Review: The Humanist In the Bathtub

The Humanist In the Bathtub by Mary McCarthy

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I have to respect McCarthy's accomplishments as a novelist. But, her lengthy forays into collegiate women ("The Vassar Girl"), sexual politics in an evasive if not pointless rambling ("Tyranny of the Orgasm") and exegesis of the mechanics of novel writing ("The Fact in Fiction", "Characters in Fiction") is for a reader of another time and another mind, if not another gender. "The Vassar Girl", the lengthy opening, seems to me setting this reader up that McCarthy is of the same era and mold as Plath's character in [b:The Bell Jar|6514|The Bell Jar|Sylvia Plath|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1379098702s/6514.jpg|1385044]. In that, I feel McCarthy as a person much successfully surivived that era and culture, but I liked Plath's telling of the time much better.



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