Synopses & Reviews
This collection of essays by a diverse group of young academics, established critics, and well-known writers strikes an intriguing balance between scholarship and reminiscence. The only full-length book on Mary McCarthy that is not a biography, this volume contains discussions of McCarthy as a member of the New York intelligentsia, her search for a just and ethical political philosophy, and the paradox of her views on feminism. The contributors include McCarthy biographers Carol Brightman, Carol Gelderman, and Fran Kiernan; novelists Thomas Flanagan, Maureen Howard, and Thomas Mallon; Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Frances Fitzgerald; and critics Morris Dickstein and Katie Roiphe. The book concludes with a moving reminiscence by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Review
This is a fascinating collection...Highly recommended for all collections.Choice
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-211) and index.
About the Author
EVE STWERTKA was a student of Mary McCarthy's at Bard College, in the late 1940s.MARGO VISCUSI worked for eight years as secretary to Mary McCarthy in Paris and is now a trustee of the Mary McCarthy Literary Trust.
Table of Contents
A Note to Readers
Of Intellect and Culture
Living and Reading, by Thomas Flanagan
Of Academics and Intellectuals, by Terry Cooney
A Glint of Malice, by Morris Dickstein
Our Leading Bitch Intellectual, by Beverly Gross
Terrorists, Artists, and Intellectuals, by Margaret Scanlan
"Knowing Concerns Me": The Female Intellectual and the Consumer Idiom, by Jill Wacker
Questions of Politics and Religion
Nicola Chiaromonte, the Politics Circle, and the Search for a Postwar "Third Camp", by Gregory D. Sumner
Reimagining Politics, by Harvey Teres
The Left Reconsidered, by Alan Wald
A Very Narrow Range of Choice: Political Dilemma in The Groves of Academe, by Timothy F. Waples
Reluctant Radical: The Irish-Catholic Element, by Stacey Lee Donohue
The Uses of Ambivalence: Mary McCarthy's Jewish Politics, by Rhoda Nathan
Mind and Body
The Stink of Father Zossima: The Medical Fact in Mary McCarthy's Fiction, by Perri Klass
Frigid Women, Frozen Dinners: The Bio-Politics of "Tyranny of the Orgasm", by Priscilla Perkins
Damn My Stream of Consciousness, by Katie Roiphe
Facts in Fiction
A Single Truth, But Tell It Sharp, by Mary Ann Caws
Mary McCarthy as a Fictional Character, by Thomas Mallon
The Minotaur as Mentor: Edmund Wilson's Role in the Career of Mary McCarthy, by Avis Hewitt
Biography and Reminiscence
My Secret Sharer, by Carol Brightman
Just the Facts, Ma'am, and Nothing But the Facts: A Biographer's Reminiscence, by Carol Gelderman
Contracts and Nymphets, by Frances Kiernan
Taking Risks, by Frances Fitzgerald
Memories of Another Catholic Girlhood, by Maureen Howard
Remembrances of an Old Friend, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Bibliography
Index