More than thirty years ago, Elizabeth Hardwick and Mary McCarthy began their literary careers with precocious works of fiction (The Ghostly Lover and The Company She Keeps). Both of them went on to become literary and cultural critics of considerable authority. But in the novels and stories they continued to write (Miss McCarthy has of course been the more prolific novelist), their fierce analytic intelligence often seemed less an asset than a meddlesome intrusion. Their highly developed skills at critical generalization diminished their imaginative freedom; they preferred commentary to the disorder of human experience, and their characters were personifications of the writers' fervent—in Miss McCarthy's case, belligerent—opinions about politics, society, culture, and woman's estate. Their fiction displayed such perfect command of an intellectual "position" that the well-heeled bohemians of Miss McCarthy's A Charmed Life and the academic voyeurs of Miss Hardwick's The Simple Truth seemed encased...