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BANKHEAD_AHEAD

                                             May 16, 2010

There's a scene in the Lillian Hellman
memoir "Pentamento", where she
describes a house party where one of              Tellulah Bankhead
the guests was Tellulah Bankhead.                 was a famous
                                                  wild woman of
Hellman walks in on Bankhead in                   Hollywood.
bed with a man, and Bankhead
goes into this routine, showing
off the guys erection, asking
Hellman if she'd ever seen one
as big as that.
                                      STYLE_IMPAIRED
  Hellman was not amused or
  grossed out, but conveyed
  the impression that she               There are some other scenes
  was bored by these antics.            where Dashiel Hammet criticizes
                                        Bankhead's cocaine habit.
  It seemed like tired schtick,
  it reminded her of stuff the            Bankhead is portrayed as
  schoolgirls she knew in the             self-deluded: "I'm not an
  20s used to do.                         addict! I've been using it for
                                          years with out any problems!"

     An example of attitudes              (Myself I suspect that this was a
     swinging back and forth...           weak attempt at self-deprecating
                                          humor that fell flat.)
     The liberal, licentious
     Roaring Twenties seemed              Reading between the lines,
     shrill and tacky a decade            Hammet seems pompous, posing as
     or two later.                        the Great Private Detective for
                                          a bunch of Hollywood clowns.
     That reaction eventually
     veered into the post-war             "When I was with the Pinkertons,
     Return to Normalcy, which            we always hated dealing with the
     in turn gives way to the             drug addicts because you never
     beatnik/hippie Sexual                knew what they were going to do."
     Revolution, on through the
     excesses of the 70s, and                    (paraphrased
     back again (a bit)                           from memory)
     post-80s.

           But the trouble with
           the pendulum metaphor
           is that we *do not*          EXCUSES
           "return to the same
           place".                          NORMAL_PERVERSION

              Every revolution (and
              counter-revolution?) really      It could be, though,
              leaves in place a permanent      that it's important
              residue.                         for us to *believe*
                                               that the pendulum
                                               is swinging.

                                                  We like that simple,
                                                  two-sided model.




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