Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949-1975 [Hardcover]

Mary McCarthy (Author), Hannah Arendt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1995

Selections from the twenty-five-year correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy provide an intimate look at two important women of the twentieth century; reflects their ideas on politics, morality, and other topics; and traces the evolution of a unique friendship.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Those who read Brightman's NBCC-winning biography Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World will remember the snippets of this correspondence as one of the highlights. Wise, eloquent and loving, the letters chronicled a quarter-century friendship between two women of widely differing backgrounds united by respect and a shared contempt for intellectual fraud. Their characters and their circumstances made for a rich exchange: Based in Europe, the American writer McCarthy (1912-1989) gave the German-born political philosopher Arendt (1906-1975) an earpiece into Europe, while Arendt, based in New York City and Chicago, served a similar function for McCarthy. McCarthy's carefully constructed, wonderfully perceptive letters and Arendt's more studious replies return time and again to moral philosophy, politics and shared friends (including many of the intellectuals of the time). But the letters are also models of the fine art of constructive criticism and the role of friendship. "Workmanly friendship," as McCarthy says, describing Arendt's Men in Dark Times, "of apprentices starting out with their bundle on a pole and doing a piece of the road together." That their bundle included a half-dozen important books and their road was an uneven one of critical kudos, unfavorable reviews, the popular success of McCarthy's The Group and the intellectual furor over Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem should not obscure the warmth or trueness of this deeply engaging exchange.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

For three decades, Mary McCarthy (1912-89), the American novelist and literary critic, and Hannah Arendt (1906-75), the German-born American philosopher and political scientist, shared a rare and enviable friendship that spanned the continents. Their long correspondence is fascinating in its revelation of two very different personalities and their views on notable political, philosophical, and literary figures and events of the day, such as Karl Jaspers, Robert Lowell, the Vietnam War, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Richard Nixon, and Watergate. The two intellectuals share professional and personal concerns and critique each other's works. The collection is uneven, with more letters from McCarthy than Arendt. Contextual notes are placed at the beginning of the correspondence or at the end, with the exception of explanatory terms found in brackets within the letters, a practice that is both helpful and distracting. For all interested readers.
--Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 412 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (January 17, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015100112X
• ISBN-13: 978-0151001125
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,028,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( A ) > Arendt, Hannah

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars More loyal to each other than to the whole truth, March 24, 2011

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949-1975 (Paperback)

This book is not quite what it is advertised to be. There is far more here of the more glib and voluble Mary McCarthy than there is of Hannah Arendt. She writes twice as often and the letters are two or three times longer. McCarthy writes frequently about the most intimate questions in her life, most importantly her marriages. Arendt is more guarded and does not give much away about her closest relationships. She does indicate her devotion to her husband and a separate unit of the book begins after he dies in 1970. She herself will live only another five years in which she will rely much on her friends of which McCarthy is no doubt one of the closest. They are friends who miss each other when they are apart and greatly enjoy each other's company. They are especially loyal to each other intellectually and each provides high and continuous praise of the work of the other.Each is the defender of the other against many criticisms made against them. But this strong loyalty also would seem to bring with it a certain intellectual dishonesty. When Arendt is under fire for her 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' neither she nor McCarthy show any real understanding of the weighty and , to my mind, valid criticisms of Arendt's work made by Gershom Scholem, and others. When Mailer and a number of other novelists criticize McCarthy's work Arendt sees it as nothing but 'envy'. The mutual praise and encouragement has another weak element. There is an imbalance in the intellectual discussions with Arendt being of course the more profound. But there is too no real critical give and take. Again many of the letters have to do with McCarthy's marriage to her third and last husband the American diplomat Anthony West. There is a great deal exchanged about the previous husband who refuses at first to give a divorce. Arendt plays the role of loyal helper to her friend in pushing for the divorce. Again there is much gossip about mutual friends Dwight Macdonald, Robert Lowell, Nicola Chiaromente ,Natalie Sarraute and intellectual acquaintances they both seem not to like very much i.e. Alfred Kazin, Norman Podhoretz. Arendt is silent about a key relationship the most morally questionable one in her life to her mentor and former lover Heidegger. Arendt was the key person in rehabilitating Heidegger after the War, when it is now well established that he was a full participant in the Nazification of the German universites. The editor also includes an allegation which I have not seen elsewhere of Arendt having had an affair with the Critic Harold Rosenberg. This charge is raised in a note with no confirmation or refutation of it in any of the letters. And this when the notes which come after each letter identifying various people mentioned in them are useful.
I had the sense very much of both of these friends wanting very much to stay friends and to compliment and help each other. They clearly do this throughout the work, and the Letters certainly give strong evidence of value of such a friendship to both of them.
I would only add that I somehow expected them to be more interesting intellectually than I found them to be. Nothing in them comes close to the greatness of writing which is often present in Arendt's best work.