Meulenhoffreeks - 33: De oase

More about the book

<i>The Oasis</i>, McCarthy's second novel, won a contest organized by Cyril Connelly, the British critic and editor of the prestigious literary magazine <i>Horizon</i>, and was first published as the February 1949 edition of that magazine. Connelly called the book "brilliant and true and funny and beautifully written and intelligently thought and felt."<p><i> The Oasis</i> is a wickedly satiric <i>roman a clef</i> about a group of urban American intellectuals who try unsuccessfully to establish a rural utopian colony just as the Cold War is setting in and fear of the atomic bomb is reaching panic proportions. At its appearance a few months later in the U.S., the novel caused a scandal, alienating a number of McCarthy's friends. </p><p>One of her former lovers, the critic Philip Rahv, was so upset at the character based on him that he tried to stop its publication. At the same time, a then relatively new acquaintance who later became McCarthy's closest friend, Hannah Arendt, wrote her: "I just read <i>The Oasis</i> and must tell you that it was pure delight. You have written a veritable little masterpiece."</p>