I confess that I vaguely remember ever hearing about The Group by Mary McCarthy when I was growing up. I say this, because I got my love of reading from perusing my mother's bookshelves. I can't remember if I ever saw it there, but I never thought of it again until I saw recently a review of it i...
Mary McCarthy's book first published in 1956 regards Florence, Italy. The first chapter seemingly disparages Florence and asks in essence, why would one want to visit Florence while only providing discouragement to do so. However, remarkably, by the end of the book I found myself quite excited a...
This book is very important and worth careful study. Arendt takes up where Kant's Critique of Pure Reason stops, showing how "reason" goes beyond conceptual knowledge. Knowing that Arendt was one of Heidegger's most important students, you can see places where she is pointing toward Heidegger's n...
A suspenseful and sometimes horrifying novel of manners, whose plot and odd mix of characters combine to produce an unorthodox thriller about the hijacking of a Middle East-bound jetliner over France in early 1975. "Psychologically astute, ironic and ultimately heartbreaking"(Publishers Weekly).
The seven stories collected here showcase McCarthy's formidable powers of observation, her deliciously witty writing style, and her celebrated talent for dissecting characters with biting acuity. A young woman looks for subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways to escape her unsatisfying marriage; an innoc...
Literary criticism that ranges from Shakespeare to Salinger.
it's interesting when she talk about Red and Black, it's been a long time after reading Standhal's Red and Black, but it's good that I almost remember every details with Julien Maddma Renal, etc. and also cool about Dostoyevski, Crime and Punishment. but it's a little way too self-esteem when she...
This is the author’s first novel, which relates the experiences of a young bohemian intellectual. The six episodes create a fascinating portrait of a New York social circle of the 1930s. McCarthy’s bold insight and virtuoso style won her immediate recognition as one of the most accomplished, vers...
Another campus novel of the several I read this fall. (You Deserve Nothing; The Secret History) I wonder if Donna Tartt read Mary McCarthy. One difference from Tartt's book is that in The Groves of Academe the professors and President of Jocelyn College are the focus of the novel rather than the ...
Reading and romance, gardening tips, a farewell to a friend, even an opera retold make up this stellar collection from the bestselling author of "The Group "and "Memories of a Catholic Girlhood"This intriguing nonfiction collection by Mary McCarthy is a cornucopia of literary delights that challe...
Glowing with pleasure or pale with responsibility, these boy and girl schismatics nurtured in the Party and now feeling its disapproval (expressed parentally by withdrawal of financial support) showed extraordinary discipline, cheerfulness, and patience in handling the crowds, mostly their contem...
His Zingareska for orchestra, one of the first symphonic works to incorporate jazz, was performed in Berlin in 1921. When he moved to Paris in 1923, he was taken up by Joyce, Yeats, Satie, Picasso, and Pound (who wrote a book about him). In November 1923, two violin sonatas commissioned by Pound—...
Their novels and stories, collectively speaking, constituted our Book of Wisdom.The condition, of course, was that we were young women, and that Marriage and Motherhood was the territory upon which our battle with Life was expected to be pitched. As we were intellectually ambitious girls, English...
she grinned mischievously. “For blowjobs.” Eva Bradley, a petite woman in her early forties with neatly bobbed black hair, wore her standard issue corporate attorney Ann Taylor black pantsuit and brightly colored scarf du jour. She’d taken a small box from her Coach purse, removed a brown bottle,...
At last, she said to herself, with a great leap of her soul. John, next to her, was still asleep; she muted her exultant thoughts for fear they would wake him. It was far too soon to tell him since of course she could not be sure. Yet there could hardly be any doubt. This swelling was one of the ...
They both looked extremely nervous, like a young couple being detained in the waiting-room of a doctor’s suite or an employment or adoption agency. The role they were about to play in the history of academic causes was in the foreground of their thoughts, so that they glimpsed themselves from the...