15 Questions on "My Confession," by Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989)

Why is it that McCarthy says that "Speaking for myself, I cannot remember a single broad altruistic emotion visiting me  -- the kind of emotion the simpler comrades, with their shining eyes and exalted faces seemed to have in copious secretion" during the period she and her first husband took part in left-wing life.  What, then was their motivation?
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Why does McCarthy say "I see no reason to disavow my actions, which were perfectly all right, but my motives give me a little embarrassment, and just because I cannot disavow them: that fevered, contentious, trivial show off in the May Day parade is still recognizably me." (455)+

Why was "to be a Communist to possess a source of privilege?" (456)

What do you make of the hierarchy she proposes from most to least esteemed: (1) underground worker, (2) theoreticians and oracles, (3) activists (who worked on the waterfront). Last: rank and file, who made speeches, distributed leaflets, attended party and faction meetings, joining front organizations, marched in parades and demos, and that a low opinion was held of "fellow travelers"  (457)

Why would being critical of the party be a compelling reason for joining it? (458)

What is significant about the story of Ansel, who learns to drive and takes a car to California to work as an organizer for the Party?

How did McCarthy unwittingly co-sponsor a letter calling for Trotsky to have the right of asylum and his day in court? (462)

What ensued when McCarthy demanded that her name be taken off the letter? What makes this a key turning point in McCarthy's "confession."  How did it "change her life"? (465)

McCarthy says (p.467) of the majority of those who became anti-Communists during the year 1936-7 that "our anti-Communism came to us neither as the fruit of a special wisdom nor as a humiliating awakening from a prolonged deception, but as a natural event, the product of chance and propinquity. One thing followed another, and the will had little to say about it."  Have your political leanings ever followed a similar path?

Do you agree that Marxism is something you have to take up young, like ballet dancing? (467)

"I joined the anti-Communist movement without meaning to and only found out afterward, through others, the meaning or "name" assigned to what I had done.  This occurred in the late fall of 1936."  What is that "name"?  (page 450)

Why does McCarthy call a "surprise witness," Trotsky, to her side at the end of the piece? (464)

What is the role of chance in life, both in Trotsky's and McCarthy's (469)?

McCarthy ends with this quote from Trotsky, "One can foresee the consequences of a revolution or a war, but it is impossible to foresee the consequences of an autumn shooting-trip for wild ducks", and then she writes, "This shrug before the unforeseen implies an acceptance of consequences that is a far cry from penance and prophecy."  Does this statement give philosophical reassurance to the reader?

Is this a great book?