Mask Of State: Watergate Portrait (Harvest Book; Hb283) [Paperback]

Mary McCarthy (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0156573024 | ISBN-13: 978-0156573023 | Publication Date: March 19, 1975 | Edition: First Harvest Edition

During the Watergate hearings, McCarthy wrote eight reports telling of deceit and arrogance in the Nixon administration. She revised and amplified those reports for this book and added a Postscript on the Nixon pardon.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

MARY MCCARTHY (1912-1989) was a short-story writer, bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic. She was the author of The Stones of Florence and Birds of America, among other books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 183 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; First Harvest Edition edition (March 19, 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156573024
• ISBN-13: 978-0156573023
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,546,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hit and miss first person account of Watergate hearings, November 14, 2005

By 

Steven Hellerstedt "SH" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mask Of State: Watergate Portrait (Harvest Book; Hb283) (Paperback)

Beginning in June, 1973 and continuing through September, 1974, Mary McCarthy covered the Senate Watergate Hearings as a correspondent for the London Observer and the New York Review of Books. In 1975 the articles - nine in the book, although there may have been more - were released in book form under the title `The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits.' Besides the final chapter, dated September, 1974, which contains McCarthy's reaction to President Ford's pardon of Nixon, a long-ish chapter that ruminates on the Watergate break-in, and one written while the Senate hearings were in short recess during a state visit by Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, six have as subject the hearing's witness or witnesses of the week. For instance, the first chapter, `The Athlete of Evasion and the Prodigal Son,' report on the appearance of Maurice Stans and Jeb Magruder before the Senate Committee.

McCarthy is at her best in the hearing's chapter, where her novelist's attention to detail and acrid wit allow her to impale the perfidious with a wry thrust of the pen. In `The Wagons Are Drawn Around the White House,' John Dean's testimony chapter, his impression suggests "not so much of a truthful person as of someone resolved to tell the truth about this particular set of events because his intelligence has warned him to do so." An apt description of the somewhat robotic and bloodless ex-counsel to the president. Contrasting John Ehrlichman's belligerent aggression manner before the committee with John Mitchell's earlier dour and somewhat boring appearance, McCarthy notes "the difference between him (Ehrlichman) and Mitchell came down to the difference between the ready insolence of power and a surly nihilism proceeding from defeat." In contrast, ex-Prussian Guard, the intimidating H.R. Haldeman, plays the meek Jeff to Ehrlichman's Mutt, and, belying his reputation, has "something rabbity about him." My favorite skewering, though, is McCarthy's take on Ehrlichman and Haldeman's pit-bull of a lawyer, John L. Wilson "`... a querulous dropsical old party with a mean City Hall mouth and a shrill ungoverned temper recalling Rumpelstiltskin." Good, lively writing.

As welcome as are McCarthy's acerbic observations, her take on the politics of things at times made me wince. After Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of taping devices in the White House, McCarthy gushes "If we had only known about them earlier. What a lot of mental man-hours we would have saved." The introductory bits in the front of the book inform us that the original articles were edited prior to re-publication. Enough time, then, for a rock to learn that more mental man-hours were devoted to extracting the tapes from the Nixon White House than all the hearings, trials, and depositions combined. Maybe - just maybe - McCarthy kept that brace of sentences in to stay true to her original reaction, although even then one would have wished for a little more cynicism and a little less naïveté. The farther away McCarthy gets from her press chair in the Senate Caucus room the flabbier it gets. During the Brezhnev recess chapter McCarthy makes sense of the public's ability to withstand Watergate thusly - "The public's ability to absorb more shocks than it was originally prepared for can be explained by the residue of guilt left over from Vietnam..." That's either brilliant, poppycock, or the attempt of a high-profile Author to stake an intellectual claim in a played out mining camp. McCarthy's penultimate chapter, `Always That Doubt,' her summation, precious space in any book like this, is wasted by her attempt to determine whether or not Nixon personally authorized the break-in of the DNC. The ripe meat of Watergate was in the abuse of power prior to the break-in, and the cover-up subsequent to the break-in, not the break-in itself. Whether Nixon authorized it or not simply wasn't that compelling a question.

First person accounts are always the best, and there are some truly delightful chapters in `The Mask of State.' On a balance scale they outweigh the dross, but not by as great a margin as they ought. Certainly not enough to merit more than a tepid recommendation for this book.