Occasional Prose by Mary McCarthy

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Occasional Prose by Mary McCarthy. 1985 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, first edition, 341 pages. McCarthy was a prolific critic, memoirist, and novelist, known for her cutting wit and confident takedowns, culminating in a televised interview where she called Lillian Hellman a "dishonest writer," which led to a defamation lawsuit. Her work often skewered the milieu in which she ran, intellectual literary circles, and included thinly disguised characters based on her friends and acquaintances. Her most famous novel The Group, was a bestseller and turned into a film, yet this too alienated some friends. Occasional Prose includes reviews of Tolstoy and Didion and more, plus lectures, and reportage. Condition: Jacket is VG, some foxing to text block and end papers. "The novel, after all, is the literary form dedicated to the representation of our common world, i.e., not merely the common ordinary world but the world we have in common." Show more