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{{short description|American novelist and political activist (1912–1989)}}
{{other people||Mary McCarthy (disambiguation)}}
{{Use American English|date=June 2026}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2022}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Mary McCarthy
| birth_name = Mary Therese McCarthy
| image = Mary Therese McCarthy NYWTS.jpg
| image_size =
| caption = McCarthy in 1963
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1912|6|21}}
| birth_place = [[Seattle]], Washington, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1989|10|25|1912|6|21}}
| death_place = New York City, U.S.
| resting_place =
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| residence =
| other_names =
| known_for =
| education = [[Vassar College]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])
| employer =
| occupation = {{hlist|[[Novelist]]|critic|political activist}}
| title =
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| awards = [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]] (1960) [[Edward MacDowell Medal]] (1984) [[National Medal for Literature]] (1984)
| spouses = {{marriage|Harald Johnsrud|1933|1936|end=divorce}} {{marriage|[[Edmund Wilson]]|1938|1946|end=divorce}} {{marriage|Bowden Broadwater|1946}} {{marriage|James West|1961}}
| children = 1
| partner =
| parents =
| relatives = [[Kevin McCarthy (actor)|Kevin McCarthy]] (brother)
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}}
'''Mary Therese McCarthy''' (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) was an American novelist, critic and political activist, best known for her novel [[The Group (novel)|''The Group'']], her marriage to critic [[Edmund Wilson]], her intimate friendship with her colleague [[Hannah Arendt]] and her storied feud with playwright [[Lillian Hellman]].<ref name=":0" /> McCarthy was the winner of the Horizon Prize in 1949<ref>The Montgomery Fellows Program. [http://montgomery.dartmouth.edu/mary-mccarthy "Mary McCarthy."] Dartmouth College, 2017. Retrieved October 11, 2017.</ref> and was awarded two [[Guggenheim Fellowships]], in 1949 and 1959.<ref>{{cite web|title=Mary McCarthy|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/mary-mccarthy/|website=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation}}</ref> She was a member of the [[National Institute of Arts and Letters]]<ref>{{cite web|title=Academy Members|url=http://artsandletters.org/academy-members/|website=American Academy of Arts and Letters}}</ref> and the [[American Academy in Rome]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Fellows – Affiliated Fellows – Residents 1970–1989|url=http://www.aarome.org/fellows-affiliated-fellows-residents-1970-1989|website=American Academy in Rome|access-date=January 16, 2017|archive-date=January 18, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170118034713/http://www.aarome.org/fellows-affiliated-fellows-residents-1970-1989|url-status=dead}}</ref> In 1973, she delivered the [[Huizinga Lecture]] in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title ''Can There Be a Gothic Literature?'' The same year she was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]].<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterM.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=July 25, 2014}}</ref> She won the [[National Medal for Literature]]<ref>{{cite news|title=Mary McCarthy Wins Medal for Literature|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/10/arts/mary-mccarthy-wins-medal-for-literature.html|work=The New York Times|date=April 10, 1984}}</ref> and the [[Edward MacDowell Medal]] in 1984.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Freedman|first1=Samuel G.|title=MCCARTHY IS RECIPIENT OF MACDOWELL MEDAL|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/27/books/mccarthy-is-recipient-of-macdowell-medal.html|work=The New York Times|date=August 27, 1984}}</ref> McCarthy held honorary degrees from [[Bard College|Bard]], [[Bowdoin College|Bowdoin]], [[Colby College|Colby]], [[Smith College]], [[Syracuse University]], the [[University of Maine at Orono]], the [[University of Aberdeen]], and the [[University of Hull]].<ref>[https://www.vassar.edu/specialcollections/exhibit-highlights/2001-2005/marymccarthy/mmbio.html Mary McCarthy: A Biographical Sketch at Vassar College Library]</ref>

== Early life and education ==
Born on June 21, 1912 in [[Seattle]], Washington to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife Martha Therese ({{Nee|Preston}}), McCarthy and her three brothers were orphaned when both their parents died in the [[1918 flu pandemic|flu epidemic of 1918]]. She and her brothers, [[Kevin McCarthy (actor)|Kevin]], Preston and Sheridan, were raised in very unhappy circumstances by her father's [[Irish Catholic]] parents in [[Minneapolis|Minneapolis, Minnesota]], and under the direct care of an uncle and aunt, whom she remembered for harsh treatment and abuse.<ref>{{cite book|first=Frances|last= Kiernan|title=Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy|year=2000|publisher=W.W. Norton|isbn=0-393-32307-2|pages=29–43}}</ref>

When the situation became intolerable, McCarthy was taken in by her maternal grandparents in Seattle. Her maternal grandmother, Augusta Morganstern, was Jewish, and her maternal grandfather, Harold Preston, a prominent attorney and co-founder of the law firm [[Preston Gates & Ellis]], was [[Presbyterian]]. Her brothers were sent to boarding school.

McCarthy credited her grandfather, who helped draft one of the nation's first [[Workmen's Compensation]] Acts, with helping form her liberal views. McCarthy explores the complex events of her early life in Minneapolis and her coming-of-age in Seattle in her memoirs, ''[[Memories of a Catholic Girlhood]]'' and ''[[How I Grew]]''. Her younger brother, [[Kevin McCarthy (actor)|Kevin McCarthy]], became an actor and starred in motion pictures ''[[Death of a Salesman (1951 film)|Death of a Salesman]]'' (1951) and ''[[Invasion of the Body Snatchers]]'' (1956).

Under the guardianship of the Prestons, McCarthy studied at the [[Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart|Convent of the Sacred Heart - Forest Ridge]] in Seattle and [[Annie Wright Seminary]] in [[Tacoma, Washington|Tacoma]]. She attended [[Vassar College]], in [[Poughkeepsie (town), New York|Poughkeepsie, New York]], where she graduated in 1933 with an [[Bachelor of Arts]] ''[[cum laude]]'' and was elected to [[Phi Beta Kappa]].

== Career and public life ==
McCarthy's [[debut novel]], ''[[The Company She Keeps (novel)|The Company She Keeps]],'' received critical acclaim as a ''[[succès de scandale]]'', depicting the social milieu of [[New York intellectuals]] of the late 1930s with unreserved frankness. It includes her celebrated short story "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt" which ''[[Partisan Review]]'' published in 1941. It recounts the sexual encounter of a young [[bohemianism|bohemian]] intellectual woman and a middle-aged businessman encountered in the club car of a train. Although she finds him fat and grey, she is intrigued by his elegant [[Brooks Brothers]] shirts and his knowledge of literary figures. The story depicts—shockingly for the literary fiction of the era—not only the act of a woman choosing to engage in [[casual sex]] with a complete stranger but, more importantly, how that act is rooted in the complexity of her character.<ref name="New Yorker">{{Cite magazine |last=Kiernan |first=Frances |title=Mary McCarthy, Edmund Wilson, and the Short Story That Ruined a Marriage |magazine=The New Yorker |url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mary-mccarthy-edmund-wilson-and-the-short-story-that-ruined-a-marriage |language=en-us}}</ref>

After building a reputation as a [[satirist]] and critic, McCarthy enjoyed popular success when the 1963 edition of her novel ''[[The Group (novel)|The Group]]'' remained on the [[New York Times Best Seller list|''New York Times'' Best Seller list]] for almost two years. Her work is noted for its precise prose and its complex mixture of autobiography and fiction.

[[Randall Jarrell]]'s 1954 novel ''[[Pictures from an Institution]]'' is said{{by whom|date=July 2022}} to be about McCarthy's year teaching at [[Sarah Lawrence]].

McCarthy's feud with fellow writer [[Lillian Hellman]] formed the basis for the play ''[[Imaginary Friends (play)|Imaginary Friends]]'' by [[Nora Ephron]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hollywoodinvestigator.com/2002/minds.htm |title=Ben Pleasants's Contentious Minds: The Mary McCarthy / Lillian Hellman Affair |publisher=Hollywoodinvestigator.com |access-date=2010-11-09}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0920/p19s01-almp.html| title=When Mary Met Lillian| work=The Christian Science Monitor| author= Saidi| date= September 20, 2002 |first = Janet}}</ref> Their feud began in the late 1930s over ideological differences, and was rooted in McCarthy's belief in the innocence of the defendants in the [[Moscow Trials]] during the [[Great Purge]] and Hellman's support for Soviet Premier [[Joseph Stalin]]. McCarthy further provoked Hellman in 1979, when she said on ''[[The Dick Cavett Show]]'': "every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." Hellman responded with a $2.5 million [[lawsuit]] against McCarthy for alleged [[libel]]. Observers of the trial noted the irony of Hellman's defamation suit was that it brought significant scrutiny. It resulted in a serious decline of Hellman's reputation, as McCarthy and her supporters worked to ''prove'' that Hellman had lied. The case was dropped shortly after Hellman died in 1984.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/node/268 |title=Two Invented Lives |work=New Politics|issue=23 |date=Summer 1997 | first=Phyllis|last= Jacobson|access-date=2010-11-09}}</ref>

Although McCarthy broke ranks with some of her ''Partisan Review'' colleagues when they swerved toward conservative politics after [[World War II]], she carried on lifelong friendships with [[Dwight Macdonald]], [[Nicola Chiaromonte]], [[Philip Rahv]], [[F. W. Dupee]] and [[Elizabeth Hardwick (writer)|Elizabeth Hardwick]]. Perhaps most prized of all was her close friendship with [[Hannah Arendt]], with whom she maintained a sizable correspondence widely regarded for its intellectual rigor. After Arendt's passing, McCarthy became Arendt's literary executor, serving from 1976 until her own death in 1989.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Parini|first=Jay|editor1-first=Jay|editor1-last=Parini|editor2-first=Phillip W|editor2-last=Leininger|title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0-19-515653-9|pages=48|doi=10.1093/acref/9780195156539.001.0001|lccn=2002156325|oclc=51289864}}</ref> As executor, McCarthy prepared Arendt's unfinished manuscript ''[[The Life of the Mind]]'' for publication.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Arendt |first1=Hannah |title=The Life of the Mind |date=1977–1978 |publisher=Harcourt, Inc. |isbn=0-15-651992-5 |page=xiii}}</ref> McCarthy taught at [[Bard College]] from 1946 to 1947, and again between 1986 and 1989. She also taught a winter semester in 1948 at [[Sarah Lawrence College]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Mary McCarthy: A Biographical Sketch|url=http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/marymccarthy/mmbio.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140823092453/http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/marymccarthy/mmbio.html|archive-date=August 23, 2014|access-date=June 26, 2014|website=Special Collections: Mary McCarthy – A Biographical Sketch|publisher=Vassar College Libraries}}</ref>

== Ideology ==
{{more citations needed section|date=July 2022}}
McCarthy left the [[Catholic Church]] as a young woman, becoming an [[atheist]].<ref>{{cite news |last=McCarthy |first=Mary |title=Letter to the editor: Flannery O'Connor's works |date=October 2, 1988 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/02/books/l-flannery-o-connor-s-works-684188.html |access-date=May 18, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150525081014/http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/02/books/l-flannery-o-connor-s-works-684188.html |archive-date=May 25, 2015 |url-status=live}}</ref>

In New York, she moved in "[[fellow traveller|fellow-traveling]]" Communist circles early in the 1930s, but by the latter half of the decade she had sided firmly with the [[anti-Stalinist Left]]. She accordingly expressed solidarity with [[Leon Trotsky]] and his followers after the [[witch hunt]] targeting them culminated in the [[Moscow Trials]]. McCarthy also vigorously countered playwrights and authors she considered to be adherents of [[Stalinism]].<ref name="White">{{Cite book |last1=White |first1=Duncan |title=Cold warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War |last2=HarperCollins Publishers |date=2019 |publisher=Custom House |isbn=978-0-06-244981-8 |location=New York |language=English |oclc=1142845156}}</ref>{{RP|113-130}}

=== Opposition to Vietnam War ===
In 1967 and 1968, McCarthy travelled to North and South [[Vietnam]], to report on the war from an anti-war perspective.<ref>{{Cite news |title=2 Novelists Tell of Visit to Hanoi; Mary McCarthy Found Foe Confident of Winning |language=en |work=The New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/04/08/88936296.html?pageNumber=3 |access-date=2023-02-25}}</ref> She documented her observations in two books: ''Vietnam'' and ''Hanoi''.<ref>Mary McCarthy, ''Vietnam'' (1967); Mary McCarthy, ''Hanoii'' (1968).</ref>

Interviewed after her first trip, she declared on British television that there was not a single documented case of the [[Viet Cong]] deliberately killing a South Vietnamese woman or child.<ref>{{cite book | author = Leckie, Robert |title = The Wars of America | publisher = Castle Books | year = 1992}}</ref> She wrote favorably about the Viet Cong.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/marymcc.htm |title=Mary McCarthy |website=Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi) |first=Petri |last=Liukkonen |publisher=[[Kuusankoski]] Public Library |location=Finland |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041209133724/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/marymcc.htm |archive-date=December 9, 2004 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

McCarthy visited North Vietnam in March 1968, only a month after the [[Tet Offensive]] created havoc in South Vietnam. In her book, ''Hanoi,'' McCarthy provides a rare English-language description of life in North Vietnam during the war. McCarthy describes an orderly society, in which everyone pitched in to help with the war effort. North Vietnam received advance warning of most bombing attacks and McCarthy regularly had to take cover from American bombs.<ref>Mary McCarthy, ''Hanoii'' (1968).</ref>

McCarthy's visits to Vietnam were controversial. During her visit to North Vietnam, she met briefly with U.S. Air Force officer [[James Robinson Risner|James Risner]], who was being held as a prisoner of war by North Vietnam. Years later, after his release, Risner attacked McCarthy for her not having recognized that he had been tortured by the North Vietnamese while in custody.<ref>{{Cite journal|url =http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1974/mar/07/on-colonel-risner/ |title = On Colonel Risner|last = McCarthy|first = Mary|date = March 7, 1974|journal = The New York Review of Books|access-date = July 26, 2014|url-access=subscription |volume = 21|issue = 3}}</ref>

== Personal life==
McCarthy married four times. In 1933, she married Harald Johnsrud, an actor and playwright. She and critic [[Philip Rahv]] were lovers. Her best-known spouse was her second husband, writer and critic [[Edmund Wilson]], whom she married in 1938 after leaving Rahv. They had a son, Reuel Wilson. McCarthy and Wilson divorced in 1946. Later that year, she married Bowden Broadwater, who worked for ''[[The New Yorker]]''. They also divorced.

In 1961, McCarthy married career diplomat James R. West.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/17/arts/james-r-west-84-diplomat-married-to-mary-mccarthy.html | work=The New York Times | title=James R. West, 84, Diplomat Married to Mary McCarthy | date=September 17, 1999 | access-date=May 12, 2010}}</ref>

McCarthy died of lung cancer on October 25, 1989, at [[NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital]] in New York City.<ref name=":0">{{cite news |title=Mary McCarthy, 77, Is Dead; Novelist, Memoirist and Critic |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy-obit.html |quote=Mary McCarthy, one of America's pre-eminent women of letters, died of cancer yesterday at [[New York Hospital]]. She was 77 years old and lived in [[Castine, Maine]], and Paris.|newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 29, 1989 |access-date=2008-07-07 }}</ref>

==Film portrayals==
In the 2012 German movie ''[[Hannah Arendt (film)|Hannah Arendt]]'', Mary McCarthy is portrayed by [[Janet McTeer]].

==Selected works==
===Novels===

* ''[[The Company She Keeps (novel)|The Company She Keeps]]'' (Simon & Schuster, 1942)
* ''[[The Oasis (novel)|The Oasis]]'' (Random House, 1949)
* ''[[The Groves of Academe]]'' (Harcourt, Brace, 1952)
* ''[[A Charmed Life]]'' (Harcourt, Brace, 1955)
* ''[[The Group (novel)|The Group]]'' (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963)
* ''Birds of America'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971)
* ''[[Cannibals and Missionaries]]'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979)

===Stories===

* ''Cast a Cold Eye'' (Harcourt, Brace, 1950)
* ''The Hounds of Summer and Other Stories'' (Avon, 1981)

===Memoirs===

* ''[[Memories of a Catholic Girlhood]]'' (Harcourt, Brace, 1957)
* ''How I Grew'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987)
* ''Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936–1938'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992)

===Essays, Criticism, Journalism & Nonfiction===

* ''Sights and Spectacles: 1937–1956'' (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1956)
* ''Venice Observed'' (Bernier/Reynal, 1957)
* ''The Stones of Florence'' (Harcourt, Brace, 1959)
* ''On the Contrary: Articles of Belief, 1946-1961'' (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1961)
* ''Vietnam'' (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967)
* ''Hanoi'' (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968)
* ''The Writing on the Wall and Other Literary Essays'' (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970)
* ''Medina'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972)
* ''The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974)
* ''Ideas and the Novel'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980)
* ''Occasional Prose'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985)
* ''A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays'' (New York Review, 2002)

===Books about McCarthy===
*Sam Reese, ''The Short Story in Midcentury America: Countercultural Form in the Work of Bowles, McCarthy, Welty, and Williams'', (2017), Louisiana State University Press, {{ISBN| 9780807165768}}
*Sabrina Fuchs Abrams, ''Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics, And The Postwar Intellectual'', (2004), Peter Lang Publishing, {{ISBN|0-8204-6807-X}}
*Eve Stwertka (editor), ''Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Mary McCarthy: The Writer and Her Work'', (1996), Greenwood Press, {{ISBN|0-313-29776-2}}
*Carol Brightman (editor), ''Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975'', (1996), Harvest/HBJ, {{ISBN|0-15-600250-7}}
*Carol Brightman, ''Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy And Her World'', (1992), Harvest Books, {{ISBN|0-15-600067-9}}
*Joy Bennet, ''Mary McCarthy; An Annotated Bibliography'', (1992), Garland Press, {{ISBN|0-8240-7028-3}}
*Carol Gelderman, ''Mary McCarthy: A Life'', 1990, St Martins Press, {{ISBN|0-312-00565-2}}
*Doris Grumbach, ''The Company She Kept'', 1967, Coward-McCann, Inc., LoC CCN: 66-26531,
*Alan Ackerman, ''Just Words'', (2011), Yale University Press, {{ISBN|978-0-300-16712-2}}
*Michelle Dean, ''Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion'', (2018), Grove Press, {{ISBN| 978-0802125095}}
*Frances Kiernan, ''Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy'', (2000), W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0-393-03801-7

===Films based on her writing===
* ''[[The Group (film)|The Group]],'' 1966 film directed by [[Sidney Lumet]], based on McCarthy's novel by that name
* ''[[Women & Men: Stories of Seduction]],'' 1990 [[HBO Films]] release of a combination of stories, one of which was based on McCarthy's "The Man In The Brooks Brothers Suit"

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
*{{cite book | last=Wilson | first=Reuel | title=Holding the road : away from Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy | publisher=privately published| publication-place=Charleston, South Carolina | year=2018 | isbn=978-1-7248-6306-5 | oclc=1091357698}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote|Mary McCarthy}}
*{{IMDb name|0565239|Mary McCarthy}}
*{{IBDB name}}
*{{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4618/the-art-of-fiction-no-27-mary-mccarthy| title=Mary McCarthy, The Art of Fiction No. 27| author=Elisabeth Sifton| date=Winter–Spring 1962| journal=The Paris Review | volume=Winter-Spring 1962| issue=27}}
* [https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin#reviews New York Times] Featured Author Page (Book Reviews, Interviews, Sound Clips.)
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3028 Literary Encyclopedia] (in-progress)
* {{Books and Writers |id=marymcc |name=Mary McCarthy}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140823092453/http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/marymccarthy/mmbio.html Brief bio] at Vassar College
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929032834/http://kenspeckle.net/blog/2007/08/26/mary-mccarthys-nyc/ Map of Mary's NYC, 1936–1938] based on ''Intellectual Memoirs''
* {{Find a Grave|7316259}}
{{Mary McCarthy}}
{{New York Intellectuals}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:McCarthy, Mary}}

Mary McCarthy - Revision history

Deleatur yhe: Created page without categories