"It’s like a novel, Mary McCarthy observed of the completed edition of
The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt and McCarthy had clashed in 1945 when they first met at a New York party hosted by
Partisan Review’s Philip Rahv, McCarthy’s ex-lover. Another fierce wit who rarely suffered fools gladly, McCarthy, when they were introduced, made a sarcastic quip about Hitler’s unpopularity in Paris. Arendt, exhausted from work and war and grieving her dead, exploded with uncharacteristic and dramatic self-importance:
How can you say such a thing in front of me—a victim of Hitler, a person who has been in a concentration camp! They met again a few years later, realized that they actually rather liked one another, exchanged apologies, and then, soon after, the first of many books. McCarthy sent Arendt her crisp, slim, satirical
roman-à-clef on self-important American intellectuals,
The Oasis (1949). Arendt upped the stakes of their early friendship considerably by reciprocating with the neither crisp nor slim
The Origins of Totalitarianism. ..."
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