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novel "who was inclined to give herself married airs, since she had been
debauched, one otiose noon, by a demon." Assuming that this could
happen to anybody, there remains a difference between those who
give themselves airs about it, and those who do not. Miss McCarthy
despises those who do; for herself, she would admit that the experience
to some extent deepened her
singularity,
and ought to be regarded as
relevant; she would give herself no airs, certainly not married ones.
She is incorrigibly single, which is why she disagrees on principle with
the world.
This is productive of paradox. Is anti-Semitism mindless? No, it is
"a form of intellectuality," a substitute for the pleasures of logical exer–
cise. I cannot myself believe this; it seems an example of an intellectual
preference for extensible hypotheses over common observations. In fact
Miss McCarthy, who is in many ways like Shaw, and in many others
like Orwell, shares some of their impatience with common sense: it is a
looking-glass silvered with stupidity, and when you get through it you
see that things are actually the wrong way round on the usual side. The
learned, vivid contrariness of the author's mind comes out strongly in
the section called "Politics and the Social Scene," for instance, in her
defence of American innocence. On the subject her position is close to
that of Henry James, but more radical. She thinks, as Shakespeare did,
that nothing new is to be found in America; his Indian is a European
savage. Irritated by Simone de Beauvoir, Miss McCarthy asserts that
American ugliness is merely European squalor writ large, given room to
expand. This is an example of the genetic fallacy. French, English, Indian
squalor might similarly be explained as the consequence of remote in–
vasions. Nobody can drive far in the United States without learning the
differentiae of American ugliness; it is largely a matter of licentious
outdoor selling, and the general indifference to this is all the more
remarkable to the European observer who has noticed that, from one
end of the middle class to the other, American houses are more beauti–
ful than their European counterparts.
However, this example surprises Miss McCarthy in a likeable posture
.of patriotic defense; in fact, she is extremely sensitive to the disorders
of American life. What leads her into excess is a just fury with other
people for being stupid or inaccurate. "These authors will say
anything,"
she cries, exasperated at the inadequate premises and feeble logic of a
book on modem woman. Unflaggingly valiant for truth, she has come
to see that this isolates her; few can argue with such fierce disinterest,
few can dispense as she does with cant. Why do we all put up with it?
Well-cant, in politics, is a discharge from the body politic consequent
