Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy
by Frances Kiernan
List Price:
Our Price: $0.98
You Save: $38.97 (98%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.28 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Frances KiernanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-05-17
ISBN: 0393323072
Number of pages: 848
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Summary of Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy
A revealing portrait of the dramatic life of writer and intellectual Mary McCarthy.
From her Partisan Review days to her controversial success as the author of The Group, to an epic libel battle with Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy brought a nineteenth-century scope and drama to her emblematic twentieth-century life. Dubbed by Time as "quite possibly the cleverest woman America has ever produced," McCarthy moved in a circle of ferociously sharp-tongued intellectuals?all of whom had plenty to say about this diamond in their midst. Frances Kiernan's biography does justice to one of the most controversial American intellectuals of the twentieth century. With interviews from dozens of McCarthy's friends, former lovers, literary and political comrades-in-arms, awestruck admirers, amused observers, and bitter adversaries, Seeing Mary Plain is rich in ironic judgment and eloquent testimony. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2000 and a Washington Post Book World "Rave".20 pages of b/w photographs
"To see Mary McCarthy plain is not quite so simple as it sounds," writes Frances Kiernan, a comment amply borne out in her many-faceted biography of one of America's most famous and controversial women of letters. Interspersing her narrative and analysis of McCarthy's life (1912-1989) with lengthy direct quotes from the writer's friends, lovers, colleagues, and enemies, Kiernan tries to blend the depth of a critical biography with the immediacy of oral history. The mixture doesn't always quite gel, but McCarthy's forceful personality emerges with intimacy and pungency from the chorus of disparate opinions. Her character was formed by her parents' early deaths, a miserable childhood redeemed by intellectual stardom in school, and scads of poorly judged sexual entanglements (including a ghastly seven years wed to Edmund Wilson) that ended only with her happy fourth marriage. There's little in McCarthy's life that isn't already familiar to readers of her fiction, from The Company She Keeps to The Group, and her liberal political convictions are also a matter of record, not least from her own journalism and essays. Kiernan's achievement is to reveal a woman best known for her slashing intellect and feared for her ferocious critical judgments as very human and surprisingly vulnerable. --Wendy Smith
Authors Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalledby Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.40
Price in other shops:
William Tyndale: A Biographyby David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish Americaby Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Lifeby C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.22
Price in other shops:
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library)by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops:
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops:
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
The Professor and the Madman CDby Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.46
Price in other shops:
Alexander Hamilton: A Lifeby Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.86
Price in other shops: