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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 Conversatio
n 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.