An extraordinary collection and collocation in [The Writing on the Wall]. Mary McCarthy, the formidable polymath of letters, rides again and the unwary had better look out because she shoots to kill.

We begin with the essay on Macbeth in which the essayist demonstrates that the protagonist lacks all tragic stature and depth—is in fact a kind of account executive at Dunsinane, with neither imagination nor the guts his wife had, addicted to bombast and fustian. Miss McCarthy does not tell us whether or not she thinks Shakespeare intended such a portrait of the killer king. We don't have to consider matters historical or literary because Miss McCarthy is after another kind of game: she is out to get the bourgeois. In a very real sense she seems to seek what she can devour in nearly all these essays, from her bagging of George Orwell to the...