Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy [Paperback]

Frances Kiernan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2002

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

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

In an autobiographical short story by McCarthy, a psychiatrist tells the heroine, "Let me suggest to you... that this ordeal of your childhood has been the controlling factor of your life." In 1918, when she was six, McCarthy's parents died in the flu epidemic then sweeping the U.S. With her siblings, she was raised by a loveless aunt and uncle; these interconnected events became the core of her remarkable Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. The brilliant savagery of her best criticism and fiction has its roots in that defining experience, prodigiously recreated by Kiernan, a former fiction editor at the New Yorker. After Vassar and the Depression (both figure in her notorious novel The Group), McCarthy joined what Kiernan calls "the increasingly acrimonious and contentious world of New York intellectuals," writing for the new Partisan Review and sleeping with its editors and writers. She had four marriages (with Edmund Wilson, among others) and many affairs, and, as a diplomat's wife, lived abroad, largely self-exiled from the milieu that fed her mordant satire. Kiernan uses a biographical device of setting off from her narrative blocks of quotation from interviewees so that in many places the book reads like oral history, a technique that sometimes works, but adds hundreds of loosely integrated pages. How McCarthy used real life in her fiction, she once explained, was to "take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake." Kiernan applies the method too generously, overstocking her book with myriad details. Yet it evokes a fascinating portrait of a woman with "great personal glamour" and "ferocious intelligence." 16 pages of photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 848 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (May 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393323072
• ISBN-13: 978-0393323078
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #638,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating portrait of a multifaceted writer, April 10, 2000

By 

Trent Duffy (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy (Hardcover)

Frances Kiernan's biography experiments with form to get at the essence of an exceedingly complicated and complex writer. By combining excerpts from McCarthy's published writers, letters to and from her, and the comments of many people (famous and not) who knew her, the book shows us a woman who is talented but capricious; a loyal friend and a fierce enemy, a sharp intellect and a charming hostess. Ms. Kiernan provides just enough narrative thread to stitch these disparate voices together, and while she clearly admires McCarthy, she is not afraid to criticize her subject. By presenting so many contrasting viewpoints, the book invites us (much like the film Rashomon) to draw our own conclusions. This is a worthy biography and one that should compel the reader back to McCarthy's own stories, novels, and essays.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating story of a great woman, March 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy (Hardcover)

I love Mary McCarthy's writing. Her prose is so knowing, and so smart that it takes my breath away. I didn't know anything about her at all until I read this book. It's a terrific read - McCarthy's life was flamboyant, daring, challenging. She was a feminist in the most modern sense of the word, and a devastatingly attractive woman. I believe her writing deserves to be better known and this biography may be the thing to get her some of that recognition, because the more you read about her, the more you want to see how it comes across in her text. I am dying to get back into my Mary McCarthy books and see how far it was autobiographical. The writer of this book is never prurient but never produces anything that isn't fabulously titillating. A great gift for a literary girlfriend.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars rich, gossipy details, August 19, 2000

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy (Hardcover)

The author takes a back seat and allows us to step into Mary McCarthy's life as if we were one of her circle of friends. Wonderfully detailed with quotes from the major literary lights of our day.