Being 'the hero' of your own story

 

“We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.” –  Mary McCarthy

Author, critic and political activist McCarthy was born in Seattle on this date in 1912 and built her reputation as a satirist.  Her satirical novel The Group, in fact, was on the New York Times Bestseller list for almost two years.

Noted for her precise prose and its complex mixture of autobiography and fiction, she was considered a rather “scandalous” writer in her younger years, especially with her first novel The Company She Keeps, which “told it like it was” in 1930s New York Society.

Winner of two Guggenheim Fellowships and a number of other major “funding” awards, she was named for the National Medal for Literature and

 the Edward MacDowell Medal, both in 1984.       Also a respected critic, she was presented with 8 honorary degrees for her groundbreaking work. 
 

  “The suspense of a novel,” she said,  “is not only for the reader, but in the novelist, who is usually intensely curious about what will happen to her hero.”