The Oasis

The Oasis is a short satirical novel by the American writer Mary McCarthy, published by Random House in 1949. McCarthy describes this, her second novel, as a "conte philosophique". It tells the story of a group of embattled intellectuals, their quest to establish a Utopian community in the mountains of New England, and their failure to surmount ideological and personal differences for the greater good of the commune. Doubling as a roman à clef, The Oasis borrows heavily from McCarthy's experiences and frustrations with the short lived European-American Group, and serves more broadly as a critique of the “abstract idealism of intellectuals” and their inability to enact actual change.