Customer Reviews

Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

It took Frances Kiernan nine years to research and write this biography of America's first lady of letters. It was well worth the wait. To see McCarthy "plain" -- simple, yet with sharp clarity -- Kiernan pieced together her subject's life, from years spent in Seattle, New York, Maine, Italy and Paris, by interviewing more than 200 people who knew her. What emerges is an intellectual,, affectionate yet judgmentally balanced portrait of a woman, mother, stepmother, wife, ex-wife, lover and friend ... as well as an important literary voice. With Kiernan on the scene, make that two important voices.

If Mary McCarthy's only accomplishment was to expose Lillian Hellman as a duplicitous Stalinist trollope, hers would still be a life worth celebrating. She was involved with, or had something to say about every major social and political issue of mid-century. Her friendships were numerous and varied. She was married four times (once to literary titan Edmund Wilson) and had many tempestuous affairs. It's disappointing, therefore, that this biography is such a disjointed and discursive hodge podge of gossip, hearsay, and innuendo. Not that those are bad things, but if that's all the attention McCarthy deserves why not just let Kitty Kelly do the book? While the author may have had a successful career as fiction editor of The New Yorker while it was being transformed into a middlebrow women's magazine, she lacks the skills necessary compose a biography of a subject as protean as Mary McCarthy.

I had been a fan of Mary McCarthy since high school and therefore was excited when this book came out. I ordered it as soon as it was available but still have not finished it. The text is jumpy and jerky and definitely not presented in an organized, smooth manner. Biographical information is interesting but then is supported by repetitive gossip or other information that interupts one's train of thought. I would have not purchased this book if I had previewed it first. I believe that I wasted my money on this one.

This book is tedious and nearly impossible to read. When one gets into the narrative, wham! Quotes and comments are jerked onto the page and the reader gets lost again. It's a shame that such a marvelous topic should be presented so poorly. Give this one a miss.

Mary McCarthy led a fascinating life, and this very long biography makes you feel like you know the whole story. Although it is overly long (and I'm a slow reader), it's made up of quotations and excerpts from the many many famous people who knew her, along with some of her own writings. And the people she knew! We hear direct from no lesser persons than Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, Gore Vidal, Renata Adler, Susan Sontag, Clement Greenberg, Peggy Guggenheim, Edmund Wilson (who was also her second husband)! Alfred Kazin, Pauline Kael. The who's who list of Mary's illustrious friends is delicious; we read these people's up-close impressions of Mary at all the different stages of her life, and in the end, her death.

Kiernan herself is an extremely good writer: sympathetic, thoughtful, careful, never too wordy. She probably couldn't bring herself to cut any of this marvelous gossip and firsthand impression; and there were so many interesting stages of McCarthy's life that it would have been hard to leave anything out.

Mary McCarthy was a dynamo: a prolific writer, a teacher, a (for a time) single mother; married four times, with the last one a happy marriage. She put all of herself into her work, including managing the literary estate of her close friend Hannah Arendt. Through all this, she was a consummate entertainer, furnishing and decorating house after beautiful house, and apartments from Paris to New York to New England, and putting on grand and elegant dinner parties featuring her own first-rate cooking. It was as if her deprived childhood--McCarthy was orphaned at an early age and, during her formative years, raised by sadistic, loveless relatives--created in her a craving for the good life: abundant food, warm company, gracious living. Her many friends and acquaintances corroborate this impression; they all marveled at her energy, friendliness, and intellect, although there were some who were hurt by her barbed wit, and a few who didn't admire her so much.

The book is a delight to read, a long, intelligent gossipfest and a vivid portrait of a most interesting writer and human being with a fierce appetite for life.

I am very surprised this book is not more highly reviewed here. I find it to be an extremely well written and engaging biography. The author, Frances Kiernan, grabbed me on the very first page and never let go. Aside from thoroughly appreciating Ms. McCarthy's novel, The Group, the only thing I knew about her was her well publicized feud with Lillian Hellman. I've read most of Ms. Hellman's work, and, in a way, was looking for a view from the other side.

I love how the arc of Mary McCarthy's life is presented through other people's viewpoints and also through excerpts of her own writing and the other writing of others.

This book gives a very well rounded look at Mary McCarthy: her personal life, her writing and her relationships. High recommended for people who especially enjoy biting their teeth into a big fat and engrossing biography. Highly recommended.

My v smart husband notes, "the world will always try to diminish your Best Idea". (Start taking notes in your own life. Bet you'll see the wisdom in the line.) Things that challenge the "typical" don't always go down so easily -but in the end, they're often the most satisfying.

"Seeing Mary Plain" is criticized by readers, here on Amazon, for a style that allows others to "do the talking". Exactly. What a good idea. With Kiernan deftly choosing and threading together their quotes, she's created a full and rich picture of Mary McCarthy and the times of her life, like the most skillful documentary artist.

Like a documentary, I found myself listening to the contrast and truth of the comments she'd harvested. Never has a biography been more alive to me.

McCarthy was a worthy subject, no doubt, but I'd suggest that the form of the book, itself, has its own brilliance. The work is colorful, smart, witty, sophisticated, fresh and original. Most of all, this feels like a real life -- told with the kind of truth one can only get out of the mouths of conflicting, biased, loving, generous, jealous, spiteful, bemused and conflicted witnesses. The axes grind and you feel the sparks of McCarthy's life.

I can't wait for Frances to write another book in this v same style and I hope she influences others to do the same.

Those who have urged her to be more traditional and produce biographies cut from the same old cloth, know that she's capable of doing a near perfect job in that old suit; see "The Last Mrs. Astor" as proof. But
for readers who might enjoy the magic of pushing an art-form while writing about an artist - this is a wonderful place to land. Brava, Mrs. Kiernan. Be brave.