Mary McCarthy introduces [Sights and Spectacles: 1937–1956] as "a report to a minority by one of their number," and this superbly, indeed formidably, intelligent author almost succeeds in drawing out the sting from possible criticism of her book by inserting her own keen sting into it. Not quite, however, because it is not the admitted callowness of her early reviews (not quite as callow, incidentally, as her prefatory comment on them would lead one to believe), but her current judgments that are apt to make drama critics question the soundness of her opinions. "The truth is," she says, "that I simply do not respond to the playwrights and popular actors that many other people find exciting," and she proceeds to declare that "American playwrights, on the whole, cannot write." Miss McCarthy applies the charge to Williams, Miller and Odets, among others, and inevitably she does not spare O'Neill….

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