Book Description
Mary McCarthy was one of the leading literary figures of her time. Best remembered for her novels and memoirs, she was also a tireless literary and social critic. The intellectual brio and acute judgment that characterize her best fiction is vividly displayed in this rich selection of essays spanning the 1930s to the 1970s. Topics include everything from McCarthyism, Vietnam, and Watergate to Eugene O’Neill, J. D. Salinger, Madame Bovary, A Streetcar Named Desire, and women’s fashion magazines. “[McCarthy is] our First Lady of letters.” — Norman Mailer “McCarthy’s essays ... display a keen intelligence ... freshness of perception, coupled with common sense and an old-fashioned belief in social responsibility.” — The New York Times
Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Mary McCarthy may be best remembered today for her novels and memoirs, but she was also a dazzling and prolific essayist and critic, known for her witty and fearless commentary on topics ranging from American realist playwrights to women's fashion magazines, from left-wing politics to the nineteenth-century novel." This collection, which spans her career from the 1930s to the 1970s, displays McCarthy's acute judgment and stylistic brio. It begins with a generous selection of her drama reviews, and includes essays on Nabokov, Burroughs, Salinger, Flaubert, Calvino, Sarraute, and Tolstoy. In the essays that follow, she dissects the social and political controversies that dominated midcentury American intellectual life, from the Moscow trials to the Vietnam War and the Watergate hearings.
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