The interest of Mary McCarthy's The Group … stems in part from the ingenuity of its argument that rules aplenty exist in every age, and that old ways of judging people aren't really outmoded. The news will not astonish this writer's followers; a Puritan in Upper Bohemia, Miss McCarthy has for years approached her characters as a stern objective moralist. Sly Professor Mulcahy in The Groves of Academe is a knave; it is wrong to take advantage of innocence, no matter whether the innocent is a college president or a college girl. Clever Martha Sinnott in A Charmed Life receives the wages of sin; it is wrong to commit an act of adultery whether in the name of reason or of passion. The elegant European anti-Americans chided in On The Contrary are irresponsible; it is wrong to deny the connection between American ugliness and European apathy about the education...