Mary Therese McCarthy

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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.

Mary Therese McCarthy 1912–89, American writer, b. Seattle, grad. Vassar, 1933. As drama critic for the Partisan Review (1937–45), she gained a reputation for wit, intellect, and acerbity. Her novel The Oasis (1949) satirizes left-wing intellectuals, whereas The Group (1963) satirizes an entire generation. Her other novels include Cast a Cold Eye (1950), The Groves of Academe (1952), Birds of America (1971), and Cannibals and Missionaries (1979). Among her volumes of nonfiction are Venice Observed (1956), The Stones of Florence (1959), Vietnam (1967), The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits (1974), Ideas and the Novel (1980), and How I Grew (1987). A comprehensive collection of her literary, cultural, and political writings was posthumously published as A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays (2002). She was married several times, from 1938–46 to the critic Edmund Wilson .

Bibliography: See her memoirs, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957) and How I Grew (1985); her correspondence with Hannah Arendt (1995); biographies by C. Gelderman (1988) and F. Kiernan (2000); study by I. Stock (1968); Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World (1992) by C. Brightman.

McCarthy, Mary (1912–89) US writer and drama critic. McCarthy wrote several novels, including The Groves of Academe (1952) and The Group (1963). Among her other works are Venice Observed (1956), and the autobiography Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957).