Monthly Archives: August 2026

My Favorite Academic Satire: Mary McCarthy’s “The Groves of Academe”

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Mary McCarthy, the 20th-century novelist, critic, and essayist, taught English for two semesters in 1945 and 1946 at Bard College, a progressive college. McCarthy taught a class in The Modern Novel that only went as far as Henry James.  This may have been a low point for McCarthy, because she wrote an academic satire of Bard.

The Groves of Academe, set during the Communist witch hunts and McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, mocks the instructors and professors, the “progressive” curriculum, and the college bureaucrats.  The hero, Henry Mulcahy, a brilliant, lazy professor who doesn’t turn in his evaluations on time and sometimes forgets to meet with “tutees,” receives a letter from the college president informing him that his contract won’t be renewed at Jocelyn College.

Hen is not as broken-hearted as you would think.  Instead, he goes into battle mode, plotting and scheming to save his job.  This is the end of the line for him: he has been fired from so many colleges and universities that there’s no going back, and he must support his wife and five children. He considers this job beneath him (he is the only Ph.D. at Jocelyn College), but he got the job only because two of his friends asked the college president for a favor.  

And yet it is simply unimaginable that Hen would get fired!  Jocelyn College might be a step above “Drake and Montana,” he muses, but isn’t he the best professor here (perhaps on his good days!)? Well, this is comic hubris, but it is true that some of his colleagues are similarly lax, and don’t get fired.

Hen is a comic character, but he is not a sympathetic character. The effect of his campaign on his supporters , especially Domna, a new instructor, almost witchily alters her character. She fibbed, almost lied, during a meeting about Henry with Maynard, the college president. And she wonders coldly why she didn’t tell Maynard that Henry’s confession of party membership implicated Maynard as well in these times.

McCarthy writes, “As soon as this devilish idea reached her full consciousness, she expelled it as wicked and useless – it could only end in ineffectuality or in both men’s losing their jobs. Yet the fact that it could have proposed itself to her so readily, easily, and naturally gave her a disturbing shock.”

Hen, of course, has no such doubts. Unlike stumbling, sweet-natured Jim in Kingsley Amis’ academic satire, Lucky Jim, McCarthy’s Hen, a famous Joyce scholar who also writes for The Nation, has few moments of sweetness.   Hen is a trickster, like so many comic heroes.

And yet I am surprised to say that, on a third reading of The Groves of Academe, I dislike Hen less.  His actions at the college are still despicable, but he is a good husband and father, and has good friends at Jocelyn College.

On this reading, I also find that Hen’s politics and philosophy are not entirely wrong, and it’s touching the way his colleagues support him.  One woman even resigns her job.  Pity the woman who resigns her job for a trickster.

During the McCarthy hearings, leftist writers, actors, and professors, and of course others lived in fear.   Hen hints to his colleagues that he is being fired for his Communist affiliations:  he has in fact never been a member of the party, though has attended some Communist lectures.  His colleagues are so indignant about the state of intolerance in the U.S. that they rally round him and work to topple the college president’s vendetta. Hen also claims that his wife is so ill she might die from the shock. It never occurs to them that Hen might be lying, or at least exaggerating.

My guess is that some people at Bard College might have been offended by this satire, but probably most of them laughed. However, McCarthy made a lot of enemies through her writing, and she burned a lot of bridges. Perhaps this wasn’t a bridge she minded burning.

In the City, Part 1:  Initiation

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It’s not as hard as you might think, living in a city. You were blissful in the university town where you loved your studies and made many friends, but you were all kicked out en masse after you finished your degrees.

 You donned a smart dress, or a suit (it was the age of suits), flats instead of walking shoes, flew to a strange city, took a taxi, and finally ended up in a headmaster’s office for the interview.  We chatted about whatever popped into this charming man’s mind. (Hint: it wasn’t movies! He had never heard of Half Moon Street, Slapshot, or the screwball comedy classic, The More the Merrier.)  The assistant head plied me with tea in a china cup and saucer, and gave me two Pepperidge Farm cookies.  And then they hired me for the job. 

In this beautiful city, I went to art museums, saw Aristophanes’ The Birds at a theater, frequented a bookstore and record shop near my apartment and nerdily attended a lecture on Hesiod.

Anyway, my husband (then boyfriend) found a job in another city, where we could live more cheaply. After we got married by a Justice of the Peace – it was moving, because it was just us and the words – we drove the Ryder truck to our new home.

Having lived in cities for many years, my husband was pragmatic about the ups and downs.  At that time, the supermarkets were closed on Sunday. This was, indeed, a strange custom for a city.

 I took the optimistic view of life in this city.  “Well, it’s gray.  I like gray.  Do you suppose it’s like Seattle?”  My husband roared with laughter.  “Good one!” He may have thought I was joking…

And then I decided to get tough about it. “At least all the s___ is on the surface,”  I said daringly.

He put a wrestler’s hold on me before turning it into a hug.”Well, I would say there are sewers, too.”

Everything was perfect at first.  We loved our duplex,  were able to walk to the grocery store, and the lake was only a mile away.

And then the alley took on a new life.

Every night, night after night, people partied in the alley and took drugs.   I have trouble sleeping anyway, and the parties kept me awake. I got up one night while my husband slept to ask if they could take the party elsewhere.

I’ve always been a peaceful person. but there are limits. I started to cry as I made my request.

A thin, careworn man with dilated eyes muttered, “Sorry, dear.  You look like you could use some sleep.” They duly left their “camp” and went somewhere else. Whenever I saw him afterwards, we nodded Hello. One day, we sat together on the bus, and told each other our stories. He was an emergency room doctor. “It pays well and no one wants to work there.” And then he looked at my tired eyes. “I advise you to get more sleep.’

He was right. Sleep matters! My job was exhausting. I loved the work, but felt I did nothing but commute back and forth (two trains, a bus, and a brisk walk),. 

And things changed: I found other work that I loved. That is the key to happiness at certain stages of life, and I look back at that time fondly.

My Favorite Poem by Chuck Miller

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“Late September” by Chuck Miller

you wake slowly without abruptness
as though there were no line between sleep and consciousness
and see the leaves variegate the woodland floor
in some diagonal drift,
gray skies with the smell of wetness in the air
the flurries of wind sound
as though your relatives were arguing again
in the trees,
but in truth their arguments have ceased
for some stopped with earth
and you remember that yesterday
suddenly in a moment of consciousness
you could not speak on the surface of things
there was only a feeling
a long grasp of memory
and now that too has passed

the birds make insistencies with their cries
and you wait for the water to boil
to wash the dishes
think of the trees that fell last night on the farm
and your dog asleep in her place
practicing perhaps
for the longs sleep not long to come

The Pursuit of Happiness

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The pursuit of happiness is a personal quest.  Sometimes it’s achieved by meditation, other times it’s drinking green tea; other times it’s taking a bicycle ride; still others it’s reading a good book. 

Here are four suggested Happiest Day of Your Life activities.  Warning: These are for Nerds and Homebodies. 

HAVE A PAJAMA DAY. Stay home from work and wear your favorite cat pajamas, which is the most adorable outfit in your wardrobe anyway, and if you wear the oversized CAT MOM t-shirt with it, you can wear it in public. Truly, you wear a lot of odd non-pajama outfits, too, most of which you meant to return to Lands End, Ultimately you own what you order, you wear what you buy, so it’s best to buy pajamas.

2. RESOLVE NEVER TO READ ANYONE EXCEPT MARY MCCARTHY.  McCarthy was the best, wittiest, most brilliant novelist of the 20th century (Birds of America, The Groves of Academe, A Charmed Life), but people read only her beach book, The Group.  I love her personal style: she married four times, wrote brilliant articles about the McCarthy hearings, and a hilarious  novel based on a political commune established by friends and a former lover (Oasis). She made enemies, though: she once said on The Dick Cavett show that the only true word that ever came out of Lillian Hellman’s mouth was “The.” 

3. DATE NIGHT.  Date night doesn’t have to be at night. Date mornings are altogether different. They are all about wearing glasses and reading The New York Times over brunch or reading aloud.  Yes, of course we’re nerds!  Last year we sat in the park, and over a series of weekends, read aloud Alice Thomas Ellis’s humorous novel, Pillars of Gold. So smart and funny!

4.    THE GREAT OUTDOORS.  You love the outdoors!  Trees, rivers, wildflowers, lakes, beaches, benches, boats, fishing (you draw the line at that), and discussing playwright Lillian Hellman and her lover Dashiell Hammet. ( Lillian writes, while Dash fishes!). They were the ideal 20th-century couple. Try to emulate them! Dash wrote few books, but The Thin Man is a classic. As for Lillian, I love her memoirs.

LET ME KNOW YOUR OWN HAPPIEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE ACTIVITIES.  Don’t be afraid to overshare, even if it involves board games, because we’re nerds, too!   

Generational Nostalgia:  Chuck Miller’s “start up the music again”

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Garrison Keillor once read a poem by Chuck Miller on The Writer’s Almanac. That’s how I rediscovered Miller’s poems. He writes about nature, his dog (rescued from a dental lab), living in a shack, and continually reminds himself why he’s an anarchist.

Miller built a rough shack in the 1980s, using egg cartons as insulation. It is nothing like Thoreau’s shack. It looks barely livable.

And I am saddened by Miller’s rough life-style. How? Why? He earned a BS in Science and Math at the University of Illinois, an MA in philosophy at the Southern Illinois University, and an MFA from The Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. How could he not find a good job?

But I’m here to share my enthusiasm for his book, Northern Lights: New & Selected Poems (1994). The poem “start up the music again” especially resonates with me.

Chuck Miller and his shack.

An excerpt from “start up the music again,” by Chuck Miller

but there is a hunger for those other times
when if we were more desperate for everything
we were also more alive
in some other way,
you seek out this sense
without knowing how
exactly you are going about it
but what is it
…the memory of our lost youth…
or something generational
that now seems almost past for us
or that once we struck out against them
and made a life, at least for a while
so completely different
from their own




Chuck Miller, the least silent of poets, was a member of the Silent Generation. When he wasn’t writing poetry, socializing, or rabble-rousing, he was telling truths no one wanted to hear. I saw him at a poetry reading when I was a teenager, and he was very handsome, with a slightly mischievous twinkle.

On the back of the book, Miller is quoted by an editor on what he does not want to see printed on the back of the book.

“The thing I don’t want on the back of my book is a bunch of crap about my degrees, or who I studied with, or my MFA from the University of Iowa, blah-blah, particularly since I ended up absolute enemies with the Writers’ Workshop; it would be ironic, galling, and disgusting to be identified as some product  or protege of theirs.”

.Sometimes Miller was dirt-poor:  He writes a poem about almost taking a telemarketer job.  He was desperate, but when he he saw the crowded room of miserable people, being rated, berated, or praised by a supervisor, he left. He decided he was not that desperate.

He also rages against the food stamps program. He’s been getting food stamps for years, and suddenly they change their procedure, in order, he believes, to make it more difficult for the poor and the immigrants. He is told that everyone must watch a two-hour film on what food stamps are before he gets his stamps. Miller explains that he knows what food stamps are. He has to get back to his job: he doesn’t have time for the bureaucracy.

In one poem, he writes about people with dead eyes on the bus, getting out at the supermarket which sells food that he says will kill them: dyed food with lots of additives, and cheap fruit and vegetables imported from Mexico. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be eating American fruit.

But it is the gentler poem, “the memory of our lost youth/ or something generational.” that haunts me. A snapshot fell out of a book the other day, a faded picture that won’t last much longer, ,of my husband and me in our early twenties on a picnic by the river. What makes me laugh: we wore nearly identical jeans and t-shirts (though mine is pink). We could wear the same clothe then. How sweet we were!

Cheers to Chuck Miller and his book Northern Fields, which I really love. He lived a long life, in spite of his life-style. Some people can live like that, others cannot. And he seemed to appreciate his shack and his country walks, so there was clearly joy in his life.

Reading Mary McCarthy on My Birthday

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I celebrated a Big Birthday this month.  We put many, many candles on the cupcakes, but it was too windy to light them.

There was singing. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you…”

“Happy Birthday to me…”

After a long walk my husband laid down his head on a picnic table and gently snored.  I skootched next to him and read Mary McCarthy’s A Charmed Life, a brilliant satiric novel about life in an artists’ colony in New England. Martha, an aspiring playwright, reluctantly renews her relationship with her domineering ex-husband, Miles. Both are remarried, but he is determined to seduce her. The place abounds with writers, artists, and spouses who drink too much at parties and criticize each other’s lack of talent.  They’re fascinated by the relationship between Martha and MIles.

Such a fun book to read! But McCarthy’s satire was so pungent that she didn’t dare  return to Wellfleet.

I can’t quite imagine the artists’ colony, but I’ll read anything by Mary McCarthy.

The Witch, the Loom, & the Critics

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The Odyssey is the best, the boldest, and the most-hyped movie of the summer. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve read about it; if you haven’t read about it, you’ve seen the trailer; and if you’ve seen the trailer, you probably saw the movie. 

The critics have taken the movie seriously.  Multiple articles and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The TLS, and The London Review of Books. The poet A. E. Stallings (TLS) and the translator Emily Wilson (LRB) went one-on-one in the literary boxing ring. Stallings is an enthusiastic and groupie-ish fan ( in a good way; I’m a groupie, too), while Wilson objects to changes from Homer’s Odyssey and drily mocks the film (in a funny way!).

Since the movie opened in July, Emily Wilson’s popular translation of the Odyssey (2017) has sold a million copies. She has popularized Homer, and let us hope the classics classes are full of Homer fans this fall. My own favorite is Robert Fagle’s literal but elegant translation (1996). My professor’s favorite was Richmond Lattimore’s, which, he thought, was closest to the Greek.

There are many translations, all slightly different, and the movie is extremely bold in its differences from the poem.  In Homer’s epic Circe the witch is known as “the nymph with the lovely braids” or “Circe skilled in spells.” She lives in a palace, with many handmaidens. Circe in the movie (Samantha Morton) is haggard, middle-aged, tricky, and lives in a hut. Morton’s interpretation of Circe is brilliant, a woman ordinary on the surface but full of power.  No one could call her “the nymph with the lovely braids.”  It’s a new, different interpretation of Circe. And it’s perfect for the movie.

Homer’s Circe turns the men into pigs by stirring “her wicked drugs/ to wipe any memory of home.”  In the movie Circe feeds them a grotesque-looking stew, which makes them oink, and she twists and turns their skin to make them pigs.

Some critics have complained that Christopher Nolan, the director/writer, omits the sex scenes. There are not what I’d call sex scenes in Homer’s epic. Occasionally someone “mounts a gorgeous bed.” That’s about it.

But I did find a few lines in Fagles’ translation.  

Circe says to Odysseus, “Come, sheathe your sword, let’s go to bed together, / mount my bed and mix in the magic work of love -. We’ll breed deep trust between us.”    

The actors’ interpretations are splendid:  the most memorable characters are Samantha Morton’s Circe and Matt Damon’s Odysseus. Damon’s Odysseus is quiet and still, even contemplative, though in battle, or in the Cyclop’s cave, he is a “man of twists and turns,” a strategist, and a general.

But it’s the Trojan Horse scene that haunts me.  This black structure of a horse looks less equine than like something I. M. Pei might create in a black mood. Inside the horse, Odysseus and his men are jostled, unable to get a hold on the walls, and one man dies. Finally, in the deep darkness, while the Trojans are sleeping, the Greeks climb out of the horse and unlock the gate so their army can enter the city and attack. And then there’s a moment: Odysseus walks alone toward the city, seeming contemplative, almost regretful, and then rushes forward. Perhaps there is a moment when he realizes what he has wrought..

And I want to add one observation.  In Book X of Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus’ men approach Circe’s palace, there is a reference to Penelope and her loom. Circe is singing as she “glided back and forth/ at her great immortal loom, her enchanting web/ a shimmering glory only goddesses can weave.”  Is Circe, like Penelope, weaving while she waits for an Odysseus? She is a better weaver than Penelope.

A Lost Comic Novel:  Gladys Taber’s “Mrs. Daffodil”

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“‘What type girdle?  What size, Moddom?’ asked the fiercest of the clerks.” – Mrs. Daffodil

Gladys Taber’s, Mrs. Daffodil,  a comic novel set on a farm in Connecticut, is a charming light read suitable for fans of Betty MacDonald and Cornelia Otis Skinner.  Mrs. Daffodil, the author of a popular column called “Butternut Wisdom,” has hundreds of fans who consider her their best friend. Unfortunately, they often drop in.

Mrs. Daffodil is so kind that she never turns them away. She cooks meals for them. In fact, she likes food so much that she also sneaks recipes into her column and romantic short stories.

Taber writes, “One editor complained that after the staff read Mrs. Daffodil’s story (light love) they had rushed out trying to find home-baked beans like those she described.”

When a reporter interviews her, Mrs. Daffodil genuinely can’t remember how long she’s lived on the farm. She babbles charmingly, but the reporter despairs of taking notes.  We do learn, however, that  Mrs. Daffodil and her friend Kay pooled their resources to buy the farm after Kay, devastated by her husband’s death, had a breakdown.

There is plenty about dogs, cats, chickens, and their maid’s horse,  but Taber focuses on the humorous problems of middle-aged woman.

When Mrs. Daffodil goes shopping, “Buying a girdle is a horror…. The lingerie department was filled with languid female figures, and you had to look twice to tell which were live models in the filmy robes and which were plaster. Mrs. Daffodil asked one the way to the girdle department and there was no answer so she raised her voice.” Kay points out Mrs. Daffodil is talking to a mannequin.

 Many readers would enjoy Mrs. Daffodil, but, alas! it is out-of-print.  Too bad: we need humor and wit in 2026.

In Praise of Small Houses

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In the early 21st century, when I was hospitalized for an unidentified illness, which manifested such symptoms as necrosis, Clonus, and hallucinations, the team of doctors, who were experts in their fields, comforted me with humor and optimism. 

“Trial and error,” one said cheerfully.  “I feel we’re getting close.”

“Closer and closer,” said another. 

That was a Paul McCartney song.

“This might be your lucky day.” My favorite doctor handed me a Chinese fortune cookie that said “It’s your lucky day.”.

I still have that fortune. It is in my lucky blue jar, a blue ceramic jar with a bird flying off the lid.

The next day he told me,  “f you were a horse, I’d bet on you.”

“I’m a tired horse right now.”

“Bet you $5 you won’t go downstairs to the cafeteria in your pajamas.”

“Bet’s on, Cookie, dear!” I called him Cookie because of the fortune cookie. I did feel ridiculous in the cafeteria, but I went down in my jams, pink robe and slippers.

And then one day I woke up and was completely well.  No one knew how or why.  The doctors said some cases were like that: they experimented with drug cocktails until they found  the right one. Cookie gave me a pack of peanut M&Ms:  “I know they’re your favorite.”

While I was lying in bed I finally stayed up long enough to read Thoreau. Thoreau was the ultimate downsizer, and I was thinking about downsizing. I imagined us leaving our big, rambling house in a dicey neighborhood plagued by “white flight” to live in a smaller house in a safer neighborhood.

I don’t mean I wanted to live in a shack like Thoreau, but I thought in a smaller house we would live closer together and take up less space.  We would live more simply; we would ultimately be happier. Perhaps I was thinking like Bronson Alcott, the impractical Transcendentalist dreamer who started a vegetarian commune and forgot to plant vegetables. I sincerely hope I am more like his daughter, Louisa May, who wrote a satire of the commune, Transcendental Wild Oats.

Eventually we found a house. It’s not a tiny house, mind, it’s just small, and there are trees in the backyard, and one started out as a weed tree and grew into a tall walnut tree. Our house might be a Sears Roebuck house, or so a carpenter told us. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold house kits that came with blueprints and the materials to build the house. 

Sometimes we feel cooped-up here in winter. It’s small, it’s too cold to sit on the porch, there’s too much ice on the sidewalk, he wants to watch sports, I would prefer a rom-com – you know how it goes.  But overall, I think it’s better for the soul, it’s a better way to know the truth, it’s a charm against the competitive trampling that goes on in our society, and a way to live without chasing down the dream of a suburban mansion with a turret, a tower (I want that), two porches (I want those), a gazebo, a billiards room, a library (I want that), several boudoirs, and the mysterious three garages. 

Mary McCarthy’s “Birds of America”

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“How can we not write satire? ” Juvenal asked in the second century CE.

That’s why I appreciate Mary McCarthy.  I recently reread her brilliant novel Birds of America (1971), set in the 1960s in Rocky Port, Massachusetts, Paris, and Rome. 

McCarthy aims her savage wit at American politics (the 1964 presidential election and the Vietnam War), the rise of “canned” culture, literally canned and frozen food, the creation of faux history in American small towns, and the growing mistrust of the American government in the U.S. and Europe.

The protagonist, Peter Levi, a birdwatcher and amateur philosopher, moves to Rocky Port with his mother after she separates from her second husband, a Berkeley professor.  They had enjoyed a stay in Rocky Port a few years ago, but the small town is no longer idyllic: it has been infected by urban culture, the disappearance of fresh vegetables in stores,  and the death of the Great Horned Owl at the nature preserve, which only Peter mourns.

But the changing American traditions, old and new, are most sharply illustrated by McCarthy’s descriptions of two Thanksgivings, one in Rocky Port, the other in Paris.

Thanksgiving in Rocky Port is the most fun, because Peter’s mother, who plays the harp and is a professional musician, organizes it. She resolves to make a tradtional Thanksgiving dinner using only ingredients available to the Pilgrims and indigenous Americans of the time.

And still she can’t find a bean pot!  Peter wonders,”Can’t you use a casserole?” Fortunately, a neighbor provides one. And of course the unique traditional meal is scrumptious, and both family (Peter’s cynical aunt and joyful cousins), and friends (lonely Mrs. Curtis, who takes most of her meals at the Portuguese diner), enjoy the food and have fun. 

And then there’s another Thanksgiving dinner in Paris, where Peter spends his junior year abroad. He is acquainted with a general attached to NATO, and his wife invites Peter to “partake of turkey ‘n’ trimmings” on Thanksgivlng.  Naturally, the victuals at Thanksgiving in Paris are of the all-American kind, of the modern frozen tureky era, because the general’s Southern wife wants to be as American as possible.

But Peter is appalled when the general’s wife holds forth on Thanksgiving. 

He observes,

“Then, at table, she actually explained the principle of Thanksgiving to the French. ‘It isn’t a social event, you see.  It isn’t exactly a family event, either…  It’s the day when we Americans – help me, Chuck – as we thank God for our blessings trying to gather under our roof some of our fellow countrymen who might be lonely….'”

Peter, a little tired of being a waif, can’t resist saying, “It’s just a harvest festival, isn’t it?”

And that’s the thing about Peter: he is philosophically prepared, from reading Kant and living with his radical mother, who gets arrested in Rocky Port for refusing to post a faux historical plaque on her house, to jeer at undercooked thought and oppose American imperialism.

McCarthy also mocks Peter’s American obsession with European toilets:  In his rooming house in Paris, he is so disgusted by the filthy toilet that he rises early every morning to scrape the shit off the seat and walls. In Rome, he has to repeat the process.  He had hoped for better. So it’s not only America: France and Italy are also full of shit. (No, I’m only pretending to parse the text. That’s not at all what Mccarthy means!)

McCarthy’s slings and outrageous arrows strike everything in sight, not just American smugness but French chauvinism and tourism in Italy. In the process she makes you laugh aloud, but she also reveals both affection and criticism of flawed American culture.

This is one of my favorite books.