SOURCE: “Testing the Current,” in Washington Post Book World, No. 220, July 12, 1992, p. 9.

In the following mixed review of The Astonishing World, McCarthy views the collection as an uneven yet provocative work.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison points out in her introduction to The Astonishing World that she has mixed fiction into this collection of interviews, journalistic reports, recollections and travel essays. In her case, she explains, the categories overlap. This does not mean, she adds, that she ever plays fast and loose with facts. “I mean only that the slightest nuance has the power to modify the most obdurate fact, and writers deal in nuance. In fiction, almost nothing I say is the literal truth; in non-fiction, everything I say is the truth as I perceive it—and it comes out, as far as I can see, pretty much the same …”

That could also mean that this prolific and celebrated...