A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays
Encyclopedia
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays is a collection of essays and reviews by Mary McCarthy
. Although McCarthy was best known for her novels and memoirs, this collection, which spans from the 1930s to the 1970s, illuminates her prowess as a prolific essayist and critic. The essays include McCarthy's commentary on topics ranging from American realist playwrights to women's fashion magazines, from left-wing politics to the nineteenth-century novel, as well as writings on Vladimir Nabokov
, J. D. Salinger
, Vietnam
, Italo Calvino
, and Leo Tolstoy
. In New York Times critic A. O. Scott
's introduction to the work, Scott attempts to justify McCarthy's "witty savagery", as the collection's essays reveal McCarthy's unmitigated seriousness and rigor that were sometimes muzzled in her works of fiction.
Mary McCarthy (author)
Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
. Although McCarthy was best known for her novels and memoirs, this collection, which spans from the 1930s to the 1970s, illuminates her prowess as a prolific essayist and critic. The essays include McCarthy's commentary on topics ranging from American realist playwrights to women's fashion magazines, from left-wing politics to the nineteenth-century novel, as well as writings on Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980....
, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
, and Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
. In New York Times critic A. O. Scott
A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott, known as A. O. Scott , is an American journalist and critic. He is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with Manohla Dargis.-Background and education:...
's introduction to the work, Scott attempts to justify McCarthy's "witty savagery", as the collection's essays reveal McCarthy's unmitigated seriousness and rigor that were sometimes muzzled in her works of fiction.