INTELLECTUAL MEMOIRS: New York 1936-1938 by...

INTELLECTUAL MEMOIRS: New York 1936-1938 by Mary McCarthy (Harcourt Brace & Company: $9.95; 134 pp.). McCarthy blends politics, literature and sex in these gossipy recollections of life among Manhattan’s left-wing literati. During the late ‘30s, “An orthodoxy was cracking, like ice floes on the Volga,” as New York’s liberal intelligentsia split into Stalinite and Trotskyite factions. This division proved more significant culturally than politically, as it involved many prominent critics, authors and editors. McCarthy’s unblushing account (including the affair that lead to her unhappy marriage to Edmund Wilson) imbues the era with a racy vivacity. Carol Brightman’s notes identify many bright young intellectuals whose radiance has faded and the models for some of the characters in McCarthy’s fiction.