Mary McCarthy's Collected Memoirs: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, How I Grew, and Intellectual Memoirs (88 page)

As
Partisan Review
editor,
23–24
,
66–67
,
74–76
,
91–92
,
119

Pins and Needles
,
62

Popular Front,
2

Porter, John,
55

death of,
39
,
42–43

McCarthy’s abandonment of,
43–45
,
48
,
51–52

McCarthy’s relationship with,
1–3
,
15
,
35–45
,
116

parents of,
36–37
,
42
,
43

POUM,
61
,
85
,
121

PR. See Partisan Review

Preston, Harold,
44
,
51
,
69
,
87–88
,
101–2
,
114
,
126

Prokosch, Frederick,
72

Proust, Marcel,
96

Puritanism, in
New Masses
,
55–56

Pyatakov, Grigory L.,
59
,
85

Radek, Karl B.,
59
,
85

Rahv, Naomi,
66

Rahv, Philip,
96
,
122
,
123

background and youth of,
65
,
78–80
,
81–82

McCarthy’s abandonment of,
97–99
,
102–10
,
114

McCarthy’s affair with,
62
,
63
,
65–88
,
91
,
94
,
95–97
,
118

as
Partisan Review
editor,
23–24
,
66–67
,
71
,
74–76
,
91–92
,
93
,
118
,
119

personality of,
80
,
95
,
96

Rand, Christopher,
14–15
,
20
,
48

Rand, Maddie Aldrich,
14–15
,
20
,
48
,
119

Ransom, John Crowe,
24

Realism,
64
,
84

Red Army,
85
,
86

Retour de l’U.R.S.S.
(Gide),
75

Revolution Betrayed, The
(Trotsky),
92

Rodman, Eunice.
See
Clark, Eunice

Rodman, Nancy.
See
Macdonald, Nancy

Rodman, Selden,
16–17
,
19–20
,
22
,
27
,
63

“Rogue’s Gallery” (McCarthy),
11

Rome, Harold (“Hecky”),
62

Roosevelt, Franklin D.,
34
,
66
,
84

Rosenberg, Harold,
84
,
104
,
123

Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel,
23

Rosenfeld, Paul,
90

Rousuck, Emmanuel J. (“Mannie”),
11
,
18
,
51
,
52
,
106
,
118

Rubin, Jay,
17

Rumsey, David and Julia,
20

Sandison, Helen (“Miss Sandison”),
11
,
52–57
,
71
,
90
,
114
,
118
,
120
,
122
,
124

Sandison, Lois.
See
Howland, Lois Sandison

Saturday Review of Literature, The
,
29

Savoy Ballroom (Harlem),
15
,
27

Schlesinger, Arthur,
71

Schrifte, Evelyn,
49

Schwartz, Delmore,
76
,
104
,
122

Scottsboro Boys,
18

Second Congress of the League of American Writers,
72
,
85
,
122

Seven Who Fled
(Prokosch),
72

Sheean, Vincent,
28

Sheridan, Margaret,
115

Sherman, Stuart,
23

Shriver, Myers,
2
,
93
,
115

Socialism,
2
,
6
,
26
,
33
,
65
,
67
,
69
,
72

Solow, Herbert,
74
,
84
,
100

So Red the Rose
(Young),
28

Spanish Civil War,
35
,
61
,
72–73
,
85
,
121

Spenser, Edmund,
56

Stalin, Joseph,
86
,
116
.
See also
GPU; Moscow Trials

Stalinism,
10
,
15
,
23
,
42
,
57–58
,
60–61
,
64
,
71
,
72–73
,
85–86
,
114
,
123

Stein, Gertrude,
25–26

Steinbeck, John,
28
,
64

Sternberg, Harry,
13
,
118

Stewart, Donald Ogden,
73
,
121–22

Stolberg, Ben,
30–31
,
33–35
,
94

Strachey, John,
17–18
,
82
,
122

Strasberg, Lee,
5
,
116–17

Strauss, Harold,
64

Summer Will Show
(Warner),
28

Sun Also Rises, The
(Hemingway),
16

Swan, Mrs. Joseph,
81
,
108–9

Swan, Nathalie,
12
,
20
,
44
,
72
,
74
,
83–84
,
118

Tate, Allen,
24

Tender Is the Night
(Fitzgerald),
17

Theater Union,
3
,
4
,
5
,
18

Time
,
7

Travels in Two Democracies
(Wilson),
90

Trees (Wilson’s home),
96–97
,
98
,
99
,
100
,
106
,
109
,
113
,
125

Tresca, Carlo,
97
,
125

Trilling, Diana,
73–74

Triple Thinkers, The
(Wilson),
124

Trotsky, Leon,
41
,
57–58
,
69
,
72
,
74
,
84
,
90
,
92

Trotskyism,
4
,
26
,
61
,
67
,
71
,
73–74
,
84
,
87
,
103
,
114
.
See also
Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky

Troy, William,
76
,
103
,
122

Tukhachevsky, M. N.,
85–86

Ulysses
(Joyce),
25

“University” (Johnsrud),
25

Valéry, Paul,
84

Van Doren, Irita,
10–11

Variety
,
6

Vassar College,
15
,
99

McCarthy’s attendance at,
1
,
8
,
28
,
35
,
52
,
71
,
87
,
90
,
103
,
117
,
118
,
120
,
124

McCarthy’s friends and enemies from,
5
,
74
,
116
,
118
,
119
,
122

Villard, Oswald Garrison,
30
,
120

Waiting for Lefty (Odets),
4
,
5

Waldorf strike,
16–17

Walker, Adelaide,
4
,
84

Walker, Charles,
4

Warner, Sylvia Townsend,
28

Waste Land, The
(Eliot),
77

Weatherwax, Clara,
28

Webb, Sidney and Beatrice,
14

Webster Hall dances,
3
,
15
,
61

Welty, Eudora,
64

Weston (Porter’s collaborator),
37–38
,
40–41

Williams, Tony,
15–16

Willkie, Wendell,
50

Wilson, Edmund (“Bunny”)

influence of, on McCarthy’s writing,
103–4

McCarthy leaves,
54–55

McCarthy’s marriage to,
109–14
,
116
,
125

McCarthy’s relationship with,
88–114
,
124
,
125
,
126

As
New Republic
editor,
6
,
10
,
117

political views of,
59
,
121

relations of, with women,
100
,
103
,
111–12
,
123

Wilson, Mrs. (Edmund’s mother),
105–6
,
109–12

Wilson, Reuel,
18
,
54
,
105–6

Wilson, Rosalind,
111

Winchell, Walter,
5

Wine and Food Society,
59–60

Winterset
(Anderson),
1
,
22
,
35

Wolfson, Martin,
3

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom,
36

Woollcott, Alexander,
16
,
119

World Series,
49–50

WPA,
66
,
105

Writers’ Congress,
72
,
85
,
122

Writers’ Project,
66
,
76
,
105

Yale University,
34–35
,
99

Young, Art,
57

Young, Stark,
28

Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, The
(Farrell),
22

Zinoviev, G. Y.,
26
,
35
,
85

Zugsmith, Leane,
61

A Biography of Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) was an American critic, public intellectual, and author of more than two dozen books, including the 1963
New York Times
bestseller
The Group
.

McCarthy was born on June 21, 1912, in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and Therese (“Tess”) Preston McCarthy. McCarthy and her three younger brothers, Kevin, Preston, and Sheridan, were suddenly orphaned in 1918. While the family was en route from Seattle to a new home in Minneapolis, both parents died of influenza within a day of one another.

After being shuttled between relatives, the children were finally sent to live with a great-aunt, Margaret Sheridan McCarthy, and her husband, Myers Shriver. The Shrivers proved to be cruel and often sadistic adoptive parents. Six years later, Harold Preston, the children’s maternal grandfather and an attorney, intervened. The children were split up, and Mary went to live with her grandparents in their affluent Seattle home. McCarthy reflects on her turbulent youth, Catholic upbringing, and subsequent loss of faith in
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
(1957) and
How I Grew
(1987).

A week after graduating from Vassar in 1933, McCarthy moved to New York City and married Harold Johnsrud, an aspiring playwright. They divorced three years later, but many aspects of their relationship would resurface in the unhappy marriage of Kay Strong and Harald Petersen in
The Group
. In the late 1930s, McCarthy became a member of the
Partisan Review
circle and worked actively as a 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
.