SOURCE: "Satirist's Utopia," in The New Republic, Vol. 121, No. 23, December 5, 1949, pp. 19-20.

In the following review, Klein asserts that the novella The Oasis is artificial and forced.)

With sharp wit, high spirits and a talent for epigram and capsule characterization, Mary McCarthy offers us in this roman à clef a satirical portrayal of intellectuals at bay. In essence, The Oasis is a series of vignettes hung on a forced framework of several contrived moral crises, most of which are either basically false or far too neat and complete. The result, despite specific true elements, is not truth larger than life-size but the exaggerations of falsehood.

There is still another reason why these flareups, planned as focusing highlights, actually reveal much less than the keen bits of analysis sprinkled liberally throughout. Miss McCarthy's depiction of character suffers from the intrinsic shallowness of all chiefly cerebral fabrications, even when these are...