Bedrock | Literary Precedents

Bedrock Literary Precedents

Alther writes comedy of manners in the tradition of Mary McCarthy, Dorothy Parker and, more recently, Nora Ephron. More noticeable, however, has been her ability to identify herself as a chronicler of generations, of particular place and time. Although the flashback to Clea and Turner's college years — as Greeks, of course — and their sexual adventures and sexual politics is only part of the Bedrock saga, the evocation of Mary McCarthy's The Group (1963) is uncanny — the fads, fancies, driven women, remote men, comical sex, as are the echoes of Alix Kates Shulman's Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972) and Erica Jong's Fear of Flying (1973), other icons of the 1970s.

Alther's particular mixture of conservative satire — to be a fanatic about anything is bad form — and sexual adventurousness is in the tradition not only of McCarthy, but her lesbian eroticism plugs into a...
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