McCarthy, Mary [Therese] (1912–89),born in Seattle, was orphaned as a child and reared by diverse relatives, as she recalled in
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), a memoir continued in
How I Grew (1987), dealing with her experience and intellectual development from age 13 to 21. After graduation from Vassar (1933) she became a drama critic of the
Partisan Review, and her reviews and articles from 1937 to 1956 were collected in
Sights and Spectacles (1956). She also taught English briefly at Bard and at Sarah Lawrence College. She was wed to and divorced from Edmund Wilson. She wrote
Venice Observed (1956) and
The Stones of Florence (1959), descriptive profiles of two cities she knows well, and published literary essays in
On the Contrary (1961),
The Writing on the Wall (1970), and
Ideas and the Novel (1980), but is best known for social commentary and fiction. Her novels are
The Company She Keeps (1942), a witty portrait of a bohemian, intellectual young woman;
The Oasis (1949), a brief satirical tale of a Utopia created by some intellectuals on a New England mountain top;
The Groves of Academe (1952), a satirical portrait of faculty life at a liberal college for women;
A Charmed Life (1955), set in an artists' colony where life is more destructive than creative;
The Group (1963), about the misadventures of eight Vassar alumnae of 1933 in the 30 years after their graduation:
Birds of America (1971), treating strained relations between a mother and son because of their different generations and values; and
Cannibals and Missionaries (1979), treating modern terrorism in an airplane hijacking.
Cast a Cold Eye (1950) collects stories.
Vietnam (1967),
Hanoi (1968), and
Medina (1972) are short books collected in
The Seventeenth Degree (1974), about the U.S. war in Vietnam.
The Mask of State (1974) contains portraits of persons involved in the Watergate scandal.
Occasional Prose (1985) collects book reviews, essays, political reporting, and obituaries.
Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936–1938 (1992) chronicles her 24th to 26th years and includes her liaison with
Philip Rahv, work on the
Partisan Review, and
Edmund Wilson's pursuit of her, ending in marriage. The book deftly captures McCarthy in the swift process of becoming a critic and then, at Wilson's insistence, a novelist.
