Imaginary Friends (Criticism)

Criticism

Wendy Perkins

Perkins is a professor of American and English literature and film. In this essay, Perkins examines the theme of fact verses fiction in relation to art in Ephron's play.

In his article on Imaginary Friends for The Nation, David Kaufman asserts that the play captures our attention because of the compelling questions it raises concerning "truth versus mendacity, fact versus fiction." He writes that the argument Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy have over these questions points to what he calls "one of the more troubling developments of the twentieth century," intensified in the twenty-first: "the culture's growing tendency to conflate fact with fiction, both diluting and polluting our reality."

Ephron's exploration of fact versus fiction in the play focuses attention not on the ways culture dilutes and pollutes reality, but on the complexities inherent in the artist's attempt to express reality. In her presentation of the often acerbic, always humorous confrontations between Hellman and McCarthy, Ephron illustrates the intricate relationship between art and experience.

Both women grapple in the play with the question of fact and fiction in art, but Hellman does so in a more obvious way. McCarthy's declaration to Dick Cavett that "every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the,'" was, of course, a gross exaggeration, but it did have more than a note of truth to it. Hellman's most famous "lie" was her claim that "Julia" in her memoir, Pentimento, who, she wrote, helped fund the anti-Nazi movement during World War II, was based on her own experience. As Hellman's slander suit against McCarthy gained publicity, the identity of the real Julia — psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner — surfaced. Subsequent study of Hellman's memoirs found other major and minor discrepancies.

In Imaginary Friends, Ephron's focus on McCarthy's statement, and Hellman's subsequent suit against her, illuminates the ways that fact and fiction can be intermingled in art. Ephron suggests that the work of art cannot be separated from the artist. Readers would assume a non-fiction work like Hellman's Pentimento, which promises to provide an accurate recording of the details of the author's life, to be objective. Yet, New Historicist scholars insist that it is impossible to create a truly objective history, that even works called non-fiction are fictional constructs, as the author relies on memory or someone else's accounts of the past. The author's careful arrangement of what are considered to be facts into a history or biography completes the artist's vision of reality. Through her characterization of the two women, Ephron argues that each author brings her own subjective vision to her experience and that vision forms the basis of her art.

Ephron posits, through Muriel Gardiner's psychoanalysis of the two women, that Hellman's penchant for fabrication resulted from childhood incidents. Hellman, she argues, was traumatized by seeing her father's infidelity and being told to lie about it. As a result, she spent her life "telling lies and expecting to be applauded for it." As a scene from the film is played on stage, Hellman admits to McCarthy that some of the details of her story about Julia were fabricated. She alludes to the fictional nature of her memory when, after Jane Fonda as Hellman in Julia throws a typewriter out the window, Hellman declares, "that never happened."

Ephron illustrates the impact her father's infidelity had in a scene where Hellman remembers her childhood. Initially, her memories are quite theatrical. She claims, "I was the sweetest-smelling baby in New Orleans," and comments to the audience, "you probably heard that about me." She tells romanticized stories of her relationships with the "wildly glamorous" children in the neighborhood. However, when Hellman sees her father embrace Fizzy, a young neighbor, she falls out of the tree. The adult Hellman picks her up and discovers that she is a doll, a fiction like her memories. The real Hellman tells of her promise to her nanny, Sophronia, to keep the truth about her father a secret.

Hellman's story about Julia could have also reflected her relationship with her mother, Julia Hellman. John MacNicholas, in his article on Hellman in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 7, notes that while she and her mother had opposite personalities, Hellman's ties to her mother were quite strong and became a focus of some of her work.

Ephron suggests that Hellman's desire for self-promotion was another impetus for the creation of Julia. Insisting that she was friends with the true Julia, and that she smuggled money to her and so made a significant contribution to anti-Nazi activities during World War II, made the story Hellman told all the more compelling and more marketable. When Muriel Gardiner speculates that she is the real Julia, Hellman refuses to agree but claims that it does not matter one way or the other since the two became famous as a result. Both Hellman and McCarthy acknowledge how difficult it was for women to become successful writers during their careers. The two women express a brief, ironic note of camaraderie on this point when they agree that they were invited to speak at Sarah Lawrence because they were token female writers.

McCarthy also accuses Hellman of lying about her relationship with Dashiell Hammett, whom the latter wrote about in her memoirs. Ephron implies that Hellman tried to compensate for her lack of beauty with a romanticized vision of her relationship with him when Hammett makes occasional appearances as Nick in the play, a character he wrote for the film The Thin Man. Hellman insists that he modeled Nick's wife Nora after her. McCarthy, however, argues that none of it happened and tells Hellman that her romantic vision of him is a "figment of [her] imagination. He was just a story."

While McCarthy continually insists throughout the play that she always tells the truth, she often undercuts herself. Gardiner reinforces this contradiction when she insists that the lies told to Mary about her parents caused her to make "a religion out of the truth," which turned into her "blind spot." This blind spot ironically causes her to fictionalize her memories. At one point, when McCarthy and Hellman are reminiscing about the past, McCarthy becomes quite theatrical in her declaration "we all lead our lives more or less in vain." When she adds that she is "trying to be brave" as she looks back on her past, Hellman responds with a note of reality when she insists that the two had great fun while they were writing, "drinking and flirting" and that they feuded "just so people would know who we were."

In a memory of her childhood, McCarthy creates a vivid picture of her life with her aunt and abusive uncle, but paints a romantic figure of her father. She tells Hellman a story that shows her father's heroism, but later admits it never happened.

McCarthy's truth, like Hellman's fiction, often becomes self-serving. She recalls a conversation with her friend about an interviewer in Paris who, she says, kept going on "all about dashing Lillian Hellman and frumpy me." Her remark about Hellman's lies first appeared in that interview, most likely as a counter to the reporter's praise about her nemesis. As she talks to her friend about her upcoming appearance on the Dick Cavett show, the two discuss how she can casually insert the line so it will appear spontaneous. These incidents suggest that McCarthy's fiction, which she claims is based on personal experience, is, like Hellman's memoirs, an intricate combination of fabrication and truth.

In the second act, Ephron inserts a song sung by two characters, Fact and Fiction, who address the complexities of the creative act. Together they sing, "when we do our number / it's something of an art / and now and then they even say; it's tough to tell us apart." In Imaginary Friends, Ephron illustrates, through the confrontations between her sharp-tongued combatants, that it is often difficult to separate truth from fiction in the process of artistic creation.

Source:

Wendy Perkins, Critical Essay on Imaginary Friends, in Drama for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.

Laura Carter

Carter is currently employed as a freelance writer. In this essay, Carter considers Ephron's discussion on the value of truth versus fiction.

The nature of truth in Nora Ephron's drama Imaginary Friends is illusive. The play is based on the real life feud of two of the most colorful literati of the twentieth century, Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman. In creating this fictional confrontation, Ephron shuttles the audience through the drama of both Mary and Lillian's personal lives. The work takes the audience from their childhood experiences to Sarah Lawrence College, where their rivalry began and beyond, in an attempt to make sense of a lifetime of contempt led by two writers. The fantastic conceit that forms the basis for the work, a moment in the afterlife where both Mary and Lillian meet to reopen old wounds, amplifies the unrealistic expectations inherent in such a reunion. Ultimately, the play does little to resolve their differences; rather, it questions whether the truth is indeed better, or stranger, than fiction.

Mary and Lillian spent time in Minneapolis, ran in the same intellectual circles, and enjoyed healthy writing careers; yet, they never met and managed to become obsessed with each other's respective careers. In Ephron's production, the lives of both Mary and Lillian unfold accordingly. Their childhood stories begin as parallel plot lines whose pivotal moments come in subsequent accounts during the play. As a small child, Lillian observes her father's affair and is instructed by an overprotective nurse to lie, then tells her not to "go through life making trouble for people." Mary reveals that she was orphaned at a young age, forced to live with an abusive uncle who saw her as spoiled and undeserving, claiming, "No one told us our parents were dead. No one ever told us."

The stories are retold by both women several times during the play, each time a bit more revealing until eventually, the temptation of both writers to edit each other's work takes hold. In act 2, scene 1, Mary again recounts the moment of her childhood when her uncle punishes her for allegedly taking a small butterfly tin from her brother. As the scene progresses, a cheerful Lillian skips towards the house. Hearing Mary scream, she bangs on the door before going inside to retrieve Uncle Myers, flinging him out the door. Says Mary to Lillian, "Hey, wait a minute. It was my uncle, and my house — and my story. And now you're the queen of it." Realizing that in Lillian's account they are now hiding in a fig tree, Mary exclaims, "There are no fig trees in Minneapolis."

In act 2, scene 6, a new account of Lillian's experience is retold by Mary. It begins with Mary chastising Lillian for telling her that the scene is "very Tennessee Williams" and that despite the hot day, Lillian should "lose the fan." After repeated criticism from Mary, Lillian exclaims, "I give up. You write the scene." Mary does indeed write it and, instead of coming to Lillian's rescue, she takes the opportunity to embellish on the affair between her father and Fizzy, injecting great romance and passion, before adding a few less than favorable comments about her rival into the hurtful dialogue. Mary takes her digs at Lillian using dialogue. In Mary's version of the story, Lillian's father characterizes his daughter as "that nosy child of mine." His lover asserts, "She spies on me when I'm getting dressed, and she tells lies, too, Max, she tells lies all the time, everything she says is a lie." A furious Lillian responds, leading the two in a round of childish insults, before both fall from a fictional fig tree.

Ephron's clever interweaving of both Mary and Lillian's stories serves an important purpose. Each childhood story is told in a repetitive fashion, eventually uniting both characters. By sharing intimate details of their own lives, the assumption naturally would be that each writer would forge an emotional bond, bringing them closer together. To have both writers rewrite the script of their lives also seems to be an excellent means of reconciliation. Both Mary and Lillian's insights may lead to a better understanding of one another's contributions to their longstanding battle. Ephron takes a different path, allowing her characters to drive the outcome of their afterlife reunion. Having these two writers rework the events of their lives, sometimes working with input from one another, sometimes turning over their story completely, reveals how bias works to further personal agendas. For example, Mary is offered the chance to rewrite Lillian's childhood tale, but instead of defending Lillian, she uses the opportunity to take a few digs at her in an extremely vulnerable moment.

Both women retell each other's stories the way they see fit, which leads the audience to the conclusion that the truth about their relationship is largely subjective. Ephron may take license with the dialogue, but the events driving it are real, a product of careful research. In her introduction, the playwright concedes that when she met Lillian, she was initially under her spell, before revealing that the "fabulous stories she entertained her friends with" were, in fact, "stories." But she also came to understand in Mary "an intellectual and a star in a world that had a pathological distrust not just of commercial success but also of stars." Lillian was that star. Nor does she side with either character. Concludes Ephron, "How could you take sides after all? They were both wrong. And at the same time, they were both right."

Ultimately Ephron's reconstruction of history heightens the dance between Mary and Lillian, and the audience discovers that where there is passion there is fire. In scene 7, a fictional brush with Muriel Gardiner, psychoanalyst and model for Lillian's "Julia," forms the climax for the play. Mary and Lillian create a courtroom scenario, calling Gardiner to the stand, where she eventually analyzes the character of both writers. The two commiserate after Gardiner's grand exit, then argue the reason for their union in the afterlife. The fight crescendos as the two exchange comments, sling insults at each other, then in a moment of burning hatred, grab each other and kiss.

This dramatic gesture serves as the climax to the play, leading to a moment of personal reflection with each opponent pondering what has led up to their eternal union. To Lillian, all of this pondering leads her to conclude, "I'm just a story. So are you. The question is, who gets to tell it?" Mary, however, insists that the truth and the story are interdependent upon one another. This is betrayed in a demand directed toward Lillian: "Don't tell me there's no such thing as the truth. I don't believe that." In Lillian's world, however, artistic license trumps the truth. She bases her stories on the lives of others rather than her own, which in her estimation, makes for a more exciting story. For Mary, the integrity of a tale is only as sound as the facts supporting it.

The comment from Gardiner forming the basis for the play's conclusion informs the entire work — that the truth is indeed relative, a construct often based on the individual perspective rather than group conscience. Ephron, in her characterization of both Mary and Lillian, hits both characters with insights the audience may have, at this point in the work, concluded on their own. Gardiner looks to both writers, insisting she "has something to tell." To Mary, she says, "Someone once told you a lie, a terrible lie, so you made a religion out of the truth." She sees this event as a blind spot for Mary, claiming that "you never understood how subjective and elusive and abstract the truth is — you simply thought that if you could prove someone was telling a lie, you'd won." To Lillian, she offers,

You, on the other hand, witnessed a traumatic version of a primal scene, and then you were persuaded to lie about it. So you spent your life telling lies and expecting to be applauded for it.

Ephron frames the climax around a much anticipated speech that could very well resolve the tension between Mary and Lillian. In this instance, self-knowledge could lead to self-empowerment, alleviating the need to stand on false principal and self-righteous indignation. In this existential moment, rather than digest and embrace Gardiner's accurate analysis, both writers choose to turn away from it, dismissing the assessment as little more than "A perfect example of the limits of Freudian analysis." Instead, it launches them into a new round of finger-pointing. Lillian claims to have sued Mary to shorten her life, and Mary counters with "And I'm glad I outlived you."

In Ephron's attempts to make sense out of the scenario, the playwright thoroughly explores key moments of each character's life, sometimes bringing them together, sometimes pulling them apart, sifting through both Mary and Lillian's history to make sense of a lifetime spent on intense hatred, with no resolution. What has transpired between the two writers simply is what it is. Despite a few existential moments, there will be no grand reconciliations, no new level of self-awareness, no final resolution, just two bitter women who can agree to disagree. Ephron concludes that this was the only logical outcome, sharing that she "could perhaps end up with something that was not the truth, and not the story, but something else, to begin with, a play."

A strong human component surfaces in Ephron's nonsensical fight. Her work is more than mere sentimental recollection; it raises questions concerning the fine line that can be drawn between fact and fiction and, consequently, that getting to the truth of any matter is, at times, challenging if not impossible. Her character study reaches to the very depths of human experience, of the curiosity everyone shares about the dynamics of human interaction and the nature of relationships. It seeks not to draw any direct moral conclusions about either writer but to emphasize that there is no likely conclusion to the story, no resolution to the conflict between these two creative divas.

Nora Ephron's Imaginary Friends is more than an amusing play about a fictitious reunion that never occurred. Depictions of both Hellman and McCarthy support the idea that human beings are all limited, only as receptive to being taught as they are teachable. In a more contemporary world driven by self-help, therapy and psychotropic medication, there simply are no certainties in the realm of human experience. The meaning of truth, the nature of fame, and the value of integrity are all relative in Ephron's world. Happiness is relative. And of their ever being any resolution to the McCarthy versus Hellman battle — it depends on who is writing the story.

Source:

Laura Carter, Critical Essay on Imaginary Friends, in Drama for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.

What Do I Read Next?

• Ephron's novel Heartburn (1983) chronicles the dissolution of her marriage to reporter Carl Bernstein. She later adapted the novel for the screen.
• Lillian Hellman's Pentimento (1973) is an autobiographical work that includes a story about a woman named Julia, a friend of Hellman's who worked for the underground during World War II.
• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, published in English in 1952, chronicles the courageous life of its author, a gifted Jewish teenager, after she and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Anne later died in a German concentration camp.
• Agents for Escape: Inside the French Resistance, 1939 – 1945 (1996) is a firsthand account of a member of the French Resistance, Andre Rougeyron. He helped downed Allied pilots return to England through an underground network of people. He was later captured and sent to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.
• Mary McCarthy's The Group (1963) traces the careers and relationships of a group of Vassar women from the time of their graduation until seven years later. This witty satire of American society in the 1930s follows the eight women as they struggle to live up to their ideals amid the general duplicity that surrounds them.
• McCarthy's A Charmed Life (1955) examines a collection of people who are defined by their historical moment.