Gasp!

Hard Times: The 30s

If you don't know much about the Great Depression and would like to learn more, there's no shame in reading "Hard Times: The 30s" from Time-Life Books. It will give you an overview of what life was like during the decade, and the pictures are fabulous.

The best part of the book are the factoids. Radio schedules, annual salaries and snippets of radio show scripts are interspersed throughout the text. For those writing about the 30s, these features are priceless.

Example: A union man listens to Eddie Cantor's Camel Caravan on a Friday night at 7:30 tries to do the jitterbug. His girlfriend comes in and pronounces him an ickie.

Theoretically Speaking
Books like "Hard Times" aim to collect the political, social and cultural realms into one coherent picture. It's a provocative vision.

Technology has created a cultural shift, from creative to literal. Radio shows required listeners to imagine events. Now, we can create worlds where violence happens and the consequences are within our control. Are we a less creative and more dependent society as a result of this change?

Yes. Between pictures of the Great Depression and Jean Harlow are more aggressive visions: Richard Frankensteen getting beaten for handing out union pamphlets at a Ford plant, for instance. Another picture shows a family migrating so they can find work. Some made unfortunate political decisions and chose to act upon them, as woman at the communist rally reveals.

Today it's hard to get worked up about much of anything. Economic downturns are taken for granted; prolonged wars are fought. It's still - as always - business as usual.

Compared to the days of the Great Depression, we're a society who brazenly feels immortal... Demoralized and immortal - a depressing combination.

Musings on Mary McCarthy

Intellectual Memoirs
New York 1936-1938
by Mary McCarthy
Harcourt Brace and Company,1992, 134 pages

Just who did Mary McCarthy sleep with and why? The question needs to be asked, evidently, because it warranted writing a book. Actually, it has probably given McCarthy more than enough to write about throughout the years.

For writers of the female persuasion, McCarthy offers a glimmer of hope. She refuses to castrate her breasts and vagina to the cause of being taken seriously. After all, how many of us have been slammed for being “too female” in our own work.

I’ll never forget the night I went out with a group of writers, only to have one of the wives tell me that my writing was too girlish. What made the moment fascinating, in hindsight, was that she very obviously chose her intellect over her femininity. I recognized it because I’ve done the same thing. And so here we both were, two women who couldn’t come to grips with the idea of having both a vagina and a mind. And our only recourse was to “out-man” each other. She slammed me for being “too girlish” and therefore, “not intellectual enough.” I could slam her (in my own thoughts) for living her intellectual life vicariously through her husband.

After leaving the event, I couldn’t remember her name. But I could never forget our unfortunate connection in that moment.

This is what I like about Mary McCarthy. She was a writer who was comfortable with her gender, sexuality and intellect. This book covers three years of her life, 1936-1938. Her relationships with Philip Rahv and Edmund Wilson are touched upon, along with her philosophical affinity with Trotsky. The last chapter, her marriage to Wilson, is the shortest. Subsequently, it feels incomplete. Indeed, the ending gives the impression that McCarthy is in an irreconcilable pickle. Drunk and crazed on their wedding night, Wilson believes her brothers are part of Stalin’s secret police force. He accuses her of being in cahoots with them.

“That badly injured marriage lasted seven more years, though it is true that it never recovered.”

The last thought from this chapter begs for another. Unfortunately, it will never be finished.