I truly enjoyed Mary McCarthy's memoir, which is highly episodic and a bit repetitive. It details her experiences of growing up in Minneapolis and Seattle during the post-World War I era, being both Catholic and having a complex financial situation that ranged from rich to poor.

My own background and family are of an age that allows me to relate to the arcane rituals of Catholic and Wasp families from nearly a hundred years ago. McCarthy is an excellent writer, and her clear descriptive prose vividly brings her family members to life. Even as she confesses that these accounts may only be on the border of truth and fidelity, they still have a powerful impact.

Reading McCarthy's memoir made me think of my mother. She never had the opportunities to break free from her poor Catholic upbringing, and as a result, she carried a significant chip on her shoulder. It's interesting to note that some people are able to escape their childhoods, while others are not. This memoir serves as a reminder of the complex and lasting effects that our early experiences can have on us.

Maybe I read this book too late. It was long after Mary McCarthy was writing, publicly arguing with Lillian Hellman, and taking courageous, and to some, outrageous, social and political stands. At any rate, I might not have finished this book had it not been Mary McCarthy’s memoirs.

How can one’s own memoirs sound like reportage?

Yes, she recounted her terribly tough childhood. Her grandparents on both sides were affluent but not extravagant, at least not when it came to spending on others. Her life changed when she lost her parents in the 1918 flu epidemic at the age of six, along with her three younger brothers. They lived with their great aunt and her sadistic husband in Minneapolis until she was eleven, suffering horrible punishments and starvation at times.

Her McCarthy grandmother, who lived nearby in relative splendor, would invite the children occasionally but ignored their treatment. The great aunt and her husband were paid well to be guardians but made a profit while the children suffered. The facts are there, but the emotion is lacking. However, her wit is intact. She describes her grandmother’s sporadic gift giving.

I don’t want to repeat all of her biography. Just enough to show my puzzlement at the emotional flatness of her telling. She was finally rescued by her maternal grandfather and taken to Seattle. Her life improved, but her upbringing was still strange in some ways. She writes about her lack of social life and how she blamed herself.

One summer in high school, a friend invited her to Montana. She had a miserable time due to the rough ways of the cowpokes. This is the only description of setting we get, even though she lived in a beautiful city and made trips to Lake Crescent.

She describes returning to her grandmother’s bedside when she was dying. There were no emotional moments as her grandmother was senile.

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by! – W.B. Yeats

P.S. I should add that McCarthy wrote her memoirs as magazine articles over time. She doesn’t claim perfect recall and includes commentary on where it might not be perfect or where she made changes for artistic license.

Mary McCarthy's autobiographical collection of essays, which originally graced the pages of "The New Yorker" and "Harper's Bazaar" between 1946 and 1955, is a captivating read. In the book, she not only penned comments on her essays but also delved into the perennial question of the veracity of memory. This was of great interest to me as I am currently engaged in writing my own memoir.

The McCarthy children, including Mary's three brothers, endured a tragic loss when their parents succumbed to the flu epidemic of 1918. This followed an ill-advised train journey from Seattle to Minneapolis during the worst weeks of the epidemic. One can't help but wonder how different our literary landscape would be if young, free-spirited parents refrained from subjecting their children to such foolish or desperate adventures.

The author serves as an inspiring example of how a highly intelligent individual can overcome adversity and carve out a life for herself, albeit with emotional scars. Her family was a diverse mix of devout Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and the occasional atheist. She attended a variety of schools, including public, convent, and boarding schools.

After a difficult stint with stingy Minneapolis relatives, where the children were nearly starved to death, Mary returned to Seattle and lived with her maternal grandparents. There, she experienced over-protection and a muddled array of religious beliefs. She evolved into a rebellious, promiscuous feminist before finally settling down into marriage and motherhood, all while never sacrificing her intellectual pursuits.

After reading just two of her novels and this memoir, she has firmly established herself as one of my heroines, ranking on par with Joni Mitchell. Her story is one of resilience, growth, and unwavering intellectual curiosity.

While I truly appreciate the unique conceit that lies behind this book, and I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the non-italicized sections. They presented a certain charm and authenticity that kept me engaged. However, the italicized sections, where she attempts to explain away the rest of the book, rather bothered me.

It felt as if she was trying to justify or rationalize something, and it had the unintended consequence of making me question her credibility. As a whole, this experience made me somewhat distrust her when I was reading the next section of the memoir.

If I could give this book a rating of 2 1/2 stars, I probably would. But today, I'm feeling rather generous, so I decided to give it three stars. After all, there were still aspects of the book that I found enjoyable and thought-provoking.

Gadzooks! McCarthy was truly erudite.

As I was reading this, I came across a plethora of fascinating words. For instance, "entrained" which means to board a train or become part of a process. "Importuning" refers to persistently asking or begging. "Evinced" means to show or demonstrate clearly. Then there's "sinecure", a job that requires little or no work but still pays well.

"Grandiloquent" describes someone who uses overly pompous or fancy language. "Obduracy" is the quality of being stubborn or unyielding. "Quince" is a fruit, and "cupidity" means excessive greed for wealth or material things.

"Lackadaisically" means doing something in a lazy or half-hearted way. "Accrued" means to accumulate or build up over time. "Alacrity" is the state of being cheerful and eager. "Paucity" refers to a scarcity or lack of something.

"Badinage" is light-hearted joking or banter, and "soughing" is the soft, whispering sound made by the wind. The list of these wonderful words just goes on and on, enriching my vocabulary and adding depth to my understanding of the text.

Peter Tonguette in National Review recommended this memoir over against McCarthy's novels. He argues that McCarthy's novels do not transcend her own time.

Interestingly, I read this shortly after finishing a Dawn Powell novel. McCarthy is sort of like a junior-varsity version of Powell.

Yet I'm glad I read the recommended memoir, even if I never open the novels. McCarthy had a quite varied childhood.

Orphaned by the flu, she ended up living with an abusive uncle and aunt in Minnesota for a while. Then she was moved to parochial boarding schools near Seattle.

Her thoughts on the awful aspects of this upbringing are worthwhile, as well as her description of losing her Catholic faith.

One interesting feature of this volume is that it comprises several articles she wrote for various publications.

When she joined the articles for this volume, she added a postscript to each chapter/article. She admitted what was entirely accurate and what was literary license, discussed further memories of the events, and interacted with some reader feedback.

I wish everyone was so honest about his or her memoirs!

McCarthy offers us glimpses into a childhood that was deeply scarred by the tragic and catastrophic death of her parents during the influenza epidemic of the last century. She was, I believe, only five or six years old at that time, and she had three younger brothers. The situation is filled with a Dickensian kind of cruelty, yet there is also humor and an astonishingly perceptive understanding of character and human behavior, all presented in McCarthy's beautiful and engaging prose. It always surprises me that this book is not more frequently discussed as a precursor to the memoir movement that has emerged over the past twenty-five years. In between each section, McCarthy includes segments where she delves into the nature of truth and memory in the most captivating way. I highly recommend this book.

Being required literature wasn't terrible, but it had 0.0 structure and I didn't even understand half of it

I discovered that the structure of this book, which consists of individual essays followed by an author's note offering back story and explanation for each essay, was rather unappealing to me.

I did like the explanations; in fact, sometimes I preferred them to the essays themselves. However, I didn't truly enjoy the experience of reading them one after another. It seemed as if something of the art of the essay had been sacrificed in this format.

Beyond that, the essays were generally interesting. Nevertheless, I found a couple of them, such as the one about names and the one about a particular teacher in the seminary McCarthy attended, to be somewhat tiresome.

The overall reading experience was a bit of a mixed bag, with the structure detracting from the enjoyment of the essays to some extent, but still having enough interesting content to keep me engaged.

The essays that compose Memories of a Catholic Girlhood do not possess a particularly remarkable quality, notwithstanding being penned in McCarthy's wonderful, intelligent, and astute prose.

The earlier vignettes, which detail the loss of her parents to the 1918 flu pandemic and her dreadful life in Minneapolis under the guardianship of a clumsy aunt and uncle, are captivating. However, once McCarthy relocates back to the protected, quiet, and rarefied care of her grandparents in Seattle, her essays, in turn, become less engaging and animated.

What renders this collection fascinating is not the essays themselves but the analysis that trails each one. Each essay was crafted for a magazine, and McCarthy candidly dissects her own memory subsequent to sharing the original text, scrutinizing what she believes she fabricated and the reasons therefor, and where she is unable to ascertain what is truth and what is fiction. As an insight into the process of creating prose and the fine line between fact and fantasy, the analyses are both compelling and instructional. I have the impression that I gleaned more about McCarthy from her dissection of her own writing than from the essays themselves.

"Things" by Mary McCarthy

In general, Mary McCarthy's work titled "Things" delves into various aspects of life and human nature. It may explore the significance and meaning we attach to the objects and possessions that surround us. McCarthy might examine how these things can shape our identities, influence our emotions, and even define our social status.

Perhaps she shows how we often accumulate things without truly considering their value or the impact they have on our lives. The story could also touch upon the idea of nostalgia and how certain things can evoke memories and feelings from the past.

Overall, "Things" by Mary McCarthy seems to be a thought-provoking piece that encourages readers to reflect on their own relationship with the material world and the role that things play in our lives. It makes us question what is truly important and what we might be overlooking in our pursuit of more things.

I savored every single page of this exquisitely written memoir. It was truly a literary gem that held my attention from the very beginning to the end. The author's words seemed to dance on the page, painting vivid pictures and evoking a wide range of emotions within me.

Now I fully understand why Mary Karr is always raving about it. This memoir has a certain charm and authenticity that is hard to come by. It offers a unique perspective on life, filled with personal anecdotes and profound insights.

As I turned each page, I felt as if I was walking in the author's shoes, experiencing their joys and sorrows. It was a deeply immersive and engaging reading experience that I will not soon forget. I would highly recommend this memoir to anyone who loves a good story and appreciates beautiful writing.