Books: The Gripe

• Share

THE COMPANY SHE KEPT by Doris Grumbach. 218 pages. Coward McCann. $6.00.

This book, dubbed "A Revealing Portrait of Mary McCarthy," is hardly that, and in fact might well have been remaindered to English-Lit supplementary reading lists were it not for the mini-Manchester-style row that it started.

Doris Grumbach. 48, professor of English at the College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y., went to Paris in January 1966 to interview the author of The Group, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and The Company She Keeps. Specifically, she was after biographical detail that would support her unstartling thesis that McCarthy's books are partly autobiographical.

Over lunch and later into a tape recorder, McCarthy, 55, unwound yards and yards of chitchat about her work, her thoughts, her four marriages and her love affairs. But when McCarthy saw the galley proofs, she blew her top and, says the professor, "utterly slashed" them. After much acrimonious palaver, the manuscript was finally approved, with some deletions and revisions.

Author McCarthy is still furious, and perhaps with reason. For one thing, Professor Grumbach insists that the characters in The Group are largely based on people whom McCarthy knew at Vassar, but she does not name them. Moreover, she makes no real effort to explore McCarthy's considerable talent and wit, or even her expertise at haute cuisine.

As for the scandalous details promised by the publishers—well, they have either been mostly deleted or they were grossly overrated. True, a few of McCarthy's less discreet remarks have been recorded, such as her comment when discussing Husband No. 4, U.S. State Department Official James West: "None of my husbands was good-looking. Of course I've had affairs with good-looking men, but I've never married one—until now."

Also there is an uproarious domestic scene with Husband No. 2, Critic Edmund Wilson.* It was first recorded in 1946 in court, when McCarthy was seeking her separation from Wilson. Seems that after a party one night, Mrs. Wilson asked Mr. Wilson to take out the garbage. Mr. Wilson not only declined but made an ironical bow and said: "Empty it yourself." Whereupon, testified Mrs. Wilson, "I slapped him—not terribly hard—went out and emptied the cans, then went upstairs. He called me and I came down. He got up from the sofa and took a terrible swing and hit me in the face and all over. He said, 'You think you're unhappy with me. Well, I'll give you something to be unhappy about.' "

Quite a number of people will know just how Mr. Wilson felt, and may even raise a belated cheer. It is comforting to know that this pair of intellectual Olympians could be gripped by ordinary domestic passions. But apart from such incidental benefits, The Company She Kept is an overblown and not particularly clever literary bio-critique.