Book Description
Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics, and the Postwar Intellectual is the first book to fully examine Mary McCarthy as a fiction writer and a cultural critic. With her sharp wit and critical eye, McCarthy offers a valuable perspective on the continuing debate over liberal values and the responsibility of the intellectual. As a Catholic woman from the Northwest, McCarthy stands on the periphery of the largely Jewish, male-dominated New York intellectual scene. This marginalized identity shapes her satiric vision of postwar American culture and makes her a consummate critic of liberalism from within. Drawing on unpublished materials from the Mary McCarthy archives, Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics, and the Postwar Intellectual makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of one of America's leading women intellectuals.
Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics, and the Postwar Intellectual FROM THE PUBLISHER
Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics, and the Postwar Intellectual is the first book to fully examine Mary McCarthy as a fiction writer and a cultural critic. With her sharp wit and critical eye, McCarthy offers a valuable perspective on the continuing debate over liberal values and the responsibility of the intellectual. As a Catholic woman from the Northwest, McCarthy stands on the periphery of the largely Jewish, male-dominated New York intellectual scene. This marginalized identity shapes her satiric vision of postwar American culture and makes her a consummate critic of liberalism from within. Drawing on unpublished materials from the Mary McCarthy archives, Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics, and the Postwar Intellectual makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of one of America's leading women intellectuals.
SYNOPSIS
Abrams (English, Montclair State University) responds to the call to examine McCarthy as a fiction writer, cultural critic, and intellectual in the 1950s through the 1970s. Marginalized by her sex, geographical origin, religion and wit, McCarthy found her voice in satirizing a milieu she could closely observe but never really join as a full member. She was bemused rather than bitter, and eventually worked toward the center of eastern liberal intellectualism rather than from its fringes. In her later work, McCarthy, informed by thirty years of success, excess, and failure, turned her eye to the institutionalization of the public intellectual and the rise of a new generation of professional experts. As usual, she was slightly detached from it all and greatly amused. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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