Writing Dangerously | Writing Dangerously

At a glance:

Author: Carol Brightman
First Published: 1992
Type of Work: Literary biography
Time of Work: 1912-1989
Setting: Seattle; Minneapolis; Poughkeepsie, New York; Stamford, Connecticut; Wellfleet, Massachusetts; Truro, Massachusetts; Paris; Capri; Venice; Florence; Warsaw; Hanoi; and Castine, Maine
Principal Characters: Mary McCarthy, Roy McCarthy, Therese McCarthy, Harold Preston, August Morganstern Preston, Kevin McCarthy, Harold Johnsrud, Philip Rahv, Edmund Wilson, Bowden Broadwater, James West, Bernard Berenson, Elizabeth Hardwick, Hannah Arendt, Lillian Hellman
Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
Subjects: Intellectuals, Politics, Abused persons, Literature, Writing, Novelists, Criticism, Gossip
Locales: Paris, France, Massachusetts, Seattle, WA, Venice, Italy, Florence, Italy, Minneapolis, MN, Maine, Warsaw, Poland, Capri, Italy, Poughkeepsie, NY, Stamford, CT, Hanoi, Vietnam

Mary McCarthy is best known for her astringent critical writing and her best-selling novel The Group (1963). She often reviewed films and plays and was notorious for her demolition jobs. In private life, she had an equally sharp tongue that made her a fearsome presence in the New York literary scene. She was also a much admired debunker of the fashionable and facile products of American culture. It is a tribute to Carol Brightman’s biography—winner of the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography/Autobiography—that she maintains sympathy for her subject without...

Writing Dangerously | Writing Dangerously

At a glance:

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