SOURCE: "The Arid Plain of 'The Cicerone'," in The Process of Fiction: Contemporary Stories and Criticism, Second Edition, edited by Barbara McKenzie, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, pp. 72-116.

In the following essay, McKenzie provides a detailed analysis of "The Cicerone,"focusing on the story's communication of malaise.

"English, surely," the young American lady says, eying the "tall, straw-colored" stranger who stood smoking in the corridor of the wagon-lit. Unconvinced, her companion concedes, "If English, then a bounder." Their conversation continues "in an agreeable rattle-rattle" as they discuss the problems of detecting "a bounder in a foreign country." Thus Mary McCarthy begins her story about two young Americans (unnamed and unmarried) traveling together in Europe shortly after the end of World War II. For the most part, she writes from an inside point of view, using as her narrative focus the double consciousness of the American couple. Yet, in reality...