“For all his derogation, he truly believed in the modern, as subversive of established values, a mine or fuse laid under the terrain of the virtuous; the words, modern, secular, experimental, were drawled out by him in a seductive, blandishing tone, like a veiled erotic invitation.”

Source: The Groves of Academe (1952), Ch. VI, p. 383

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Mary McCarthy 79
American writer 1912–1989

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