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{{for|the former CIA employee Mary O'Neil McCarthy|Mary McCarthy (CIA)}}
{{Other people2|Mary McCarthy (disambiguation)}}
{{Refimprove|date=November 2010}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2013}}
<!-- Unsourced image removed: [[Image:Marymccarthy.jpg|frame|Mary McCarthy]] -->
{{Infobox person
'''Mary Therese McCarthy''' ([[June 21]] [[1912]] – [[October 25]] [[1989]]) was an [[United States|American]] author and critic. She was politically active for many years.
|name=Mary McCarthy
|birth_name =Mary Therese McCarthy
| image =Mary Therese McCarthy NYWTS.jpg
| image_size =
| caption =McCarthy in 1963
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1912|6|21}}
| birth_place =[[Seattle]], Washington, US
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1989|10|25|1912|6|21}}
| death_place = New York City
| death_cause =Lung cancer
| resting_place =
| resting_place_coordinates =
| residence =
| nationality =
| other_names =
| known_for =
| education =[[Vassar College]]
| employer = | occupation = | title = | salary = | networth = | height = | weight = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | religion =
| spouse =Harald Johnsrud (m. 1933)<br />[[Edmund Wilson]] (m. 1938)<br />Bowden Broadwater (m. 1946)<br />James West (m. 1961)
| children = Reuel Wilson
| partner = | parents = | relatives = | signature = | website = | footnotes = }}
'''Mary Therese McCarthy''' (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) was an American author, critic and political activist.


== Early life ==
== Early life ==
Born in [[Seattle, Washington]], to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Martha Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the [[1918 flu pandemic|great flu epidemic of 1918]]. She and her brothers, [[Kevin McCarthy (actor)|Kevin]], Preston, and Sheridan were raised in very unhappy circumstances by her Catholic father's parents in [[Minneapolis|Minneapolis, Minnesota]], under the direct care of an uncle and aunt she remembered for harsh treatment and abuse.


When the situation became intolerable, she was taken in by her maternal grandparents in Seattle. Her maternal grandmother, Augusta Morganstern, was Jewish, and her maternal grandfather, Harold Preston, a prominent attorney and co-founder of the law firm [[Preston Gates & Ellis]], was Presbyterian. (Her brothers were sent to boarding school.) McCarthy credited her grandfather, who helped draft one of the nation's first Workmen's Compensation Acts, with helping form her liberal views. McCarthy explores the complex events of her early life in Minneapolis and her coming of age in Seattle in her memoir, ''[[Memories of a Catholic Girlhood]]''. Her younger brother, actor [[Kevin McCarthy (actor)|Kevin McCarthy]], went on to star in such movies as ''[[Death of a Salesman]]'' (1951) and ''[[Invasion of the Body Snatchers]]'' (1956).
Born in [[Seattle, Washington]], McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the [[Spanish flu|great flu epidemic]] of [[1918]]. She was raised in very unhappy circumstances by her Catholic father's parents in [[Minneapolis]], Minnesota under the direct care of an uncle and aunt she remembered for harsh treatment and abuse.


Under the guardianship of the Prestons, McCarthy studied at the [[Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart]] in Seattle, and went on to graduate from [[Vassar College]] in [[Poughkeepsie (town), New York|Poughkeepsie, New York]], in 1933 with an [[A.B.]], [[cum laude]], where she was elected to [[Phi Beta Kappa]].
When the situation became intolerable, she was taken in by her maternal grandparents in Seattle: her Jewish grandmother, Augusta Morganstern and her Protestant grandfather, Harold Preston, a prominent attorney and co-founder of the law firm today known as Preston Gates & Ellis, LLP. McCarthy credited her grandfather, who helped draft one of the nation's first Workmen's Compensation Acts, with helping form her liberal views. McCarthy explores the complex events of her early life in Minneapolis and her coming of age in Seattle in her successful memoir, ''Memories of a Catholic Girlhood''. Her actor brother, [[Kevin McCarthy (actor)|Kevin McCarthy]] went on to star in such movies as ''[[Death of a Salesman]]'' ([[1951]]) and ''[[Invasion of the Body Snatchers]]'' ([[1956]]).

Under the guardianship of the Prestons, McCarthy studied at the [[Annie Wright Seminary]] in Tacoma, and went on to graduate from [[Vassar College]] in [[Poughkeepsie, New York]], in [[1933]].


== Beliefs as an adult ==
== Beliefs as an adult ==
McCarthy left the Catholic Church as a young woman when she became an atheist. In her contrarian fashion, McCarthy treasured her religious education for the classical foundation it provided her intellect while at the same time she depicted her loss of faith and her contests with religious authority as essential to her character.


In New York, she moved in "[[fellow traveller|fellow-traveling]]" Communist circles early in the 1930s, but by the latter half of the decade she repudiated [[Soviet Union|Soviet]]-style Communism, expressing solidarity with [[Leon Trotsky]] after the [[Moscow Trials]], and vigorously countering playwrights and authors she considered to be sympathetic to [[Stalinism]].
She left the Catholic church as a young woman when she became an atheist. In her contrarian fashion, McCarthy treasured her religious education for the classical foundation it provided her intellect while at the same time she depicted her loss of faith and her contests with religious authority as essential to her character.


As part of the ''[[Partisan Review]]'' circle and as a contributor to ''[[The Nation]]'', ''[[The New Republic]]'', ''[[Harper's Magazine]]'', and ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', she garnered attention as a cutting critic, advocating the necessity for creative autonomy that transcends doctrine. During the 1940s and 1950s she became a liberal critic of both [[McCarthyism]] and Communism. She maintained her commitment to liberal critiques of culture and power to the end of her life, opposing the [[Vietnam War]] in the 1960s and covering the [[Watergate scandal]] hearings in the 1970s. She visited [[Vietnam]] a number of times during the [[Vietnam War]]. Interviewed after her first trip, she declared on British television that there was not a single documented case of the [[Viet Cong]] deliberately killing a South Vietnamese woman or child.<ref>{{cite book | author = Leckie, Robert |title = The Wars of America | publisher = Castle Books | year = 1992}}</ref> She wrote favorably about the Vietcong.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/marymcc.htm |title=Mary McCarthy |website=Books and Writers ''(kirjasto.sci.fi)'' |first=Petri |last=Liukkonen |publisher=[[Kuusankoski]] Public Library |location=Finland |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150210175324/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/marymcc.htm |archivedate=10 February 2015 |dead-url=yes}}</ref>
In [[New York]], she moved in "[[fellow traveller|fellow-traveling]]" Communist circles early in the [[1930s]], but by the latter half of the decade she had repudiated [[Soviet]]-Style [[Communism]], expressing solidarity with [[Leon Trotsky]] after the [[Moscow Trials]], and vigorously countering playwrights and authors she considered to be sympathetic to [[Stalinism]].


== Social life==
As part of the ''[[Partisan Review]]'' circle and as a contributor to ''[[The Nation]]'' and ''[[The New Republic]]'', she garnered attention as a cutting critic, advocating the necessity for creative autonomy that transcends doctrine. During the [[1940s]] and [[1950s]] she became a liberal critic of both [[McCarthyism]] and Communism. She maintained her commitment to liberal critiques of culture and power to the end of her life, arguing against the [[Vietnam War]] in the [[1960s]] and covering the [[Watergate scandal]] hearings in the [[1970s]].
She married four times. In 1933 she married [[Harald Johnsrud]], an actor and would-be playwright. Her best-known spouse was the writer and critic [[Edmund Wilson]], whom she married in 1938 after leaving her lover [[Philip Rahv]], and with whom she had a son, Reuel Wilson. In 1946 she married Bowden Broadwater, who worked for the ''[[New Yorker Magazine|New Yorker]]''. In 1961, McCarthy married career diplomat James R. West.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/17/arts/james-r-west-84-diplomat-married-to-mary-mccarthy.html | work=The New York Times | title=James R. West, 84, Diplomat Married to Mary McCarthy | date=September 17, 1999 | accessdate=May 12, 2010}}</ref>


Although she broke ranks with some of her ''Partisan Review'' colleagues when they swerved toward conservative politics after World War II, she carried on lifelong friendships with [[Dwight Macdonald]], [[Nicola Chiaromonte]], [[Philip Rahv]], [[F. W. Dupee]] and [[Elizabeth Hardwick (writer)|Elizabeth Hardwick]]. Perhaps most prized of all was her close friendship with [[Hannah Arendt]], with whom she maintained a sizable correspondence widely regarded for its intellectual rigor. After Arendt's passing, McCarthy became Arendt's literary executor from 1976 until her own death in 1989.<ref>{{Cite book|title = The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature|last = Parini|first = Jay|publisher = Oxford University Press|year = 2004|isbn = 9780195156539|location = |pages = 48|last2 = |doi = 10.1093/acref/9780195156539.001.0001|lccn = 2002156325|oclc = 51289864}}</ref> McCarthy taught at [[Bard College]] from 1946-1947, and once again between 1986 -1989. She also taught a winter semester in 1948 at [[Sarah Lawrence College]].<ref>{{Cite web|url = http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/marymccarthy/mmbio.html|title = Mary McCarthy: A Biographical Sketch|date = |accessdate = June 26, 2014|website = Special Collections: Mary McCarthy - A Biographical Sketch|publisher = Vassar College Libraries|last = |first = }}</ref>
== Social life==


== Literary reputation ==
She married four times. In [[1933]] she married [[Harald Johnsrud]], an actor and would-be playwright. Her best-known spouse was the writer and critic [[Edmund Wilson]], whom she married in [[1938]] after leaving her lover [[Philip Rahv]], and by whom she had a son, Reuel Wilson, an academic at the [[University of Western Ontario]].
Her debut novel, ''The Company She Keeps,'' received critical acclaim as a [[succès de scandale]], depicting the social milieu of New York intellectuals of the late 1930s with unreserved frankness. After building a reputation as a satirist and critic, McCarthy enjoyed popular success when her 1963 novel ''[[The Group (novel)|The Group]]'' remained on the [[New York Times Best Seller list]] for almost two years. Her work is noted for its precise prose and its complex mixture of autobiography and fiction.


[[Randall Jarrell]]'s 1954 novel ''[[Pictures from an Institution]]'' is said to be about McCarthy's year teaching at [[Sarah Lawrence]].
Though she broke ranks with some of her ''Partisan Review'' colleagues as they swerved toward conservative and reactionary politics after World War II, she carried on life-long friendships with [[Dwight Macdonald]], [[Nicola Chiaromonte]], [[Philip Rahv]] and [[Elizabeth Hardwick]]. Perhaps most prized of all was her close friendship with [[Hannah Arendt]], with whom she maintained a sizable correspondence widely regarded for its intellectual rigor.


Her feud with fellow writer [[Lillian Hellman]] formed the basis for the play ''[[Imaginary Friends (play)|Imaginary Friends]]'' by [[Nora Ephron]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hollywoodinvestigator.com/2002/minds.htm |title=Ben Pleasants's Contentious Minds: The Mary McCarthy / Lillian Hellman Affair |publisher=Hollywoodinvestigator.com |date= |accessdate=2010-11-09}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0920/p19s01-almp.html| title=When Mary Met Lillian| work=The Christian Science Monitor| author= Saidi| date= September 20, 2002 |first = Janet}}</ref> The feud had simmered since the late 1930s over ideological differences, particularly the questions of the [[Moscow Trials]] and of Hellman's support for the "Popular Front" with Stalin. McCarthy provoked Hellman in 1979 when she famously said on ''[[The Dick Cavett Show]]'': "every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
== Literary reputation ==


Hellman responded by filing a $2.5 million libel suit against McCarthy, which ended shortly after Hellman died in 1984. Observers of the trial noted the resulting irony of Hellman's defamation suit is that it brought significant scrutiny, and decline of Hellman's reputation, by forcing McCarthy and her supporters to ''prove'' that she had lied.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/node/268 |title=Two Invented Lives |work=New Politics|issue=23 |date=Summer 1997 | first=Phyllis|last= Jacobson|accessdate=2010-11-09}}</ref>
Her debut novel, ''The Company She Keeps'' received critical acclaim as a succès de scandale, depicting the social milieu of New York intellectuals of the late 1930s with unreserved frankness. After building a reputation as a satirist and critic, McCarthy enjoyed popular success when her 1963 novel ''The Group'' remained on the [[New York Times Best Seller list]] for almost two years. Her work is noted for its precise prose and its complex mixture of autobiography and fiction.


McCarthy also engaged in a controversy with USAF general [[James Robinson Risner|James Risner]] over their meeting while he was a POW in North Vietnam.<ref>{{Cite journal|url =http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1974/mar/07/on-colonel-risner/ |title = On Colonel Risner|last = McCarthy|first = Mary|date = March 7, 1974|journal = The New York Review of Books|accessdate = July 26, 2014|doi = |subscription = yes|volume = 21|issue = 3}}</ref>
Her feud with fellow writer [[Lillian Hellman]] formed the basis for the play ''Imaginary Friends'' by [[Nora Ephron]]. The feud had simmered since the late 1930s over ideological difference, particularly the question of the Moscow Trials and Hellman's support for the "Popular Front" with Stalin. McCarthy provoked Hellman in 1979 when she famously said on ''[[The Dick Cavett Show]]'': "every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." Hellman responded by filing a $2.5 million libel suit against McCarthy. Both women died before it reached its conclusion.<ref>[Frances Kiernan ''Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy, New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2000, 702]''</ref> McCarthy's biographers have noted that the resulting irony of Hellman's defamation suit is that she brought more significant disrepute upon herself by forcing McCarthy and her supporters to ''prove'' that she was a liar in court. [[Muriel Gardiner]] claims that Hellman's memoir, ''Pentimento'' (1973), was partly based on a fictionalized account of Gardiner's life. The claim was denied by Hellman.


===Awards===
McCarthy was a member of the [[National Institute of Arts and Letters]]. She won the [[National Medal for Literature]] and the [[MacDowell Medal]] in 1984. McCarthy died of lung cancer on [[October 25]], [[1989]] in [[New York City]] at the age of 77.
{{more references|date=July 2015}}
McCarthy was the winner of the [[Horizon Prize]] in 1949 and was awarded two [[Guggenheim Fellowships|Guggenheim fellowships]] in 1949 and 1959. She was a member of the [[National Institute of Arts and Letters]] and the [[American Academy in Rome]].{{citation needed|date=October 2014}} In 1973, she delivered the [[Huizinga Lecture]] in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title ''Can There Be a Gothic Literature?'' The same year she was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]].<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterM.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|accessdate=July 25, 2014}}</ref> She won the [[National Medal for Literature]] and the [[Edward MacDowell Medal]] in 1984.


McCarthy holds honorary degrees from [[Bard College|Bard]], [[Bowdoin College|Bowdoin]], [[Colby College|Colby]], [[Smith College]], [[Syracuse University]], The [[University of Maine at Orono]], The [[University of Aberdeen]], and the [[University of Hull]].
==Notes==

<references/>
==Death==
McCarthy died of [[lung cancer]] on October 25, 1989 at [[NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital]] in New York City.<ref>{{cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Mary McCarthy, 77, Is Dead; Novelist, Memoirist and Critic |url=http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy-obit.html |quote=Mary McCarthy, one of America's pre-eminent women of letters, died of cancer yesterday at [[New York Hospital]]. She was 77 years old and lived in [[Castine, Maine]], and Paris.|publisher=New York Times |date=October 29, 1989 |accessdate=2008-07-07 }}</ref>

==Film portrayals==
In the 2012 German movie ''[[Hannah Arendt (film)|Hannah Arendt]]'', Mary McCarthy is portrayed by [[Janet McTeer]].


==Selected works==
==Selected works==
* ''The Company She Keeps'' (1942), Harvest/HBJ, 2003 reprint:ISBN 0-15-602786-0
* ''The Company She Keeps'' (1942), Harvest/HBJ, 2003 reprint: ISBN 0-15-602786-0
* ''The Oasis'' (1949), Backinprint.com, 1999 edition:ISBN 1-58348-392-6
* ''[[The Oasis (novel)|The Oasis]]'' (1949), Backinprint.com, 1999 edition: ISBN 1-58348-392-6
* ''The Groves of Academe'' (1952), Harvest/HBJ, 2002 reprint:ISBN 0-15-602787-9
* ''Cast a Cold Eye'' (1950), HBJ, 1992 reissue: ISBN 9780156154444
* ''[[A Charmed Life]]'' (1955), Harvest Books, 1992 reprint:ISBN 0-15-616774-3
* ''[[The Groves of Academe]]'' (1952), Harvest/HBJ, 2002 reprint: ISBN 0-15-602787-9
* ''Venice Observed'' (1956), Harvest/HBJ, 1963 edition:ISBN 0-15-693521-X (the 1963 edition lacks the illustrations present in the original book)
* ''[[A Charmed Life]]'' (1955), Harvest Books, 1992 reprint: ISBN 0-15-616774-3
* ''Venice Observed'' (1956), Harvest/HBJ, 1963 edition: ISBN 0-15-693521-X (the 1963 edition lacks the illustrations present in the original book)
* ''The Stones of Florence'' (1956), Harvest/HBJ, 2002 reprint of 1963 edition:ISBN 0-15-602763-1 (the 1963 edition lacks the illustrations present in the original book)
* ''The Stones of Florence'' (1956), Harvest/HBJ, 2002 reprint of 1963 edition: ISBN 0-15-602763-1 (the 1963 edition lacks the illustrations present in the original book)
* ''[[Memories of a Catholic Girlhood]]'' (1957), Harvest/HBJ, 1972 reprint:ISBN 0-15-658650-9 (autobiography)
* ''[[Memories of a Catholic Girlhood]]'' (1957), Harvest/HBJ, 1972 reprint: ISBN 0-15-658650-9 (autobiography)
* ''The Group'' (1962), Harvest/HBJ, 1991 reprint:ISBN 0-15-637208-8, adapted as a [[1966]] movie of the same name.
* ''On the Contrary'' (1961), LBS, 1980 reissue: ISBN 0-29-777736-X
* ''[[The Group (novel)|The Group]]'' (1963), Harvest/HBJ, 1991 reprint: ISBN 0-15-637208-8, adapted as a 1966 movie of the same name.
* ''Vietnam'' (1967)
* ''Vietnam'' (1967), Harcourt, Brace & World, ISBN 0-15-193633-1
* ''The Writing on the Wall'' (1970)
* ''Birds of America'' (1971), Harcourt 1992 reprint:ISBN 0-15-612630-3
* ''Hanoi'' (1968), Harcourt, Brace & World, ISBN 0-15-138450-9
* ''The Writing on the Wall'' (1970), Mariner Books, ISBN 0-15-698390-7
* ''The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits'' (1974)
* ''Cannibals and Missionaries'' (1979), Harvest/HBJ, 1991 reprint:ISBN 0-15-615386-6 (novel explores the psychology of terrorism)
* ''Birds of America'' (1971), Harcourt, 1992 reprint: ISBN 0-15-612630-3
* ''Medina'' (1972), Harvest/HBJ, ISBN 0-15-158530-X
* ''Ideas and the Novel'' (1980)
* ''The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits'' (1974), Harvest Books, ISBN 0-15-657302-4
* ''Cannibals and Missionaries'' (1979), Harvest/HBJ, 1991 reprint: ISBN 0-15-615386-6 (novel explores the psychology of terrorism)
* ''Ideas and the Novel'' (1980), Harvest/HBJ, ISBN 0-15-143682-7
* ''How I Grew'' (1987), Harvest Books, ISBN 0-15-642185-2 (intellectual autobiography age 13–21)
* ''How I Grew'' (1987), Harvest Books, ISBN 0-15-642185-2 (intellectual autobiography age 13–21)
* ''Intellectual Memoirs'' (1992)
* ''Intellectual Memoirs'' (1992), published posthumously (edited and with a foreword by Elizabeth Hardwick)
* ''[[A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays]]'' (2002), ''[[New York Review Books]]'', (compilation of essays and critiques), ISBN 1-59017-010-5


===Books about McCarthy===
===Books about McCarthy===
*Sabrina Fuchs Abrams, ''Mary Mccarthy: Gender, Politics, And The Postwar Intellectual'', (2004), Peter Lang Publishing, ISBN 0-8204-6807-X
*Sabrina Fuchs Abrams, ''Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics, And The Postwar Intellectual'', (2004), Peter Lang Publishing, ISBN 0-8204-6807-X
*Frances Kiernan, ''Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy'', (2000), W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-32307-2
*Frances Kiernan, ''Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy'', (2000), W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-32307-2
*Eve Stwertka (editor), ''Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer and Her Work'', (1996), Greenwood Press, ISBN 0-313-29776-2
*Eve Stwertka (editor), ''Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer and Her Work'', (1996), Greenwood Press, ISBN 0-313-29776-2
*Carol Brightman (editor), ''Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949-1975'', (1996), Harvest/HBJ, ISBN 0-15-600250-7
*Carol Brightman (editor), ''Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975'', (1996), Harvest/HBJ, ISBN 0-15-600250-7
*Carol Brightman, ''Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy And Her World'', (1992), Harvest Books, ISBN 0-15-600067-9
*Carol Brightman, ''Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy And Her World'', (1992), Harvest Books, ISBN 0-15-600067-9
*Joy Bennet, ''Mary McCarthy; An Annotated Bibliography'', (1992), Garland Press, ISBN 0-8240-7028-3
*Joy Bennet, ''Mary McCarthy; An Annotated Bibliography'', (1992), Garland Press, ISBN 0-8240-7028-3
*Carol Gelderman, ''Mary McCarthy: A Life'', 1990, St Martins Press, ISBN 0-312-00565-2
*Carol Gelderman, ''Mary McCarthy: A Life'', 1990, St Martins Press, ISBN 0-312-00565-2
*Doris Grumbach, ''The Company She Kept'', 1967, Coward-McCann, Inc., LoC CCN: 66-26531,

==References==
{{Reflist}}


==External links==
==External links==
{{Wikiquote|Mary McCarthy}}
{{wikiquote}}
*{{worldcat id|id=lccn-n79-60089}}
*{{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4618/the-art-of-fiction-no-27-mary-mccarthy| title=Mary McCarthy, The Art of Fiction No. 27| author=Elisabeth Sifton| date=Winter–Spring 1962| work=The Paris Review }}
* [http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin#reviews New York Times] Featured Author Page (Book Reviews, Interviews, Sound Clips.)
* [http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin#reviews New York Times] Featured Author Page (Book Reviews, Interviews, Sound Clips.)
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3028 Literary Encyclopedia] (in-progress)
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3028 Literary Encyclopedia] (in-progress)
* {{Books and Writers |id=marymcc |name=Mary McCarthy}}
* [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/marymcc.htm Brief bio] at Kirjasto (Pegasos)
* [http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/marymccarthy/mmbio.html Brief bio] at Vassar College
* [http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/marymccarthy/mmbio.html Brief bio] at Vassar College
* [http://kenspeckle.net/blog/2007/08/26/mary-mccarthys-nyc/ Map of Mary's NYC, 1936–1938] based on ''Intellectual Memoirs''
* http://prestongates.com
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7316259/ Mary McCarthy at Find a Grave]


{{Authority control}}
[[Category:1912 births|McCarthy, Mary]]
[[Category:1989 deaths|McCarthy, Mary]]
[[Category:People from Seattle|McCarthy, Mary]]
[[Category:Women writers|McCarthy, Mary]]
[[Category:American writers|McCarthy, Mary]]
[[Category:Atheists|McCarthy, Mary]]
[[Category:Irish-Americans|McCarthy, Mary]]


{{Persondata
[[de:Mary McCarthy]]
[[pl:Mary McCarthy]]
| NAME =McCarthy, Mary
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
| SHORT DESCRIPTION = American writer
| DATE OF BIRTH =June 21, 1912
| PLACE OF BIRTH =[[Seattle, Washington]]
| DATE OF DEATH =October 25, 1989
| PLACE OF DEATH =[[NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital]]<br>[[Manhattan]]
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCarthy, Mary}}
[[Category:1912 births]]
[[Category:1989 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American novelists]]
[[Category:American women novelists]]
[[Category:American people of Jewish descent]]
[[Category:Vassar College alumni]]
[[Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences]]
[[Category:Guggenheim Fellows]]
[[Category:Deaths from lung cancer]]
[[Category:Cancer deaths in New York]]
[[Category:American people of the Vietnam War]]
[[Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters]]
[[Category:Analysands of Sándor Radó]]
[[Category:Writers from New York City]]
[[Category:Writers from Seattle, Washington]]
[[Category:Rome Prize winners]]
[[Category:Bard College faculty]]
[[Category:Women in warfare post-1945]]
[[Category:Women in war in Vietnam]]
[[Category:Women war correspondents]]
[[Category:American women dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:20th-century women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights]]

Revision as of 07:07, 18 October 2015

For other people named Mary McCarthy (disambiguation), see Mary McCarthy (disambiguation) (disambiguation).

Mary McCarthy
McCarthy in 1963
Born
Mary Therese McCarthy

(1912-06-21)June 21, 1912
Seattle, Washington, US
DiedOctober 25, 1989(1989-10-25) (aged 77)
New York City
Cause of deathLung cancer
EducationVassar College
Spouse(s)Harald Johnsrud (m. 1933)
Edmund Wilson (m. 1938)
Bowden Broadwater (m. 1946)
James West (m. 1961)
ChildrenReuel Wilson

Mary Therese McCarthy (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) was an American author, critic and political activist.

Early life

Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Martha Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918. She and her brothers, Kevin, Preston, and Sheridan were raised in very unhappy circumstances by her Catholic father's parents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the direct care of an uncle and aunt she remembered for harsh treatment and abuse.

When the situation became intolerable, she was taken in by her maternal grandparents in Seattle. Her maternal grandmother, Augusta Morganstern, was Jewish, and her maternal grandfather, Harold Preston, a prominent attorney and co-founder of the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis, was Presbyterian. (Her brothers were sent to boarding school.) McCarthy credited her grandfather, who helped draft one of the nation's first Workmen's Compensation Acts, with helping form her liberal views. McCarthy explores the complex events of her early life in Minneapolis and her coming of age in Seattle in her memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. Her younger brother, actor Kevin McCarthy, went on to star in such movies as Death of a Salesman (1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

Under the guardianship of the Prestons, McCarthy studied at the Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Seattle, and went on to graduate from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1933 with an A.B., cum laude, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Beliefs as an adult

McCarthy left the Catholic Church as a young woman when she became an atheist. In her contrarian fashion, McCarthy treasured her religious education for the classical foundation it provided her intellect while at the same time she depicted her loss of faith and her contests with religious authority as essential to her character.

In New York, she moved in "fellow-traveling" Communist circles early in the 1930s, but by the latter half of the decade she repudiated Soviet-style Communism, expressing solidarity with Leon Trotsky after the Moscow Trials, and vigorously countering playwrights and authors she considered to be sympathetic to Stalinism.

As part of the Partisan Review circle and as a contributor to The Nation, The New Republic, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Review of Books, she garnered attention as a cutting critic, advocating the necessity for creative autonomy that transcends doctrine. During the 1940s and 1950s she became a liberal critic of both McCarthyism and Communism. She maintained her commitment to liberal critiques of culture and power to the end of her life, opposing the Vietnam War in the 1960s and covering the Watergate scandal hearings in the 1970s. She visited Vietnam a number of times during the Vietnam War. Interviewed after her first trip, she declared on British television that there was not a single documented case of the Viet Cong deliberately killing a South Vietnamese woman or child.[1] She wrote favorably about the Vietcong.[2]

Social life

She married four times. In 1933 she married Harald Johnsrud, an actor and would-be playwright. Her best-known spouse was the writer and critic Edmund Wilson, whom she married in 1938 after leaving her lover Philip Rahv, and with whom she had a son, Reuel Wilson. In 1946 she married Bowden Broadwater, who worked for the New Yorker. In 1961, McCarthy married career diplomat James R. West.[3]

Although she broke ranks with some of her Partisan Review colleagues when they swerved toward conservative politics after World War II, she carried on lifelong friendships with Dwight Macdonald, Nicola Chiaromonte, Philip Rahv, F. W. Dupee and Elizabeth Hardwick. Perhaps most prized of all was her close friendship with Hannah Arendt, with whom she maintained a sizable correspondence widely regarded for its intellectual rigor. After Arendt's passing, McCarthy became Arendt's literary executor from 1976 until her own death in 1989.[4] McCarthy taught at Bard College from 1946-1947, and once again between 1986 -1989. She also taught a winter semester in 1948 at Sarah Lawrence College.[5]

Literary reputation

Her debut novel, The Company She Keeps, received critical acclaim as a succès de scandale, depicting the social milieu of New York intellectuals of the late 1930s with unreserved frankness. After building a reputation as a satirist and critic, McCarthy enjoyed popular success when her 1963 novel The Group remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for almost two years. Her work is noted for its precise prose and its complex mixture of autobiography and fiction.

Randall Jarrell's 1954 novel Pictures from an Institution is said to be about McCarthy's year teaching at Sarah Lawrence.

Her feud with fellow writer Lillian Hellman formed the basis for the play Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron.[6][7] The feud had simmered since the late 1930s over ideological differences, particularly the questions of the Moscow Trials and of Hellman's support for the "Popular Front" with Stalin. McCarthy provoked Hellman in 1979 when she famously said on The Dick Cavett Show: "every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."

Hellman responded by filing a $2.5 million libel suit against McCarthy, which ended shortly after Hellman died in 1984. Observers of the trial noted the resulting irony of Hellman's defamation suit is that it brought significant scrutiny, and decline of Hellman's reputation, by forcing McCarthy and her supporters to prove that she had lied.[8]

McCarthy also engaged in a controversy with USAF general James Risner over their meeting while he was a POW in North Vietnam.[9]

Awards

McCarthy was the winner of the Horizon Prize in 1949 and was awarded two Guggenheim fellowships in 1949 and 1959. She was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome.[citation needed] In 1973, she delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title Can There Be a Gothic Literature? The same year she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[10] She won the National Medal for Literature and the Edward MacDowell Medal in 1984.

McCarthy holds honorary degrees from Bard, Bowdoin, Colby, Smith College, Syracuse University, The University of Maine at Orono, The University of Aberdeen, and the University of Hull.

Death

McCarthy died of lung cancer on October 25, 1989 at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.[11]

Film portrayals

In the 2012 German movie Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy is portrayed by Janet McTeer.

Selected works

  • The Company She Keeps (1942), Harvest/HBJ, 2003 reprint: ISBN 0-15-602786-0
  • The Oasis (1949), Backinprint.com, 1999 edition: ISBN 1-58348-392-6
  • Cast a Cold Eye (1950), HBJ, 1992 reissue: ISBN 9780156154444
  • The Groves of Academe (1952), Harvest/HBJ, 2002 reprint: ISBN 0-15-602787-9
  • A Charmed Life (1955), Harvest Books, 1992 reprint: ISBN 0-15-616774-3
  • Venice Observed (1956), Harvest/HBJ, 1963 edition: ISBN 0-15-693521-X (the 1963 edition lacks the illustrations present in the original book)
  • The Stones of Florence (1956), Harvest/HBJ, 2002 reprint of 1963 edition: ISBN 0-15-602763-1 (the 1963 edition lacks the illustrations present in the original book)
  • Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), Harvest/HBJ, 1972 reprint: ISBN 0-15-658650-9 (autobiography)
  • On the Contrary (1961), LBS, 1980 reissue: ISBN 0-29-777736-X
  • The Group (1963), Harvest/HBJ, 1991 reprint: ISBN 0-15-637208-8, adapted as a 1966 movie of the same name.
  • Vietnam (1967), Harcourt, Brace & World, ISBN 0-15-193633-1
  • Hanoi (1968), Harcourt, Brace & World, ISBN 0-15-138450-9
  • The Writing on the Wall (1970), Mariner Books, ISBN 0-15-698390-7
  • Birds of America (1971), Harcourt, 1992 reprint: ISBN 0-15-612630-3
  • Medina (1972), Harvest/HBJ, ISBN 0-15-158530-X
  • The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits (1974), Harvest Books, ISBN 0-15-657302-4
  • Cannibals and Missionaries (1979), Harvest/HBJ, 1991 reprint: ISBN 0-15-615386-6 (novel explores the psychology of terrorism)
  • Ideas and the Novel (1980), Harvest/HBJ, ISBN 0-15-143682-7
  • How I Grew (1987), Harvest Books, ISBN 0-15-642185-2 (intellectual autobiography age 13–21)
  • Intellectual Memoirs (1992), published posthumously (edited and with a foreword by Elizabeth Hardwick)
  • A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays (2002), New York Review Books, (compilation of essays and critiques), ISBN 1-59017-010-5

Books about McCarthy

  • Sabrina Fuchs Abrams, Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics, And The Postwar Intellectual, (2004), Peter Lang Publishing, ISBN 0-8204-6807-X
  • Frances Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy, (2000), W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-32307-2
  • Eve Stwertka (editor), Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer and Her Work, (1996), Greenwood Press, ISBN 0-313-29776-2
  • Carol Brightman (editor), Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975, (1996), Harvest/HBJ, ISBN 0-15-600250-7
  • Carol Brightman, Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy And Her World, (1992), Harvest Books, ISBN 0-15-600067-9
  • Joy Bennet, Mary McCarthy; An Annotated Bibliography, (1992), Garland Press, ISBN 0-8240-7028-3
  • Carol Gelderman, Mary McCarthy: A Life, 1990, St Martins Press, ISBN 0-312-00565-2
  • Doris Grumbach, The Company She Kept, 1967, Coward-McCann, Inc., LoC CCN: 66-26531,

References

  1. ^ Leckie, Robert (1992). The Wars of America. Castle Books.
  2. ^ Liukkonen, Petri. "Mary McCarthy". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on February 10, 2015. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |website= (help); Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ "James R. West, 84, Diplomat Married to Mary McCarthy". The New York Times. September 17, 1999. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
  4. ^ Parini, Jay (2004). The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 48. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195156539.001.0001. ISBN 9780195156539. LCCN 2002156325. OCLC 51289864.
  5. ^ "Mary McCarthy: A Biographical Sketch". Special Collections: Mary McCarthy - A Biographical Sketch. Vassar College Libraries. Retrieved June 26, 2014.
  6. ^ "Ben Pleasants's Contentious Minds: The Mary McCarthy / Lillian Hellman Affair". Hollywoodinvestigator.com. Retrieved November 9, 2010.
  7. ^ Saidi, Janet (September 20, 2002). "When Mary Met Lillian". The Christian Science Monitor.
  8. ^ Jacobson, Phyllis (Summer 1997). "Two Invented Lives". New Politics. Retrieved November 9, 2010.
  9. ^ McCarthy, Mary (March 7, 1974). "On Colonel Risner". The New York Review of Books. 21 (3). Retrieved July 26, 2014. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved July 25, 2014.
  11. ^ "Mary McCarthy, 77, Is Dead; Novelist, Memoirist and Critic". New York Times. October 29, 1989. Retrieved July 7, 2008. Mary McCarthy, one of America's pre-eminent women of letters, died of cancer yesterday at New York Hospital. She was 77 years old and lived in Castine, Maine, and Paris. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
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