Novels 1963-1979: The Group / Birds of America / Cannibals and Missionaries

With unflinching honesty and cool, crisp prose, Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) transformed the scope and style of twentieth-century American literature. In the sensational best seller The Group and in other novels and stories she moved the experience of modern women front and center, inspiring generations of readers and writers. Now Library of America and editor Thomas Mallon present the second volume of her collected edition of her fiction, showcasing her last three novels. When The Group, McCarthy’s fifth novel, was published in 1963, it spent five months atop the New York Times Best Sellers list and remained on the list for close to two years. Released almost simultaneously with Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Adrienne Rich’s Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, it landed squarely amid the turmoil of second-wave feminism, electrifying readers and outraging critics with its unabashed portrayal of female sexuality, its blistering satire of social conventions, and its powerful demonstration that so-called women’s issues were the stuff of serious literature. Interweaving the stories of eight members of Vassar’s Class of 1933 as they embark on post-graduate life, McCarthy treats subjects like contraception, breastfeeding, infidelity, and the tension between career and family in a matter of fact tone that was, and in many ways still is, startlingly provocative. The Group remains a brilliant portrait of an age and a timeless masterpiece of the storyteller’s art. Birds of America (1971), a very different kind of book, is a quixotic coming of age story set against the backdrop of the war in Vietnam and the loss of American innocence. In 1964, Peter Levi, an idealistic nineteen-year-old enamored with Kantian philosophy, takes flight from his small New England village and vivacious mother and migrates to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, determined to put his scrupulous code of ethics into practice. His encounters with a series of Americans abroad force him to confront the limits of philosophy as he finds his own place in the world. In Cannibals and Missionaries (1979), a book with profound resonances for today, the taking of a Middle East–bound plane by hijackers becomes in McCarthy’s hands a study in the psychology of both the terrorists and the hostages, and an ironic meditation on the power and value of art. As a special feature this volume also presents McCarthy’s 1979 essay “The Novels that Got Away,” about her uncompleted fiction.