On the Contrary: Articles of Belief, 1946-1961

by Mary McCarthy

Overview

Strikingly relevant and shrewdly observed, Mary McCarthy's On the Contrary collects articles, talks, reviews, travel notes, a short story, and a personal reminiscence by the legendary writer and contrarian. Included is her review of Hannah Arendt's seminal book, The Human Condition, a bitingly funny take on Simone de Beauvoir's account of her visit to the United States in 1947, a candid essay addressing her experience with communism, and her no-holds-barred review of the Kinsey Report. McCarthy brings her deeply informed literary insights, provocative political arguments, and prescient cultural investigations to bear on everything from fiction to fashion, religion, sex, and politics. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781735121239
Publisher:	Warbler Classics
Publication date:	06/10/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) was an American critic, public intellectual, and author of more than two dozen books, including her New York Times bestseller, The Group. After graduating from Vassar in 1933 McCarthy moved to New York City and garnered attention as a cutting theater and book critic, contributing to a wide range of publications, such as the Nation, the New Republic, Harper's Magazine, and the New York Review of Books. In the early 1930s she moved in "fellow-traveling" communist circles, but by the latter half of the decade she repudiated Soviet-style communism. She served on the editorial staff of the Partisan Review from 1937 to 1948. Her milieu included political scientist and philosopher Hannah Arendt with whom she developed a lifelong friendship. During the 1940s and 1950s she was a critic of both McCarthyism and communism. She maintained her commitment to liberal critiques of culture and power to the end of her life, opposing the Vietnam War in the 1960s and covering the Watergate scandal hearings in the 1970s. For her work, McCarthy won a number of awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Edward MacDowell Medal, and the National Medal for Literature. She died on October 25, 1989. The second volume of her autobiography was published posthumously in 1992 as Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936-1938. Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949-1975 was published in 1995.

Table of Contents

Contents

I. POLITICS AND THE SOCIAL SCENE

A Letter to the Editor of Politics

America the Beautiful The Humanist in the Bathtub

Gandhi

Mlle. Gulliver en Amérique

No News, or, What Killed the Dog

The Contagion of Ideas

Artists in Uniform

My Confession

Letter from Portugal

Mister Rodriguez of Lisbon

Naming NamesThe Arthur Miller Case

The Vita Activa

II. WOMAN

Tyranny of the Orgasm

Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue

The Vassar Girl

III. LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

Recalled to Life, or, Charles Dickens at the Bar

Settling the Colonel's Hash

An Academy of Risk

The Fact in Fiction

Characters in Fiction

The American Realist Playwrights

Mary McCarthy