Authors: Mary McCarthy
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #Memoirs, #Professionals & Academics, #Journalists, #Specific Groups, #Women
As
Partisan Review
editor,
23–24
,
66–67
,
74–76
,
91–92
,
119
Pins and Needles
,
62
Popular Front,
2
Porter, John,
55
McCarthy’s abandonment of,
43–45
,
48
,
51–52
McCarthy’s relationship with,
1–3
,
15
,
35–45
,
116
POUM,
61
,
85
,
121
PR. See Partisan Review
Preston, Harold,
44
,
51
,
69
,
87–88
,
101–2
,
114
,
126
Prokosch, Frederick,
72
Proust, Marcel,
96
Puritanism, in
New Masses
,
55–56
Pyatakov, Grigory L.,
59
,
85
Radek, Karl B.,
59
,
85
Rahv, Naomi,
66
Rahv, Philip,
96
,
122
,
123
background and youth of,
65
,
78–80
,
81–82
McCarthy’s abandonment of,
97–99
,
102–10
,
114
McCarthy’s affair with,
62
,
63
,
65–88
,
91
,
94
,
95–97
,
118
as
Partisan Review
editor,
23–24
,
66–67
,
71
,
74–76
,
91–92
,
93
,
118
,
119
Rand, Christopher,
14–15
,
20
,
48
Rand, Maddie Aldrich,
14–15
,
20
,
48
,
119
Ransom, John Crowe,
24
Realism,
64
,
84
Red Army,
85
,
86
Retour de l’U.R.S.S.
(Gide),
75
Revolution Betrayed, The
(Trotsky),
92
Rodman, Eunice.
See
Clark, Eunice
Rodman, Nancy.
See
Macdonald, Nancy
Rodman, Selden,
16–17
,
19–20
,
22
,
27
,
63
“Rogue’s Gallery” (McCarthy),
11
Rome, Harold (“Hecky”),
62
Roosevelt, Franklin D.,
34
,
66
,
84
Rosenberg, Harold,
84
,
104
,
123
Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel,
23
Rosenfeld, Paul,
90
Rousuck, Emmanuel J. (“Mannie”),
11
,
18
,
51
,
52
,
106
,
118
Rubin, Jay,
17
Rumsey, David and Julia,
20
Sandison, Helen (“Miss Sandison”),
11
,
52–57
,
71
,
90
,
114
,
118
,
120
,
122
,
124
Sandison, Lois.
See
Howland, Lois Sandison
Saturday Review of Literature, The
,
29
Savoy Ballroom (Harlem),
15
,
27
Schlesinger, Arthur,
71
Schrifte, Evelyn,
49
Schwartz, Delmore,
76
,
104
,
122
Scottsboro Boys,
18
Second Congress of the League of American Writers,
72
,
85
,
122
Seven Who Fled
(Prokosch),
72
Sheean, Vincent,
28
Sheridan, Margaret,
115
Sherman, Stuart,
23
Shriver, Myers,
2
,
93
,
115
Socialism,
2
,
6
,
26
,
33
,
65
,
67
,
69
,
72
Solow, Herbert,
74
,
84
,
100
So Red the Rose
(Young),
28
Spanish Civil War,
35
,
61
,
72–73
,
85
,
121
Spenser, Edmund,
56
Stalin, Joseph,
86
,
116
.
See also
GPU; Moscow Trials
Stalinism,
10
,
15
,
23
,
42
,
57–58
,
60–61
,
64
,
71
,
72–73
,
85–86
,
114
,
123
Stein, Gertrude,
25–26
Steinbeck, John,
28
,
64
Sternberg, Harry,
13
,
118
Stewart, Donald Ogden,
73
,
121–22
Stolberg, Ben,
30–31
,
33–35
,
94
Strachey, John,
17–18
,
82
,
122
Strasberg, Lee,
5
,
116–17
Strauss, Harold,
64
Summer Will Show
(Warner),
28
Sun Also Rises, The
(Hemingway),
16
Swan, Mrs. Joseph,
81
,
108–9
Swan, Nathalie,
12
,
20
,
44
,
72
,
74
,
83–84
,
118
Tate, Allen,
24
Tender Is the Night
(Fitzgerald),
17
Theater Union,
3
,
4
,
5
,
18
Time
,
7
Travels in Two Democracies
(Wilson),
90
Trees (Wilson’s home),
96–97
,
98
,
99
,
100
,
106
,
109
,
113
,
125
Tresca, Carlo,
97
,
125
Trilling, Diana,
73–74
Triple Thinkers, The
(Wilson),
124
Trotsky, Leon,
41
,
57–58
,
69
,
72
,
74
,
84
,
90
,
92
Trotskyism,
4
,
26
,
61
,
67
,
71
,
73–74
,
84
,
87
,
103
,
114
.
See also
Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky
Troy, William,
76
,
103
,
122
Tukhachevsky, M. N.,
85–86
Ulysses
(Joyce),
25
“University” (Johnsrud),
25
Valéry, Paul,
84
Van Doren, Irita,
10–11
Variety
,
6
Vassar College,
15
,
99
McCarthy’s attendance at,
1
,
8
,
28
,
35
,
52
,
71
,
87
,
90
,
103
,
117
,
118
,
120
,
124
McCarthy’s friends and enemies from,
5
,
74
,
116
,
118
,
119
,
122
Villard, Oswald Garrison,
30
,
120
Waiting for Lefty (Odets),
4
,
5
Waldorf strike,
16–17
Walker, Adelaide,
4
,
84
Walker, Charles,
4
Warner, Sylvia Townsend,
28
Waste Land, The
(Eliot),
77
Weatherwax, Clara,
28
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice,
14
Webster Hall dances,
3
,
15
,
61
Welty, Eudora,
64
Weston (Porter’s collaborator),
37–38
,
40–41
Williams, Tony,
15–16
Willkie, Wendell,
50
Wilson, Edmund (“Bunny”)
influence of, on McCarthy’s writing,
103–4
McCarthy leaves,
54–55
McCarthy’s marriage to,
109–14
,
116
,
125
McCarthy’s relationship with,
88–114
,
124
,
125
,
126
relations of, with women,
100
,
103
,
111–12
,
123
Wilson, Mrs. (Edmund’s mother),
105–6
,
109–12
Wilson, Reuel,
18
,
54
,
105–6
Wilson, Rosalind,
111
Winchell, Walter,
5
Wine and Food Society,
59–60
Winterset
(Anderson),
1
,
22
,
35
Wolfson, Martin,
3
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom,
36
Woollcott, Alexander,
16
,
119
World Series,
49–50
WPA,
66
,
105
Writers’ Congress,
72
,
85
,
122
Writers’ Project,
66
,
76
,
105
Yale University,
34–35
,
99
Young, Art,
57
Young, Stark,
28
Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, The
(Farrell),
22
Zinoviev, G. Y.,
26
,
35
,
85
Zugsmith, Leane,
61
A Biography of Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) was an American critic, public intellectual, and author of more than two dozen books, including the 1963
New York Times
bestseller
The Group
.
McCarthy was born on June 21, 1912, in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and Therese (“Tess”) Preston McCarthy. McCarthy and her three younger brothers, Kevin, Preston, and Sheridan, were suddenly orphaned in 1918. While the family was en route from Seattle to a new home in Minneapolis, both parents died of influenza within a day of one another.
After being shuttled between relatives, the children were finally sent to live with a great-aunt, Margaret Sheridan McCarthy, and her husband, Myers Shriver. The Shrivers proved to be cruel and often sadistic adoptive parents. Six years later, Harold Preston, the children’s maternal grandfather and an attorney, intervened. The children were split up, and Mary went to live with her grandparents in their affluent Seattle home. McCarthy reflects on her turbulent youth, Catholic upbringing, and subsequent loss of faith in
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
(1957) and
How I Grew
(1987).
A week after graduating from Vassar in 1933, McCarthy moved to New York City and married Harold Johnsrud, an aspiring playwright. They divorced three years later, but many aspects of their relationship would resurface in the unhappy marriage of Kay Strong and Harald Petersen in
The Group
. In the late 1930s, McCarthy became a member of the
Partisan Review
circle and worked actively as a theater and book critic, contributing to a wide range of publications, such as the
Nation
, the
New Republic
,
Harper’s Magazine
, and the
New York Review of Books
.