Writing dangerously

Mary McCarthy has played a remarkable and hugely controversial role in the intellectual life of our times. More than any other American writer, she has made its core ideas and many of its secrets the subject of her fiction and criticism; yet neither the drama of her own life nor the precise nature of her literary achievement has been seriously considered until now. Nor has McCarthy herself, in her memoirs, told the whole story. In this ground-breaking biography, Carol. Brightman probes both the public and private reaches of McCarthy's career and re-creates the pivotal scenes in her…