Chapter One: Parker
All her men graduates, ever after: Frank Crowninshield, “Crowninshield in the Cubs’ Den,” Vogue, September 15, 1944.
There was no need: “The Wonderful Old Gentleman,” in Collected Stories (Penguin Classics, 2002).
There was no money: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker,” interview with Marion Capron, Paris Review, Summer 1956.
need of money: Ibid.
Guess I have: Photocopies of several notes from Parker’s childhood are available in Marion Meade’s papers at Columbia University.
Edward Bernays: See Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (Picador, 1998).
For women we intend: “In Vanity Fair,” Vanity Fair, March 1914.
I don’t call Mrs. Brown: “Any Porch,” Vanity Fair, September 1915.
plain … not chic: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
brevity is the soul: From a section on Vogue patterns, October 1, 1916, 101. Captions in Vogue were never signed, but the examples used here are those that scholars believe to have been Parker’s.
There is only one thing: “The Younger Generation,” Vogue, June 1, 1916.
So odd a blend: Alexander Woollcott, While Rome Burns (Grosset and Dunlap, 1934), 144.
a horde of wraps and sofa pillows: “Why I Haven’t Married,” Vanity Fair, October 1916 (as Dorothy Rothschild).
infrequent chairs: “Interior Desecration,” Vogue, April 15, 1917 (as Dorothy Rothschild).
a sad one for the groom: “Here Comes the Groom,” Vogue, June 15, 1917.
So there you are: “A Succession of Musical Comedies,” Vanity Fair, April 1918.
dog’s life: “Mortality in the Drama: The Increasing Tendency of Our New Plays to Die in Their Earliest Infancy,” Vanity Fair, July 1918.
costume the show-girls: “The Star-Spangled Drama: Our Summer Entertainments Have Become an Orgy of Scenic Patriotism,” Vanity Fair, August 1918.
bichloride of mercury: “The Dramas That Gloom in the Spring: The Difficulties of Being a Dramatic Critic and a Sunny Little Pollyanna at the Same Time,” Vanity Fair, June 1918.
we behaved extremely badly: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
anti-Semitic remarks by the hotel’s proprietor: See “Inside Stuff,” Variety, April 5, 12, 1923.
I wasn’t there very often: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
Just a bunch of loudmouths: Quoted in Dorothy Herrmann, With Malice Toward All: The Quips, Lives and Loves of Some Celebrated 20th-Century American Wits (Putnam, 1982).
theirs was an attitude of superiority: O. O. McIntyre, “Bits of New York Life,” Atlanta Constitution, October 29, 1924.
Miss Burke: “The Oriental Drama: Our Playwrights Are Looking to the Far-East for Inspiration and Royalties,” Vanity Fair, January 1920.
It was the greatest act of friendship: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
a very young critic named Edmund Wilson: See Edmund Wilson, The Twenties (Douglas and McIntyre, 1984), 32–34.
I did not find them: Ibid., 44–45.
on an equal basis: Ibid., 47–48.
Her girlish ways: “The Flapper,” Life, January 26, 1922.
There are the Boy Authors: “Hymn of Hate,” Life, March 30, 1922.
makes us feel very old: Heywood Broun, “Paradise and Princeton,” New York Herald Tribune, April 11, 1920.
Rosalind rested: “Once More Mother Hubbard,” Life, July 7, 1921.
If she didn’t like something: Nancy Milford, Zelda: A Biography (Harper Perennial, 2001), 66.
a sexual affair between Scott and Parker: See Scott Donaldson, “Scott and Dottie,” Sewanee Review, Winter 2016.
I like girls like that: “What a ‘Flapper Novelist’ Thinks of His Wife,” Baltimore Sun, October 7, 1923.
an armed services edition: See, e.g., Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures (Little, Brown, 2014).
Almost anyone you know: Sterling North, “More Than Enough Rope,” Poetry, December 1928.
A kind of burlesque: Edmund Wilson, “Dorothy Parker’s Poems,” New Republic, January 19, 1927.
Let’s face it, honey: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
edged and acrid style: Wilson, “Dorothy Parker’s Poems.”
Razors pain you: “Résumé,” Enough Rope (Boni and Liveright, 1926).
an incompleted dogfight: “Constant Reader,” New Yorker, October 29, 1927.
To celebrate in borrowed cadence: Ernest Hemingway, “To a Tragic Poetess,” in Complete Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 1983).
His is, as any reader knows: “Reading and Writing,” New Yorker, October 29, 1927.
roughly equivalent numbers: Ben Yagoda, About Town: The “New Yorker” and the World It Made (Da Capo, 2001), 77.
goddam women schoolteachers: James Thurber, The Years with Ross (Harper Perennial, 2000), 4–5.
the affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith: “Constant Reader,” New Yorker, October 22, 1927.
The Constant Reader columns: Joan Acocella, “After the Laughs,” New Yorker, August 16, 1993.
literary Rotarians: “Constant Reader,” New Yorker, February 8, 1928.
I wanted to be cute: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
sophisticated talk: La Mar Warrick, “Farewell to Sophistication,” Harper’s, October 1, 1930.
Men like a good sport: “Big Blonde,” Bookman, February 1929.
This is instead of telephoning you: The telegram is dated June 28, 1945, and an image of it is widely available on the Internet. See, e.g., “I can’t look you in the voice,” Letters of Note (June 17, 2011) at http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/06/i-cant-look-you-in-voice.html.
Well, I did saunter: “NY Pickets Parade Boston Streets in Bus,” New York Herald Tribune, August 12, 1927.
I am not a member: “Incredible, Fantastic … and True,” New Masses, November 25, 1937.
I don’t think: New Masses, June 27, 1939.
As for me: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
traces of the unique genius: Rebecca West, “What Books Have Done to Russia,” New York Herald Tribune, October 28, 1928.
he is the Old Maid among novelists: “Marriage,” Freewoman, September 19, 1912.
I wonder about the women: Ibid.
Poor child: Letter to Letitia Fairfield, April 18, 1910, quoted in Selected Letters of Rebecca West, ed. Bonnie Kime Scott (Yale University Press, 2000).
shabby Prospero: The Fountain Overflows (New York Review Books, 2003), 85.
a prison stay: See Lorna Gibb, The Extraordinary Life of Rebecca West (Counterpoint, 2014), 36.
there is something definite about a dog: “I Regard Marriage with Fear and Horror,” Hearst’s International, November 1925, collected in Woman as Artist and Thinker (iUniverse, 2005).
Christabel Pankhurst, Who Is Rich: This headline appeared in the Los Angeles Times on December 2, 1906.
One felt: “A Reed of Steel,” in The Post-Victorians, ed. W. R. Inge (Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1933).
blonde and pretty: BBC Radio interview with Anthony Curtiss, December 21, 1972, quoted in Gibb, Rebecca West, 41.
several skins: V. S. Pritchett, “One of Nature’s Balkans,” New Yorker, December 21, 1987.
This is most damping: Letter to the editor by Rebecca West, Freewoman, March 14, 1912.
a little high voice: Rebecca West on Wells, 1CDR 0019053, at Yale’s Beinecke Library, cited in Gibb, Rebecca West, 48.
curious mixture: H. G. Wells, H. G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography (Faber and Faber, 1984), 94–95.
During the next few days: Letter from Rebecca West to H. G. Wells, circa March 1913, in Selected Letters of Rebecca West.
For though my lover: “At Valladolid,” New Freewoman, August 1913.
men often turn willy nilly: “The Fool and the Wise Man,” New Freewoman, October 1913.
I hate domesticity: Letter from Rebecca West to Sylvia Lynd, circa 1916, in Selected Letters of Rebecca West.
There is now no criticism in England: “The Duty of Harsh Criticism,” New Republic, November 7, 1914.
the woman H. G. Wells calls: This advertisement appeared in the New York Times on November 7, 1914.
extravagant ecstasies of the fanatic: “The Duty of Harsh Criticism.”
He splits hairs: “Reading Henry James in Wartime” New Republic, February 27, 1915.
One can learn nothing of the heroine’s beliefs: Henry James (Nisbet and Co, 1916).
rather metallically bright: Observer, July 23, 1916.
Very young women: Fanny Butcher, “Rebecca West’s Insulting Sketch of Henry James,” Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1916.
so austerely veracious: Lawrence Gilman, “The Book of the Month,” North American Review, May 1918.
It falls short: Quoted in Living Age, August 18, 1922.
But for her wit: “Fantasy, Reality, History,” Spectator, September 21, 1929.
George Bernard Shaw’s war speeches: “Mr. Shaw’s Diverted Genius,” New Republic, December 5, 1914.
the strains of Dostoevsky: “Redemption and Dostoevsky,” New Republic, June 5, 1915.
Dickens’s earlier biographers: “The Dickens Circle,” Living Age, January 18, 1919.
tedious and unauthentic: “Notes on Novels,” New Statesman, April 10, 1920.
Feminism has not invented: “Women of England,” Atlantic, January 1, 1916.
Mrs. Gattenrigg: Westminster Gazette, June 23, 1923.
constant disturbance: Letter from Rebecca West to Winifred Macleod, August 24, 1923, quoted in Gibb, Rebecca West, 85.
egotism: Letter from Rebecca West to Winfred Macleod, November 2, 1923, Lilly Library, quoted in Gibb, Rebecca West, 85.
in the field of the novel: “Rebecca West Explains It All,” New York Times, November 11, 1923.
The woman of 30: Ibid.
dazzle the eye with richness: “Impressions of America,” New Republic, December 10, 1924.
beyond all belief slovenly: Letter from Rebecca West to Winifred Macleod, November 2, 1923, in Selected Letters of Rebecca West.
we are all disappointed in you: Letter from Rebecca West to Gordon Ray, Pierpont Morgan, undated, quoted in Gibb, Rebecca West, 88.
I wish he’d turn his mind: “Rebecca West: The Art of Fiction No. 65,” interview with Marina Warner, Paris Review, Spring 1981.
Rebecca is a cross: The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Four (1931–1935) (Mariner Books, 1983), 131.
hair light and straight: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (Penguin Classics, 2007), 403.
sharp-nosed: A Train of Powder (Viking, 1955), 78.
I’ve aroused hostility: “Rebecca West: The Art of Fiction No. 65.”
a dull giraffe: From a notebook in the Tulsa archive, quoted in Gibb, Rebecca West, 116.
not even among his own caste: “A Letter from Abroad,” Bookman, April 1930.
intelligent fawn eyes: Anaïs Nin, Incest, from “A Journal of Love”: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932–1934 (Harvest, 1992), entry for April 27, 1934, 323.
wanting to shine: Anaïs Nin, Fire, from “A Journal of Love” The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (Harvest, 1995), entry for August 12, 1935, 130.
Masterful albeit somewhat rambling: Gibb, Rebecca West, 183.
exactly like all Aryan Germans: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, 37.
I will believe that the battle of feminism: Ibid., 124. 54 they wrote down: Ibid., 59.
most brilliantly objective: Katharine Woods, “Rebecca West’s Brilliant Mosaic of Yugoslavian Travel,” New York Times, October 26, 1941.
the only book I have read since the war: Joseph Barnes, “Rebecca West in the Great Tradition,” New York Herald Tribune, October 26, 1941.
live to some extent on what we can grow: “Housewife’s Nightmare,” New Yorker, December 14, 1941.
This crisis has revealed cats: “A Day in Town,” New Yorker, January 25, 1941.
he was a tiny little creature: “The Crown Versus William Joyce,” New Yorker, September 22, 1945.
An old man told me: “William Joyce: Conclusion,” New Yorker, January 26, 1946.
so plainly mad: A Train of Powder, 83.
There is a similarity: The Meaning of Treason (Macmillan and Company, 1952), 305.
extremely good-looking: “‘Shoulder to Shoulder,’“ New York Times, October 21, 1975.
If one is a woman writer: Letter from Rebecca West to Emanie Arling, March 11, 1952, quoted in Gibb, Rebecca West, 198.
Chapter Three: West & Hurston
blasted to bits: “So. Carolina Man Lynched in Cruel Mob Orgy,” Los Angeles Sentinel, February 20, 1947.
ripped his heart: “Lynch Mob Rips Victim’s Heart,” New York Amsterdam News, February 27, 1947.
sheer nonsense to pretend: “Opera in Greenville,” in A Train of Powder, 88.
developed a great hostility: Ibid., 82.
a plea for the extension: Ibid., 109.
There’s a law: Ibid., 99.
rejoicing at a salvation: Ibid., 112.
Gilbert and Sullivan troupe: The details of Hurston’s history here are drawn from Valerie Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (Simon and Schuster, 2004).
I am too busy sharpening: Pittsburgh Courier, May 12, 1938.
incisive and full-dress stories around Negroes: “What White Publishers Won’t Print,” Negro Digest, April 1950.
a flaming sword: “Ruby McCollum Fights for Life,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 22, 1952.
lines she previously used: See Virginia Lynn Moylan, Zora Neale Hurston’s Final Decade (University Press of Florida, 2012).
Chapter Four: Arendt
overcome by fear: “Shadows,” in Letters, 1925–1975: Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, ed. Ursula Lutz, trans. Andrew Shields (Harcourt, 2004).
protective third person: Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World, 2nd ed. (Yale University Press, 2004), 50.
More likely: “Shadows” in Letters, 1925–1975.
Ah, death is in life: Quoted in Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 40.
human experience and understanding: Daniel Maier-Katkin, Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness (Norton, 2010), 27.
The rumor about Heidegger: “Heidegger at 80,” New York Review of Books, October 21, 1971.
I will never be able: Letter from Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, February 10, 1925, in Letters: 1925–1975.
The demonic struck me: Letter from Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, February 27, 1925, in Letters: 1925–1975.
potential murderer: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, July 9, 1946, in Correspondence: 1926–1969, ed. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (Harvest, 1992).
The problem, the personal problem: “What Remains? The Language Remains: A Conversation with Günter Gaus,” in Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, trans. Joan Stumbaugh (Melville House, 2013), 18.
Arab harem girl: Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 77.
loving is that act: Translated by Arendt Center from Gunther Anders, Die Kirschenschlacht, available at: http://hac.bard.edu/news/?item=4302.
Do not forget: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Martin Heidegger, circa 1929, in Letters, 1925–1975, 51.
The thing which all my life: Rachel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman (Harvest, 1974), 3.
It was never my intention: Varnhagen, xv.
astonishing: Seyla Benhabib, “The Pariah and Her Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Biography of Rahel Varnhagen,” Political Theory, February 1995.
This sensitivity is a morbid exaggeration: Varnhagen, 214.
The modern reader will scarcely: Ibid., xviii.
It just doesn’t look good: “What Remains?,” 5.
immediate shock: Ibid., 8–9.
Whoever wants to call this: Letter from Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, circa winter 1932–33, in Letters, 1925–1975.
What am I supposed to do: “What Remains?,” 10.
I shall never: Ibid., 19.
Marx simply wanted: Letter from Hans Blücher to Hannah Arendt, July 29, 1948, in Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher, 1936–1968, ed. Lotte Kohler, trans. Peter Constantine (Harcourt, 1996), 93–95.
dual monarchy: Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, xi.
Such an existence: “Walter Benjamin,” in Men in Dark Times (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995), 176.
The book made a great impression on me: Letter from Walter Benjamin to Gershom Scholem, February 20, 1939, in The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1941, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, trans. Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson (University of Chicago Press, 1994), 596.
I am very worried about Benji: Quoted in Howard Eiland, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Unlike the class of the intellectuals: “Walter Benjamin,” 181.
One day earlier: Ibid., 192.
faces a small bay: Quoted in Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship (New York Review Books, 2003), 283.
The kind of happiness: “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (Schocken Books, 1969), 254.
In the first place: “We Refugees,” in The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron Feldman (Schocken, 2007), 265.
a quiet and modest way of vanishing: “We Refugees,” 268.
beer fiddle: Letter from Heinrich Blücher to Hannah Arendt, July 26, 1941, in Within Four Walls, 65.
A lecture on philosophy: “French Existentialism,” Nation, February 23, 1946.
The conviction that everything: The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harvest, 1973), viii.
Totalitarian solutions: Ibid., 459.
Rose Feitelson: Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 250.
monumental but extraordinarily readable book: “People Are Talking About,” Vogue, May 1951.
flatteringly mistaken: Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman (Vintage, 1995), 50.
that Weimar Republic flapper: William Barrett, The Truants: Adventures Among the Intellectuals (Doubleday, 1983), 103.
Hannah Arrogant: See Anne Heller, Hannah Arendt: A Life in Dark Times (New Harvest, 2015), 25.
vital to my life: Alfred Kazin, New York Jew (Knopf, 1978), 195.
The theoretical analysis: Dwight Macdonald, “A New Theory of Totalitarianism,” New Leader, May 14, 1951.
I’ve read your book, absorbed: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, April 26, 1951, in Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949–1975 (Harcourt Brace, 1995).
Chapter Five: McCarthy
She stood in what I later recognized: Eileen Simpson, “Ode to a Woman Well at Ease,” Lear’s, April 1990, quoted in Frances Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy (Norton, 2000), 223.
How can you say this to me: Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 197.
Her indiscretions were always open and forthright: Elizabeth Hardwick, “Mary McCarthy in New York,” New York Review of Books, March 26, 1992.
Reading was forbidden us: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1957), 61.
I reject the whole pathos: The Company She Keeps (Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1942), 263.
could not treat your life-history: Ibid., 194.
I can see myself married: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, 16.
A sense of artistic decorum: The Company She Keeps, 264.
versed in clockwork obedience: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, 102.
If I could not win fame by goodness: Ibid., 111.
There went the girl: Ibid., 121.
cold, empty gambler’s mood: Ibid., 111.
There was a scent of the seminarian: Hardwick, “Mary McCarthy in New York.”
She presented herself: Quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 119.
People celebrate one member: Diana Trilling, The Beginning of the Journey (Harcourt Brace, 1993), 350–51.
Why can’t you be like: The Company She Keeps, 276.
later, I gather: How I Grew (Harvest Books, 1987), 56.
Moby-Dick was way over my head: Ibid., 61. 98 a slight sense of being stuffed: Ibid., 78.
score some pretension: “The Vassar Girl,” Holiday, 1951, reprinted in On the Contrary (Noonday, 1961), 196.
Vassar Girls, in general: The Group (Harcourt Brace, 1963), 30.
One of the most discouraging things: Elinor Coleman Guggenheimer, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 67.
I found her remarkable and intimidating: Lucille Fletcher Wallop, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 67.
About college: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Ted Rosenberg, November 1, 1929, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 69.
One by one: “Two Crystal-Gazing Novelists,” Con Spirito, February 1933, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 81.
I’m not starving: “My Confession,” in On the Contrary, 80.
megaphone for the Communist Party: Adam Kirsch, “What’s Left of Malcolm Cowley,” City Journal, Spring 2014.
For the first time: Intellectual Memoirs 1936–1938 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 9.
It should never be taken: “Coalpit College,” New Republic, May 2, 1934.
It is hard to believe: “Mr. Burnett’s Short Stories,” Nation, October 10, 1934.
There are but two qualities: “Pass the Salt,” Nation, January 30, 1935.
On the whole: “Our Critics, Right or Wrong, Part I,” Nation, October 23, 1935.
Literature stirs in him: “Our Critics, Right or Wrong, Part III,” Nation, November 20, 1935.
the curious internal warfare: “Our Critics, Right or Wrong, Part IV,” Nation, December 4, 1935.
Oh, Mary McCarthy and Margaret Marshall: John Chamberlain, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, December 12, 1935.
The girls remind us: F. P. Adams, “The Conning Tower,” New York Herald Tribune, December 13, 1935.
perspicacious: “Our Critics, Right or Wrong, Part V,” Nation, December 18, 1935.
To marry a man: How I Grew, 267.
A kind of political hockey: “My Confession,” in On the Contrary, 78.
They made me feel petty and shallow: Ibid., 86.
The mark of the historic: Ibid., 77.
Jeweled lady-authors: Ibid., 100.
she was no good on abstract ideas: Isaiah Berlin, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain.
certain doubt of orthodoxy: “My Confession,” in On the Contrary, 102.
pungently, harshly, drivingly: “Philip Rahv (1908–1973),” in Occasional Prose (Harcourt, 1985), 4.
He wasn’t a particularly nice man: Isaiah Berlin, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 121.
a pretty brutal guy: Interview of Dwight Macdonald by Diana Trilling, Partisan Review, 1984, in Interviews with Dwight Macdonald, ed. Michael Wreszin (University Press of Mississippi, 2003).
sympathetic insight … tenderness: “Philip Rahv (1908–1973),” in Occasional Prose, 4.
ukase on her behalf: Theatre Chronicles, 1937–1962 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1963), ix.
a kind of viscous holy oil: “Theatre Chronicle,” Partisan Review, June 1938.
punctuated [their writing] with pauses: “Theatre Chronicle,” Partisan Review, March–April 1940.
purely and simply: “Theatre Chronicle,” Partisan Review, April 1938.
The character of Dorothy Parker: “Wartime Omnibus,” Partisan Review, Spring 1944.
her dumpy appearance: How I Grew, 16.
He was heavy, puffy, nervous: Ibid., 260.
I greatly liked talking to him: Intellectual Memoirs, 97.
two tyrants: David Laskin, Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals (University of Chicago Press, 2000), 88.
Suffice it to say: Reuel K. Wilson, To the Life of the Silver Harbor (University Press of New England, 2008), 53.
It was true: The Company She Keeps (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1942), 84.
At bottom, she was contemptuous: Ibid., 112.
I was at Exeter: George Plimpton, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 181.
a splendid thing, poetic, clever and new: Letter from Vladimir Nabokov to Edmund Wilson, May 6, 1942, included in Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940–1971, ed. Simon Karlinsky (University of California Press, 2001).
This was a feminist heroine: Pauline Kael, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 181.
Its satire is administered: William Abrahams, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, May 16, 1942.
a gift for delicate malice: Review by Lewis Gannett, New York Herald Tribune, May 15, 1942.
Clever and wicked: Malcolm Cowley, “Bad Company,” New Republic, May 25, 1942.
poor biography: The Company She Keeps, 194.
detect her own frauds: Ibid., 223.
Miss McCarthy has learned: Cowley, “Bad Company.”
I don’t think that she ever wrote anything else: Lionel Abel, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 180.
She was aware: “The Weeds,” in Cast a Cold Eye (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1950), 35.
And he was really quite mad: Mary McCarthy, in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, vol. 16 (Gale, 1984), quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 208.
There was a period: Margaret Shafer, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 267.
like a brilliant harpy: “People Are Talking About,” Vogue, July 1947.
deeply serious: Alfred Kazin, “How to Plan Your Reading,” Vogue, July 1947.
The whole story is a complete fiction: “The Art of Fiction No. 27: Mary McCarthy,” Paris Review (Winter–Spring 1962).
brusque and out-of-sorts: The Oasis (Harcourt Brace, 1949), 39.
The woman is a thug: William Barrett, The Truants: Adventures Among the Intellectuals (Doubleday, 1982), 67.
constitutes a gross infringement: Letter from H. William Fitelson to Robert N. Linscott, May 3, 1949, in the Mary McCarthy Papers at Vassar.
The inner circle is too small: Donald Barr, “Failure in Utopia,” New York Times, August 14, 1949.
We think so much alike: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, March 10, 1949, reprinted in Between Friends.
his Marxist assurance: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, August 10, 1954, reprinted in Between Friends.
burlesque philosophers: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, August 20, 1954, reprinted in Between Friends.
I hear that Saul: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, October 11, 1966, reprinted in Between Friends.
These people get worse: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, October 20, 1965, reprinted in Between Friends.
Chapter Six: Parker & Arendt
Listen, I can’t: Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (Penguin, 1988), 699.
Lolita: “Lolita,” New Yorker, August 27, 1955.
had read Lolita and disliked it: See Galya Diment, “Two 1955 Lolitas: Vladimir Nabokov’s and Dorothy Parker’s,” Modernism/Modernity, April 2014.
The late Robert Benchley: “Book Reviews,” Esquire, May 1958.
His long body: “Book Reviews,” Esquire, September 1959.
His publishers admit: “Book Reviews,” Esquire, June 1959.
deadly monotony of days and nights: Harry Hansen, “The ‘Beat’ Generation Is Scuttled by Capote,” Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1959.
Miss Parker, who is no longer (if in fact she ever were): Janet Winn, “Capote, Miller, and Miss Parker,” New Republic, February 9, 1959.
brings back all my faith: “Book Reviews,” Esquire, December 1962.
To write about art now: “New York at 6:30 p.m.” Esquire, November 1964.
walked through the mob, alone: Details here are drawn from Christine Firer Hinze, “Reconsidering Little Rock: Hannah Arendt, Martin Luther King Jr., and Catholic Social Thought on Children and Families in the Struggle for Justice,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Spring/Summer 2009.
It certainly did not require too much: “Reflections on Little Rock,” Dissent, Winter 1959, 50.
discrimination is as indispensable a social right: Ibid., 51.
We publish [this piece] not because we agree with it: Ibid., 46.
At first one thinks: Melvin Tumin, “Pie in the Sky …” Dissent, January 1959.
Olympian authority: “The World and the Jug,” in Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (Random House, 1964), 108.
I believe that one of the important: Ralph Ellison, quoted in Robert Penn Warren, Who Speaks for the Negro? (Random House, 1965), 343.
Your remarks seem to me so entirely right: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Ralph Ellison, July 29, 1965, cited in Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 316.
She also wrote to James Baldwin: “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” New Yorker, November 17, 1962.
frightened … gospel of love: Letter from Hannah Arendt to James Baldwin, November 21, 1962, available at http://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/view/95/156.
At least one black scholar: Kathryn T. Gines, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (Indiana University Press, 2014), 5.
Chapter Seven: Arendt & McCarthy
I would never be able to forgive myself: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, December 2, 1960, in Correspondence: 1926–1969.
I never killed a Jew: Eichmann in Jerusalem (Penguin, 1963), 22.
very tempted: Letter from Hannah Arendt to William Shawn, August 11, 1960, quoted at http://www.glennhorowitz.com/dobkin/letters_hannah_arendt-william_shawn_correspondence1960-1972.
I myself had no hatred: Eichmann in Jerusalem, 30.
Is this a textbook case: Ibid., 51–52.
sympathizing with Eichmann: Michael A. Musmanno, “Man with an Unspotted Conscience,” New York Times, May 19, 1963.
point-by-point refutations: Letter to editor of the New York Times by Robert Lowell, June 23, 1963.
the whole truth was that: Eichmann in Jerusalem, 125.
a deep effect on her: Hilberg claimed that Arendt owed a huge debt to him and believed she had plagiarized his work. See Nathaniel Popper, “A Conscious Pariah,” Nation, March 31, 2010.
undoubtedly the darkest chapter: Eichmann in Jerusalem, 117.
cruel and silly: Ibid., 12.
in place of the monstrous Nazi: Norman Podhoretz, “Hannah Arendt on Eichmann: A Study in the Perversity of Brilliance,” Commentary, September 1, 1963.
If a man holds a gun: Lionel Abel, “The Aesthetics of Evil: Hannah Arendt on Eichmann and the Jews,” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.
unimaginably inappropriate: Letter from Gershom Scholem to Hannah Arendt, June 22, 1963, reprinted in “Eichmann in Jerusalem: An Exchange of Letters Between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt,” Encounter, January 1964.
soul: See, for example: “Don’t tell anybody, is it not proof positive that I have no ‘soul’?” in Letter from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, June 23, 1964, in Between Friends.
I indeed love “only” my friends: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, July 24, 1963, in “An Exchange of Letters.”
infect[ed] those segments: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, October 20, 1963, in Correspondence: 1926–1969 (Harcourt Brace, 1992), 523.
part of the political campaign: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, September 20, 1963, in Between Friends.
What surprises and shocks me most of all: Ibid.
George Arliss playing Disraeli: Saul Bellow, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 354.
no one in the know likes the book: Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, August 12, 1963, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, ed. Thomas Travasino and Saskia Hamilton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 489.
The flat praise and the faint dissension: Elizabeth Hardwick, “The Decline of Book Reviewing,” Harper’s, October 1959.
first serious piece of science fiction: Mary McCarthy, “Déjeuner sur l’herbe,” New York Review of Books, February 1, 1963.
obsession with public success: Gore Vidal, “The Norman Mailer Syndrome,” Nation, October 2, 1960.
She was letting herself: Norman Mailer, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 189.
I confess I enjoyed it enormously: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, September 28, 1962, in Between Friends.
simply not a good enough woman: Norman Mailer, “The Mary McCarthy Case,” New York Review of Books, October 12, 1963.
What I want to say is Congratulations: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy, August 3, 1963, in the Mary McCarthy Papers at Vassar.
I find it strange that people: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, October 24, 1963, in Between Friends.
I am very sorry about the parody: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy, November 20, 1963, in the Mary McCarthy Papers at Vassar.
Fred, who was exquisitely polite: Gore Vidal, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 525.
I love you for taking all these pains: Letter from McCarthy to Katharine White, quoted in Kiernan, 524.
Oh poor girl, really: Letter from Elizabeth Bishop to Pearl Kazin, February 22, 1954, in One Art: Letters Selected and Edited by Robert Giroux (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 288–89.
a picaresque anti-novel: Daniel Stern, “Life Becomes a Dream,” New York Times, September 8, 1963.
reductio ad absurdum: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh, ed. David Rieff (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 237.
I just finished Miss Sonntag’s [sic] novel: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Farrar, Straus & Giroux, August 20, 1963, quoted in Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock, Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon (Norton, 2000), 73.
When I last watched her at the Lowells’: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, December 19, 1967, in Between Friends.
“the imitation me”: Susan Sontag, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 537.
I hear you’re the new me: Morris Dickstein, quoted in Sheelah Kolhatkar, “Notes on Camp Sontag,” New York Observer, January 10, 2005.
Mary McCarthy’s grin: As Consciousness, 8.
Because you smile too much: This anecdote is retold in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 538.
Mary McCarthy can do anything with her smile: As Consciousness, 10.
I realize I misspelled your name: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Susan Sontag, August 11, 1964, in the Mary McCarthy Papers at Vassar.
I still weep in any movie: “Project for a Trip to China,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1973.
All I can think of is Mother: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947–1963 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 5.
I felt I was slumming in my own life: “Pilgrimage,” New Yorker, December 21, 1987.
hadn’t understood any of the essays: See Daniel Schreiber, Susan Sontag: A Biography (Northwestern University Press, 2014), 22.
lesser-known Handel operas: Terry Castle, “Desperately Seeking Susan,” London Review of Books, March 17, 2005.
a writer who had never mattered to me: “Susan Sontag: The Art of Fiction No. 143,” interview by Edward Hirsch, Paris Review, Winter 1995.
Have you read Nightwood? : Interview with Harriet Sohmers Zwerling, November 30, 2015, available at http://lastbohemians.blogspot.com/2015/11/harriet-sohmers-zwerling-ex-nude-model.html.
My concept of sexuality is so altered: Reborn, 28.
You can imagine what that did to me: “Susan Sontag: The Art of Fiction No. 143.”
Our investigations thus far: Wilhelm Stekel, The Homosexual Neurosis (Gotham Press, 1922), 11.
He needs all his money to keep from going to jail: Letter from Susan Sontag to “Merrill,” undated, but found in journal near entry for March 23, 1950, quoted in Alice Kaplan, Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
I marry Philip with full consciousness: Reborn, 60.
Talked for seven years: As Consciousness, 362.
Whoever invented marriage: Reborn, 79.
emotional totalitarian: Ibid., 138.
no one to talk to about it: Joan Acocella, “The Hunger Artist,” New Yorker, March 6, 2000.
It took me nine years: In America (Picador, 1991), 24.
I replied, “Yes, I’m going to”: Interview with Marithelma Costa and Adelaide López, in Conversations with Susan Sontag, ed. Leland A. Pogue (University of Mississippi Press, 1995), 227.
light her cigarettes as she typed: Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir (Atlas, 2011), 87.
shrewd, serene, housewifely confidence: Donald Phelps, “Form as Hero,” New Leader, October 28, 1963.
Mary used to do it: “Susan Sontag: The Art of Fiction No. 143.”
no one’s interested in fiction, Susan: Ellen Hopkins, “Susan Sontag Lightens Up,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1992.
Many things in the world: “Notes on ‘Camp,’“ Partisan Review, September 1964.
Camp is a form of regression: “Not Good Taste, Not Bad Taste—It’s ‘Camp,’“ New York Times, March 21, 1965.
every kind of perversion is regarded as avant-garde: Letter from Philip Rahv to Mary McCarthy, April 9, 1965, in Mary McCarthy Papers at Vassar.
It’s embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp: “Notes on ‘Camp.’ “
too obviously queer, too revealing of her sexuality: See Terry Castle, “Some Notes on Notes on Camp,” in The Scandal of Susan Sontag, ed. Barbara Ching and Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor (Columbia University Press, 1999), 21.
the revenge of the intellect on art … an erotics of art: “Against Interpretation,” Evergreen Review, December 1964.
either history-making or a daring sham: “Sontag and Son,” Vogue, June 1966.
a sharp girl: Kevin Kelly, “‘A’ for Promise, ‘F’ for Practice,” Boston Globe, January 30, 1966.
Susan Sontag is hardly a likable person: Geoffrey A. Wolff, “Hooray for What Is There and Never Mind Reality,” Washington Post, February 5, 1966.
Agnès Varda’s sleek bob: Camera Three interview, circa fall 1969, available at https://vimeo.com/111098095.
the kind of ultra-chic occasion: Letter from Lila Karpf to Susan Sontag, November 22, 1966, quoted in Schreiber, Susan Sontag, 133.
the Natalie Wood of the U.S. avant-garde: Robert Phelps, “Self-Education of a Brilliant Highbrow,” Life, January 1, 1966.
Miss Sontag has been undone as a novelist: Gore Vidal, “The Writer as Cannibal,” Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1967.
Susan Sontag would be ugly, or at least plain: Beatrice Berg, “Susan Sontag, Intellectuals’ Darling,” Washington Post, January 8, 1967.
I must not quote her: Carolyn Heilbrun, “Speaking of Susan Sontag,” New York Times, August 27, 1967.
A legend is like a tail: James Toback, “Whatever You’d Like Susan Sontag to Think, She Doesn’t,” Esquire, July 1968.
Sue. Suzy Q.: Howard Junker, “Will This Finally Be Philip Roth’s Year?” New York, January 13, 1969.
I’ve always been touched by your personal charm: Letter from Philip Roth to Susan Sontag, January 10, 1969, in the Susan Sontag Archive at UCLA.
Today’s America: “What’s Happening in America: A Symposium,” Partisan Review, Winter 1967.
sweet young thing: William F. Buckley, “Don’t Forget—’Hate America’ Seems to Be the New Liberal Slogan,” Los Angeles, March 20, 1967.
Alienated Intellectual: Lewis S. Feuer, “The Elite of the Alienated,” New York Times, March 26, 1967.
made miserable and angry: “Trip to Hanoi,” Esquire, February 1978.
a patient in psychoanalysis: Frances FitzGerald, “A Nice Place to Visit,” New York Review of Books, March 13, 1969.
an American has no way of incorporating Vietnam: Trip to Hanoi (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 87.
I confess that when I went to Vietnam: Mary McCarthy, “Report from Vietnam I: The Home Program,” New York Review of Books, April 20, 1967.
do the work of a careful ethnologist: FitzGerald, “A Nice Place to Visit.”
I was really dumb in those days: Susan Sontag, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 594.
Interesting that you too were driven: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Susan Sontag, December 16, 1968, in Susan Sontag Archives at UCLA.
My “I” is puny, cautious, too sane: Reborn, 168.
last year’s literary pin-up: Herbert Mitgang, “Victory in the Ashes of Vietnam,” New York Times, February 4, 1969.
I’m assuming you’ve read mine: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Susan Sontag, December 16, 1968, in Susan Sontag Archives at UCLA.
I don’t write essays anymore: Leticia Kent, “What Makes Susan Sontag Make Movies?” New York Times, October 11, 1970.
a cross between Hannah Arendt and Donald Barthelme: As Consciousness, 340.
had difficulty relating: For a thorough accounting of this development and its recurrence as a cyclical phenomenon in feminism, see, e.g., Susan Faludi, “American Electra,” Harper’s, October 2010.
dull cow … battle-ax: Norman Mailer, “The Prisoner of Sex,” Harper’s, March 1971.
Norman, it is true that women find that: See Town Bloody Hall (1979) dir. D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.
Where did you get that idea?: Leticia Kent, “Susan Sontag Speaks Up,” Vogue, August 1971.
They should whistle at men in the streets: “The Third World of Women,” Partisan Review, Spring 1973.
They are a grammar: On Photography (Dell, 1978), 3.
A way of certifying experience: Ibid., 9.
Assume that we are born to die: “How to Be an Optimist,” Vogue, January 1975.
the way women are taught: “A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?,” Vogue, April 1975.
feminists would feel a pang: “Fascinating Fascism,” New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975.
Since I’m a feminist too: Interview with the Performing Arts Journal, 1977, in Conversations with Susan Sontag, ed. Leland Pogue (University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 84.
My body is invasive, colonizing: From David Rieff, Swimming in a Sea of Death (Simon and Schuster, 2008), 35. Rieff did not include this journal entry in As Consciousness.
opaque to myself: Ibid.
I wasn’t in the slightest detached: Interview with Wendy Lesser, 1980, in Conversations with Susan Sontag, 197.
cancerphobes: Illness as Metaphor (Vintage, 1979), 22.
a disturbing book: Denis Donoghue, “Disease Should Be Itself,” New York Times, July 16, 1978.
Nostrils flaring: Castle, “Desperately Seeking Susan.”
Chapter Nine: Kael
reviewing a novel for the paper: See letter from Robert Silvers to Pauline Kael, August 28, 1963, in the Pauline Kael Papers at Lilly Library, Indiana University at Bloomington.
As a group: Draft of The Group review, in the Pauline Kael Papers, quoted in Brian Kellow, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark (Penguin, 2011).
I wonder, Mrs. John Doe: Undated (circa 1962–1963) broadcast on KPFA radio, Berkeley, California, available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRhs-jKei3g.
It was not out of guilty condescension: Pauline Kael, “‘Hud’: Deep in the Divided Heart of Hollywood,” Film Quarterly, Summer 1964.
The place is cluttered up: Letter from Pauline Kael to Rosenberg, February 28, 1942, quoted in Kellow, Pauline Kael, 29.
The Chaplin of Limelight: City Lights, Winter 1953, reprinted in Artforum, March 2002, 122.
When I was a kid: Interview with the Los Angeles Reader, 1982, in Conversations with Pauline Kael, ed. Will Brantley (University Press of Mississippi, 1996), 76.
Pauline, let’s start positively: See Ed and Pauline, dir. Christian Brando (2014).
I would like to talk about the collapse: Ibid.
Welles not only teases: Ibid.
For 5½ years: “Owner and Employe [sic] Feud over ‘Art’; Guess Who Has to Take Powder?” Variety, November 16, 1960.
fifty-nine thousand dollars in back wages and profits: “Wife Wants Artie Operators ‘Wages,’“ Variety, May 31, 1961.
It began to seem like True Confession: “Fantasies of the Art House Audience,” Sight and Sound, Winter 1961.
There is, in any art: “Is There a Cure for Film Criticism?” Monthly Film Bulletin, Spring 1962.
the second premise of the auteur theory: Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” Film Culture, Winter 1962–63.
The smell of a skunk: “Circles and Squares,” Film Quarterly, Spring 1963.
Pauline acted as if I were a great menace: Quoted in Kellow, Pauline Kael, 78.
What’s the matter?: Ibid. This entire story is drawn from Kellow. Pauline Kael, 78.
Were we to infer: “Movie vs. Kael,” Film Quarterly, Autumn 1963.
why that offensive, hypocritical, “alas”: Ibid.
I’ve always been a little surprised: Interview with Allen Barra in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 28, 1991, in Conversations with Pauline Kael, 135.
charges her with careerism: See Kellow, Pauline Kael, 78.
Despite your implacable harassment of me: Letter from Dwight Macdonald to Pauline Kael, November 27, 1963, in Pauline Kael Papers, Lilly Library, quoted in Kellow, Pauline Kael, 70.
rather fruitless to care: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Pauline Kael, September 14, 1963, in the Pauline Kael Papers, Lilly Library.
Too hard on her personally: Letter from Susan Sontag to Pauline Kael, October 25, 1963, in the Pauline Kael Papers, Lilly Library.
Pauline was deaf to feminism: Karen Durbin, quoted in Kellow, Pauline Kael, 174.
Not being used to the role: “The Making of The Group,” in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Little Brown, 1968), 97.
My job is to show him: Kellow, Pauline Kael, 91.
one of her books: This would be Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Susan Sontag published an extraordinary essay: Pauline Kael, I Lost It at the Movies (Dell, 1965), 17.
disclaims ideas: See Sontag, Against Interpretation, 229.
she is the sanest, saltiest, most resourceful: Richard Schickel, “A Way of Seeing a Picture,” New York Times, March 14, 1965.
we respond most and best to work: “Circles and Squares.”
the destructive emotionality: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Review of I Lost It at the Movies, Sight and Sound, Summer 1965.
Whom could it offend?: “The Sound of …” in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 177.
Miss Kael became more and more critical: “Sez McCall’s Stein: Kael Pans Cinema Profit Motives,” Variety, July 20, 1966.
How do you make a good movie in this country: “Bonnie and Clyde,” New Yorker, October 21, 1967.
deliberately crude: Interview with Marc Smirnoff for Oxford American, Spring 1992 in Conversations with Pauline Kael, 155.
getting a letter from an eminent New Yorker writer: Ibid., 156.
Your picture on the dust cover: Letter from Louise Brooks to Pauline Kael, May 26, 1962, quoted in Kellow, Paulin Kael.
Zest but No Manners: See Variety, December 13, 1967.
shouldn’t need to tear a work apart: “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” Harper’s, February 1969.
shallow masterpiece: “Raising Kane,” New Yorker, February 20, 1971.
shallow work, a shallow masterpiece: Mordecai Richler, “The Citizen Kane Book,” New York Times, October 31, 1971.
just a lot of people telling jokes: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
Orson Welles is not significantly diminished: Andrew Sarris, “Films in Focus,” Village Voice, April 1, 1971.
I support her war: Kenneth Tynan, “The Road to Xanadu,” Observer, January 16, 1972.
crying in his lawyers’ office: See Barbara Leaming, Orson Welles: A Biography (Limelight Editions, 2004), 476.
Mankiewicz’s contribution: Peter Bogdanovich, “The Kane Mutiny,” Esquire, October 1972.
Marvelous as Mankiewicz’s script was: “Raising Kael,” interview with Hollis Alpert in the Saturday Review, April 24, 1971, in Conversations with Pauline Kael, 13.
the E. B. White elf academy: James Wolcott, Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York (Anchor, 2011), 67.
Don’t answer: Kellow, Pauline Kael, 167.
an arrogantly silly book: John Gregory Dunne, “Pauline,” in Quintana and Friends (Penguin, 2012).
Chapter Ten: Didion
a princess fantasy: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” New Yorker, November 11, 1972.
Two tough little numbers: Dunne, “Pauline.”
I didn’t realize then: “Joan Didion: The Art of Nonfiction No. 1,” Paris Review, Spring 2006.
Her father, Frank: Details about Didion’s family here drawn from Tracy Daugherty, The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion (St. Martin’s, 2015).
Really?: Where I Was From (Vintage, 2003), 211.
nothing was irrevocable: “Farewell to the Enchanted City,” Saturday Evening Post, January 14, 1967, republished as “Goodbye to All That” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968).
Talk to anyone whose work: “Jealousy: Is It a Curable Illness?” Vogue, June 1961.
I was writing pieces that I just sent out: “Telling Stories in Order to Live,” Interview on the occasion of the National Book Award, June 3, 2006, formerly available online, copy author’s own files.
a stunningly predictable Sarah Lawrence girl: “Finally (Fashionably) Spurious,” National Review, November 18, 1961.
The smoke of creation rises: “The Current Cinema,” New Yorker, November 11, 1972.
Self-absorption is general: “Letter from ‘Manhattan,’“ New York Review of Books, August 16, 1979.
What man in his forties: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” New Yorker, October 27, 1980.
Let me lay it on the line: “Movies,” Vogue, February 1, 1964.
possibly the only seduction ever screened: “Movies,” Vogue, March 1, 1964.
tends to play these things: “Movies,” Vogue, June 1, 1964.
try to pass off as sociological: “Movies,” Vogue, November 1, 1964.
More embarrassing than most: “Movies,” Vogue, May 1, 1965.
it is easy to Dial-a-Devotion: “How Can I Tell Them There’s Nothing Left,” Saturday Evening Post, May 7, 1966, republished as “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
We recognize these feelings: Letter to the editor by Howard Weeks, Saturday Evening Post, June 18, 1966.
frail, lazy and unsuited: “The Big Rock Candy Figgy Pudding Pitfall,” Saturday Evening Post, December 3, 1966.
Some instinct, programmed by all the movies: “Farewell to the Enchanted City.”
She has told me that the governor: “Pretty Nancy,” Saturday Evening Post, June 1, 1968.
I thought we were getting along: Nancy Skelton, “Nancy Reagan: Does She Run the State Or the Home?” Fresno Bee, June 12, 1968.
I ask a couple of girls what they do: “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Saturday Evening Post, September 23, 1967.
The majority of the flower children: Letter to the editor by Sunnie Brentwood, Saturday Evening Post, November 4, 1967.
one of the least celebrated and most talented: “Places, People and Personalities,” New York Times, July 21, 1968.
Journalism by women is the price: “Her Heart’s with the Wagon Trains,” Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 1968.
Joan Didion: Writer with Razor’s Edge: See article of this title in the Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1970.
Slouching Towards Joan Didion: See article of this title in Newsday, October 2, 1971.
a creature of many advantages: Alfred Kazin, “Joan Didion, Portrait of a Professional,” Harper’s, December 1971.
some of the guys are going out: The Year of Magical Thinking (Vintage, 2006), 111.
My husband switches off the television set: “A Problem of Making Connections,” Life, December 9, 1969.
very New England: “The Women’s Movement,” New York Times, July 30, 1972.
enslaved because she persists: Didion was quoting from Wendy Martin, ed. The American Sisterhood: Writings of the Feminist Movement from Colonial Times to the Present (Harper and Row, 1972).
this litany of trivia: “The Women’s Movement.”
The impulse to find solutions: “African Stories,” Vogue, October 1, 1965.
Isn’t it interesting: Susan Brownmiller, letter to the editor, New York Times, August 27, 1972.
We tell ourselves stories: “The White Album,” in The White Album (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 11.
all the day’s misinformation: Ibid., 142.
I used to wonder how Pauline Kael: “Hollywood: Having Fun,” New York Review of Books, March 22, 1973.
A possible reason: Letter to the editor, New York Review of Books, April 19, 1973.
Self-absorption is general: “Letter from ‘Manhattan.’“
Oh, wow: “They’ll Take Manhattan,” New York Review of Books, October 11, 1979.
Donner Party: Wolcott, Lucking Out, 61.
all the elements in the puzzle: “Love and Death in the Pacific,” New York Times Book Review, April 22, 1984.
a special kind of practical information: Salvador (Vintage, 2011), 17.
The narrative is made up: “Insider Baseball,” New York Review of Books, October 27, 1988.
Chapter Eleven: Ephron
The first day: Heartburn (Knopf, 1983), 3.
be the heroine of your life: Commencement address to Wellesley College, 1996, available online at http://www.wellesley.edu/events/commencement/archives/1996commencement.
frail and tiny and twinkly: “Dorothy Parker” in Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble (Vintage, 1972), 168.
to see if it was good enough: See Henry Ephron, We Thought We Could Do Anything (Norton, 1977), 12–13.
If I haven’t raised you: Eulogy for Phoebe Ephron, printed as “Epilogue,” in We Thought We Could Do Anything, 209.
She was not doctrinaire: Ibid., 211.
One day she wasn’t an alcoholic: “The Legend,” from I Remember Nothing (Random House, 2010), 37.
She knew, I think, that she was dying: “Epilogue,” in We Thought, 210.
strictly infantile: Bosley Crowther, “The Screen,” New York Times, December 20, 1944.
P.S. I’m the only one in my class: Henry and Phoebe Ephron, Take Her, She’s Mine (Samuel French, 2011), 18.
Tempest of Mirth: Thomas R. Dash, “Bringing Up Father Theme Yields Tempest of Mirth,” Women’s Wear Daily, December 26, 1961.
told interestingly: “Take Her, She’s Mine,” Variety, November 29, 1961.
Writers are always selling somebody out: Preface to Slouching Towards Bethlehem, xiv.
It would never have crossed my mind: “Journalism: A Love Story,” in I Remember Nothing.
I feel bad: “Dorothy Schiff and the New York Post,” Esquire, April 1, 1975.
People who are drawn to journalism: Introduction to Wallflower at the Orgy (Bantam, 2007), 18.
she’d never marry if she read too much: New York Post, September 23, 1967.
As in let them read schlock: “Dorothy Schiff and the New York Post.”
I think she’s a spider: A clip of this interview appears in Everything Is Copy, dir. Jacob Bernstein (2016).
more devoted to language than to people: Meg Ryan, interview, in Everything Is Copy, dir. Jacob Bernstein (2016).
Twenty-five years ago, Howard Roark laughed: “A Strange Kind of Simplicity,” New York Times, May 5, 1968.
I also got letters asking me: “Dick Cavett Reads Books,” New York Times, June 2, 1968.
a saucy, snoopy, bitchy man: Review of Do You Sleep in the Nude? New York Times, July 21, 1968.
lunch is two hours out there: “Where Bookmen Meet to Eat,” New York Times, June 22, 1969.
ten thousand dollars a year before 1974: Interview with Michael Lasky, Writer’s Digest, April 1974, reprinted in Nora Ephron: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Melville House, 2015).
something a little embarrassing: “Women’s Wear Daily Unclothed,” Cosmopolitan, January 1968, reprinted in Wallflower at the Orgy.
She is demonstrating: “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help,” Esquire, February 1970, reprinted as “If You’re a Little Mouseburger, Come with Me. I Was a Mooseburger and I Will Help You,” in Wallflower at the Orgy.
the little princess: Joan Didion, “Bosses Make Lousy Lovers,” Saturday Evening Post, January 30, 1965.
forgave Ephron: Nora Ephron: The Last Interview.
kitsch killed: “Mush,” Esquire, June 1971.
There are times: Introduction to Wallflower at the Orgy.
Why not use a Band-Aid: “Some Words About My Breasts,” Esquire, May 1972.
Writing a column on women in Esquire: “Women,” Esquire, July 1972.
If I could know for sure: Alix Kates Shulman, Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen (Knopf, 1972), 17.
an ugly girl in America: “On Never Having Been a Prom Queen,” Esquire, August 1972.
It’s her baby, damn it: “Miami,” Esquire, November 1972.
blood, birth and death: “Vaginal Politics” in Crazy Salad.
I think that piece: Interview with Joan Didion by Christopher Bollen, V, available online at http://www.christopherbollen.com/archive/joan_didion.pdf.
a deodorant for the external genital area: “Dealing with the uh, Problem,” Esquire, March 1973.
Once I tried to explain to a fellow feminist: “On Never Having Been a Prom Queen.”
recurring ironies of this movement: “Truth and Consequences,” Esquire, May 1973.
Dashiell Hammett used to say: “A Star Is Born,” New York Magazine, October 1973.
As near as possible: Quoted in “Guccione’s Ms. Print,” New York, October 29, 1973.
As one journalist put it: “Women: The Littlest Nixon,” New York, December 24, 1973.
full of nonsense: See, e.g., “The Legend,” in I Remember Nothing, 37.
You can be malevolent: This clip appears in Everything Is Copy.
You can write the most wonderful piece: Jurate Karickas, “After Book, Friends No More,” Atlanta Constitution, August 3, 1975.
there are certain magazines: Nora Ephron: The Last Interview.
We decided to get married on Sunday: Peter Stone, “Nora Ephron: ‘I Believe in Learning the Craft of Writing,’“ Newsday, December 5, 1976.
We meet outside a Chinese restaurant: “The Story of My Life in 5,000 Words or Less,” in I Feel Bad About My Neck (Knopf, 2006).
When you slip on a banana peel: Ibid., 86.
Nora is a much classier person: Jesse Kornbluth, “Scenes from a Marriage,” New York Magazine, March 14, 1983.
Chapter Twelve: Arendt & McCarthy & Hellman
HEINRICH DIED: Telegram from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, November 1–2, 1970, reprinted in Between Friends.
I am now sitting: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, November 22, 1970, reprinted in Between Friends.
The first time I heard her: “Saying Good-By to Hannah,” New York Review of Books, January 22, 1976.
on her bare shriveled arms: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Ben O’Sullivan, February 26, 1980, in the Mary McCarthy Papers at Vassar.
The only one I can think of: The Dick Cavett Show, October 17, 1979, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 673.
reckless: Irving Howe, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 674.
with that smile of hers: Jane Kramer, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 674.
I guess I never thought of you: Dick Cavett, “Lillian, Mary and Me,” New Yorker, December 16, 2002.
I haven’t seen her: “Miss Hellman Suing a Critic for $2.25 Million,” New York Times, February 16, 1980.
They are both splendid writers: Norman Mailer, “An Appeal to Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy,” New York Times, May 11, 1980.
my unspecialized study of apocryphism: Martha Gellhorn, “Guerre de Plume,” Paris Review, Spring 1981.
It was quite a while: Nora Ephron, introduction to Imaginary Friends (Vintage, 2009).
Chapter Thirteen: Adler
Mr. Shawn felt: Lili Anolik, “Warren Beatty, Pauline Kael, and an Epic Hollywood Mistake,” Vanity Fair, February 2017.
Now, When the Lights Go Down, a collection: “The Perils of Pauline,” New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980.
depressing, vengeful, ceaseless tirade: Letter from Matthew Wilder to the editor, New York Review of Books, February 5, 1980.
the staff critics I know: John Leonard, “What Do Writers Think of Reviews and Reviewers?” New York Times, August 7, 1980.
I’m sorry that Ms. Adler: Time, July 27, 1980.
as assertively and publicly ‘private’: Jesse Kornbluth, “The Quirky Brilliance of Renata Adler,” New York, December 12, 1983.
thin, rather Biblical-looking: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Carmen Angleton, August 29, 1961, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 499.
I was surprised: Quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 500.
His book begins: Review of John Hersey’s Here to Stay, Commentary, April 1963.
included a coloring book: “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker, December 8, 1962.
In literary criticism, polemic is short-lived: “Polemic and the New Reviewing,” New Yorker, July 4, 1964.
After the Second World War: Ibid.
To Miss Arendt’s quiet, moral, rational document: “Comment,” New Yorker, July 20, 1963.
If anyone was … sitting adoringly: Gone: The Last Days of the “New Yorker” (Simon and Schuster, 1999), 82.
strict parent: Interview with Christopher Bollen, Interview, August 14, 2014.
did not care for Ms. Sontag: Gone, 33.
It’s not that Hannah Arendt: Adler said this during a Q&A for a lecture given on the research in progress for this book at the New York Institute for the Humanities in November 2015.
First, “everyone I know” occurs fourteen times: “Polemic and the New Reviewing,” New Yorker, July 4, 1964.
Though I may have read things: Irving Kristol, “On Literary Politics,” New Leader, August 3, 1964.
Word came that Mrs. Viola Liuzzo: “Letter from Selma,” New Yorker, April 10, 1965.
East Coast’s Joan Didion: Jesse Kornbluth, “The Quirky Brilliance of Renata Adler,” New York, December 12, 1983.
a growing fringe of waifs: “Fly Trans Love Airways,” New Yorker, February 25, 1967.
He began to yodel: Ibid.
I am part of an age group: Introduction to Toward a Radical Middle: Fourteen Pieces of Reporting and Criticism (Dutton, 1971).
Even if your idea of a good time: “A Teutonic Striptease,” New Yorker, January 4, 1968.
among the most fond: “Norman Mailer’s Mailer,” New York Times, January 8, 1968.
Renata Adler, of the New York Times, did not like: This advertisement was quoted by the court in Adler v. Condé Nast Publications, Inc., 643 F. Supp. 1558 (S.D.N.Y. 1986).
Both her supporters and detractors: Lee Beauport, “Trade Making Chart on Renata Adler; but Some Like Her Literary Flavor,” Variety, March 6, 1968.
One of the things democracy may be: “How Movies Speak to Young Rebels,” New York Times, May 19, 1968.
Maybe it is an anti-Mummy reflex: “Science + Sex = Barbarella,” New York Times, October 12, 1968.
learn to write to deadline: Interview with Christopher Bollen, Interview, August 14, 2014.
spoke with a kind of awe: Pitch Dark (NYRB Classics, 2013), 5.
Whatever their other motives: Renata Adler, Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al.; Sharon v. Time (Knopf, 1986).
she too often surrenders: Ronald Dworkin, “The Press on Trial,” New York Review of Books, February 26, 1987.
claimed she had snowed them: See Robert Gottlieb, Avid Reader: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), 220.
comically incurious: Gone, 203.
an explosion of pain and anger: Robert Gottlieb, “Ms. Adler, the New Yorker, and Me,” New York Observer, January 17, 2000.
contrary to his reputation: Gone, 125.
If I did not wish to “disclose” my “sources”: “A Court of No Appeal,” Harper’s, August 2000.
The six-volume Starr Report: “Decoding the Starr Report,” Vanity Fair, February 1999.
I’ve said it all along: Rachel Cooke, “Renata Adler: ‘I’ve Been Described as Shrill. Isn’t That Strange?’“ Guardian, July 7, 2013.
Chapter Fourteen: Malcolm
Almost everyone else in the analytic world: In the Freud Archives (Knopf, 1983), 35.
Everything he said and thought: Ibid., 133
the kindergarten teacher saying: “Janet Malcolm: The Art of Nonfiction No. 4,” interview with Katie Roiphe, Paris Review, Spring 2011.
I went to see: “A Star Is Borne,” New Republic, December 24, 1956.
Outside the theatre: “Black and White Trash,” New Republic, September 2, 1957.
it is hard to tell about this: Letter to the editor by James F. Hoyle, New Republic, September 9, 1957.
the leading authorities everywhere: Letter to the editor by Hal Kaufman, New Republic, September 30, 1957.
awful nuisance: “D. H. Lawrence and His Friends,” New Republic, February 3, 1958.
One is forced to add: Letter to the editor by Norman Mailer, New Republic, March 9, 1959.
Our children are a mirror of belief: “Children’s Books for Christmas,” New Yorker, December 17, 1966.
I don’t know how Dr. Lasagna: “Children’s Books for Christmas,” New Yorker, December 14, 1968.
In any case, a woman who chooses: “Help! Homework for the Liberated Woman,” New Republic, October 10, 1970.
As for those that raise questions of substance: “No Reply,” New Republic, November 14, 1970.
who, as yet, is better known for his wife: “About the House,” New Yorker, March 18, 1972.
Rereading these essays: Preface to Diana and Nikon (Aperture, 1997).
The [Walker] Evans book: “Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Pa.,” New Yorker, August 6, 1979.
Innocently opening the book: “Artists and Lovers,” New Yorker, March 12, 1979.
Family therapy will take over: “The One-Way Mirror,” New Yorker, May 15, 1978.
The empty couch: Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (Knopf, 1977), 47.
mischievous: Joseph Adelson, “Not Much Has Changed Since Freud,” New York Times, September 27, 1981.
I was attracted to psychoanalytic work: Psychoanalysis, 110.
an intellectual gigolo: Ibid., 41.
what Anna Freud once said to me: Ibid., 38.
a masterwork of character assassination: https://www.salon.com/2000/02/29/malcolm/.
I wonder if he ever cared: Ibid., 163.
The portrait, in fact: Letter to the editor by Janet Malcolm, New York Times, June 1, 1984.
numerous commentators: See, e.g., Robert Boynton, “Who’s Afraid of Janet Malcolm?” Mirabella, November 1992, available at http://www.robertboynton.com/articleDisplay.php?article_id=1534.
I should have known: “Janet Malcolm: The Art of Nonfiction No. 4.”
Any journalist who is not too stupid: The Journalist and the Murderer (Vintage, 1990), 3.
Well, it was a bit of rhetoric: I remember this remark from Malcolm’s appearance with Ian Frazier at the New Yorker Festival on September 30, 2011.
He is a kind of confidence man: The Journalist and the Murderer, 3.
Miss Malcolm appears: Albert Scardino, “Ethics, Reporters, and the New Yorker,” New York Times, March 21, 1989.
fellow workers recording politicians’ doings: Ron Grossman, “Malcolm’s Charge Turns on Itself,” Chicago Tribune, March 28, 1990.
David Rieff stuck up for her: David Rieff, “Hoisting Another by Her Own Petard,” Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1990.
What Janet Malcolm was saying: Nora Ephron in the Columbia Journalism Review, July 1, 1989.
I thought Malcolm’s articles were marvelous: Jessica Mitford in the Columbia Journalism Review, July 1, 1989.
confession of Malcolm’s sins: John Taylor, “Holier Than Thou,” New York, March 27, 1989.
Masson was too honest: David Margolick, “Psychoanalyst Loses Libel Suit Against a New Yorker Reporter,” New York Times, November 3, 1994.
Who hasn’t felt pleasure: “Janet Malcolm: The Art of Nonfiction No. 4.”
then dropping him again: “The Morality of Journalism,” New York Review of Books, March 1, 1990.
Unlike the “I” of autobiography: The Journalist and the Murderer, 159–60.
Forty-One False Starts: See article of that title in the New Yorker, July 11, 1994.
She had once: The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (Vintage, 1995), 13.
official history: Letter from Ted Hughes, quotes in The Silent Woman, 53.
I saw what he was getting at: Ibid., 48.
At lunch I made a mess: Letter from Janet Malcolm to Susan Sontag, dated October 3, 1998, in the Susan Sontag Archive at UCLA.
I had formed the idea of writing: “A Girl of the Zeitgeist,” New Yorker, October 20, 27, 1986.
Afterword
Exceptional women in my generation: Speech given by Mary McCarthy at City Arts and Lectures, San Francisco, October 1985, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 710.
To read such a book: Adrienne Rich, “Conditions for Work: The Common World of Women,” in On Lies, Secrets and Silence (Norton, 1979).
simple-minded: Adrienne Rich and Susan Sontag, “Feminism and Fascism: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books, March 20, 1975.
That piece was about: Interview with Christopher Bollen, undated, available online at http://www.christopherbollen.com/archive/joan_didion.pdf.
When you are all alone: Arendt, Varnhagen, 218.