You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed, or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Sloferblad, and welcome this afternoon to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Carol Brightman, who's written the recent biography of Mary McCarthy,

writing dangerously published by Clarkson Potter. It's a biography of Mary McCarthy,

and we're lucky today to have her brother, Kevin, here to talk with us as

well and to begin by reading a brief section of Mary McCarthy's memoir, Memories of

a Catholic Girlhood.

As orphans, my brother Kevin and I have a burning interest in our past, which we try to reconstruct together,

like two amateur archaeologists, falling on any new scrap of evidence trying to fit it in,

questioning our relations, belaboring our own memories.

It has been a kind of quest in which Kevin's wife and my husband and even friends have joined,

pouring over albums with us, offering conjectures.

Do you think your grandmother could have been jealous of you?

Could your grandfather have had a nervous breakdown?

How odd this might seem to an outsider never struck any of us until a week ago.

It was a Sunday, and my brother Preston, whom I had not seen for many years,

had come up from Wilmington to lunch at Kevin's house in the country, bringing with him his

wife and children. There were seven of us, seven adults, where we had brought a friend,

having cocktails when someone, my husband, I think, mentioned Uncle Myers. Did Preston have a

snapshot of him? Who was Uncle Myers?

...