last days, fiercely defending herself against literary and public criticism of her published fabrications, while in failing health and with the onset of blindness.

Mellen's writing is uncompromising and her book scrambles the chronology to give each chapter a theme of its own.