Mary McCarthy’s Book Caused Sensation In U.S.

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30274, 29 October 1963, Page 2

Mary McCarthy’s Book Caused Sensation In U.S.

LOV

SUSAN VAUGHAN]

The extraordinary Mary McCarthy has written another book, a sexy, opinionated and dever novel called “The Group.” It caused a sensation when it was published in America last month, is expected to cause another when it appears in Britain next month.

However, there is more to Miss McCarthy than just being an author. It is probably enough to record the unusal fact that “The Group” took 20 years to write, and to pass on to her other talents—she is a public person, rather too extrovert to confine herself merely to putting down her private thoughts in a private room.

She has to act a bit* she is a kind of female Ernest Hemingway. She has never fought a bull, but she was the first American writer to lecture behind the Iron Curtain after the war.

When she returned to the West she said: “I couldn't break the habit of lowering my voice and looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was eavesdropping.” She moves about the world dropping into conferences, uttering words of wisdom. At least they seem wise at the time. At a writers’ conference In Scotland she said the nation state is dying, something that is rather difficult to accept when you remember that in 50 years the world's nations have jumped from 69 to 113.

She is against industrialisation: “Anyone who is not blind can see the whole planet is being ruined. It's part of the development of industrialisation and now it's absolutely unchained. Atoms for peace will be the final blow.”

She is scathing about fellow American eminences; of fellow author J. D. Salinger she has said: “Terrible from beginning to end. His work

is extremely sentimental, madly narcissistic, with a kind of false euphoria.” Miss McCarthy is the daughter of an Irish-Ameri-can lawyer, and has lived in various parts of the world

(New York, Paris and Florence are her favourite spots; she is at present living in Paris) and has been married four times. Her first husband was an actor, her second the critic Edmund Wilson, her third Bowden Broadwater, a school official in New York, and her fourth and present James West, an American diplomat. She says she has never been conscious of jealousy of her achievements on the part of men “not from my husbands, certainly,” and adds that she “likes being a woman.'* (All Rights Reserved)