Catfight!

Broadway resurrects a famed literary spat

No one reads any of us," laments Lillian Hellman in Imaginary Friends, Nora Ephron's new play about the literary feud between Hellman and Mary McCarthy. To be sure, these two writers are remembered at least as much for their spoken words as for the ones they put on paper. Hellman, the playwright and longtime leftist, made a famous show of defiance before the House Un-American Activities Committee: "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." McCarthy, an essayist and novelist who couldn't abide Hellman's politics or penchant for mixing fact and fiction, offered a put-down for...

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