SOURCE: "Short Stories by Six," in The Hudson Review, Vol. III, No. 4, Winter, 1951, pp. 626-33.

Since the late 1950s Krim has been writing freewheeling, hardhitting, and deeply personal essays in which he explores the vicissitudes of his own life not only as a means of deriving therapy from art but also as a way of examining contemporary American life and literature. In spirit, style, and purpose these writings are strongly influenced by the Beats and are often openly hostile to the highly formal, analytical literary criticism of the New York intellectual elit. In the following excerpt, Krim finds Cast a Cold Eye pedantic

Artfulness . . . is hardly a deficiency in Mary McCarthy, especially as regards her style and the way in which her material is conceived, if not in the actual working-out of the story itself... . Cast A Cold Eye is her third book; yet, thus far, she has...