sandbox pauline kael and 70s lookback book club thread

do you still think marcus' beef is unclear, though? whether you think it "invalidates the work as biography" or not, it certainly doesn't help a biography to have the features editor of Opera Times interrupting the story to let us know when he thinks Pauline Kael was right or not.

xpost ok didn't you just say that shit was boring?

when the focus of the biography is the written work having the editor of a piece weigh in isn't an interruption

^isn't necessarily. for the record, i thought kellow's focus on pauline-the-critic rather than pauline-the-person was the book's tragic flaw

hey, if he quoted william shawn i'd have loved it!

Two additional thoughts to last night (I'm an old guy--it takes me a while sometimes):

1) "And this is croup, if there's any doubt"--aren't you essentially saying the same thing I pointed out there, the thing you took such objection to coming from me: my opinions on Kael are well established, so take this as you wish. I don't see what else you could have meant by feeling the need to make it clear who you were.

2) "Like if you want to play semantics on the phrase 'hatchet job,' fine." Calling something a "hatchet job" is just a semantic technicality to you? A hatchet job is pretty much the worst thing a book can be. It's like saying, "If you want to play semantics on the phrase 'serial rapist,' fine."

Your Dr. Strangelove analogy is funny, and I've used the exact same line when someone (i.e., Alfred) gets angry at me for talking crass politics in the political thread. So theoretically, you're right. As a practical matter--whether such behaviour actually makes anyone feel like sticking around and hashing through a disagreement with you--you're dead wrong. (At least for me, so as not to lapse into a Kael "you" generality.)

Deli Llama: I didn't like the Wolcott book for the most basic reason of all--I don't like how he writes. I found him so annoyingly un-Kael like, in how he couches everything up in fanciful, writerly bits of business. I didn't really believe this implicit idea running through the book, either, that he was this innocent observing all these other people jostling for position on the New York food chain. Just a personal, gut reaction, but he struck me as exactly the kind of status-climber he purported to recoil from. (It's been years since I read it, but it reminded of Norman Podhoretz's Making It that way--which I recall as being more open about that sort of thing.) He doesn't condescend to Kael, no, not at all, and I did like the last couple of pages with them in a cab the night of Lennon's assassination. Elsewhere, she seemed more like a presence to me than a flesh-and-blood person...not sure if I'm saying that right; I found his portrayal of her odd.

I agree that Wolcott's metaphor-to-referent ratio gets exhausting. However almost every memoirist I've read can't resist dropping names and reveling in the company he keeps (the last Edmund White memoir is practically a who's-who of the seventies NYROB crowd). One of the exceptions is Henry Adams, obsessed with his "failure."

there are people who think wolcott derived his prose style from kael's

including, as per that atlantic interview, greil marcus. just sayin

i've always enjoyed wolcott's writing but allow that high-octane magazine prose can be hard to take over the course of a book

it's a thin line between callow status-climber and ambitious young person

there are people who think wolcott derived his prose style from kael's

Kael is accused and praised for prizing "sensation"; I'd say Wolcott more fully deserves the accusation/praise.

The one thing about Wolcott's book that mystified me--and I didn't start reading the Voice till '79, so I either never read him there, or have no recollection of doing so now--is I don't know why Kael took to his writing the way she did. If he's imitating her, I'm missing it--they seem like such polar opposites to me (she's a laser beam, he's forever losing the plot in search of clever turns of phrases). Maybe the imitation is more obvious if you go back to the Voice pieces. If his style in Lucking Out could be turned into a film, I envision some kind of whimsical concoction she'd recoil from.

Lengthy double-review of Kael--the first by one those umpteen scribes who never got over that rude thing she said to them once.

http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/13545504616/citizen-kael-part-i

it's a thin line between callow status-climber and ambitious young person

My favourite Persuaders song ever.

Why did Schickel discuss (at length!) Kael's hanging out with other directors -- even in the cutting room floor -- only to write "But, as I’ve said, I don’t care much about this point"? Oh, I see: so he can write: "Or maybe she just liked people who paid her court."

Man I hope my peers are still bothering to piss on my grave ten years after my death

(I myself did something similar when, in 1986, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in television production, though without the glamorous support she enjoyed.)

That was kind of fun to read in the sense that it was pure "Kael as Stalin" rather than "Kael as Marilyn Monroe meets Stalin"

Writers, politicians, and lots of people get raked over the coals long after their deaths. With someone like Kael, who didn't mince words, and whose personality on the page was as large and as sharp as could be--and whose career consisted of evaluating, criticizing, and praising the work of others--I would think pointedly unflattering reappraisals of her own body of work (and practices) would be a given; she also still has a great deal of worshipful things written about her. I'm sure she'd be quite happy that people still passionately argue about her. Stanley Kauffmann's been (I think, anyway) a great film critic for 50+ years and counting. When he dies, my guess is he'll be more or less forgotten soon after outside of a few thousand devoted readers, and that no one will ever engage in heated exchanges about his writing, his practices, or his place in history. I don't think Kael would take that trade-off (and yes, I'm just guessing and editorializing and offering an opinion for which I have no special background knowledge).

Hey, I said I hope for a similar fate!

All my life, I'll regret I wasn't around for Kael's reign of terror.

I think it's pretty clear that Kael rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Maybe she was very blunt with them about one thing or another, maybe she casually ridiculed or dismissed films and filmmakers about which they had strong personal feelings--I got into it with a writer friend once over that; to paraphrase Lester Bangs in his famous Elvis piece, showing contempt for our objects of veneration can really sting, whether you mean it to or not--or maybe (probably) there was an element of professional jealousy; she got a lot of attention in her day, and even though I think she deserved to, if you were someone who got a lot less, I'm sure that rankled. According to Kellow's book--according to Kael's daughter, I think--she was someone who meant no ill will when she was blunt or dismissive, and she seemed surprised when people took it personally. I believe that; I'm sure everyone has known someone like that in his or her life. So when people like Sarris or Shickel attack Kael, it doesn't alter my opinion of her writing at all--she will always be my favourite film critic. But neither do I have any feelings of "How dare they say that?" They were there, they have a right to air their grievances, and I just take what they write as another perspective on someone who's influenced me greatly and remains endlessly interesting to me.

Wolcott was def writing about TV in the Voice in '80-81, maybe for a couple of years after that. I believe his salient comment on Brideshead Revisited was "Oh, just go ahead and kiss him, you big lug!"

It's not "how dare they say that?" it's "why on earth would you want to be known for saying that?"

people are certainly allowed to look bitter and jealous of the dead

Andrew Sarris isn't "known" for his bitterness towards Kael, anymore than Kael will now be known for her seemingly callous treatment of the guy who did the Raising Kane research--Sarris is known for The American Cinema. Richard Schickel isn't going to be known for anything he writes about Kael or Brian Kellow's book in 2011; he's known for a long career of film criticism and television documentaries on filmmakers. Renata Adler--whose criticisms of Kael were made was Kael was still very much alive--probably is to some degree now known for her review of When the Lights Go Down, but she's also spent the last 40 years writing criticism, essays, and novels. They've had things they wanted to say about Kael. They wrote them. I'm not sure what your post before the previous one means.

"how dare they say that?" suggests that what they did was offensive, but more than that i think it's embarrassing, in part because they've accomplished enough that they don't need to air their contempt to get attention. we'll never know if Kael would have lobbed back at the slams (Well, the ones made while she was alive) if William Shawn hadn't curbed that tendency. But I think she's better off for not engaging in public flame wars once she was established.

And I don't mean to suggest that she's above criticism. But there's an ugliness to a lot of the attacks she's received that I'm not aware folks like Sarris and Schickel expend on other subjects.

and your comparison re: kane is flawed because a) kael didn't attack the researcher, she used his work without credit and b) sarris, adler and schickel are aiming their bile at a popular figure, arguably more popular than them, considering she's got a bio out.

Schickel is an inveterate spleen-venter, his negative reviews are cranky as fuck

also Kael and Sarris are totally known for their rivalry, a notoriety Sarris has done far more to keep alive (did she even acknowledge him after Circles And Squares?) and Adler's review of Kael takes a healthy chunk of her wikipedia page

x-post yeah i'll be honest, he may just be like this all the time.

his beef with Kael stems from her contempt for his boy Clint Eastwood

From what I've read Sarris never forgave Kael; he was still spitting poison when approached for obit purposes in 2001. It's a long time to nurse a grudge.

yeah i knew about the 2001 obit (classy guy), but i didn't know until the book that he was lobbing arrows all through her new yorker stint

adler and schickel are aiming their bile at a popular figure, arguably more popular than them

as somebody once said of rock critics, they're fighting turf wars over territory the size of a postage stamp

I would agree with that. ("That" meaning your post responding to my previous one.) I think one thing that speaks very well of her--I've seen this a couple of places--is that it sounds like she always wished she had some kind of friendship with Sarris. (There was a part in Kellow's book I found moving, where, at some point close to her death, she said something like "He's very good" about Sarris.) So even though I feel like I do understand his lifetime bitterness--a combination of feeling blindsided, and the fact that "Circles and Squares" so eviscerated some of his theories, at a point in his career where he was just starting to get noticed--it seems clear that she put the whole episode behind her very quickly, and that's a good thing.

I still don't understand why you dismiss the criticisms of Sarris, Schickel, and Adler almost wholesale, but obviously we're at an impasse on that.

Adler wrote a lawyer's brief that is shockingly so what.

your comparison re: kane is flawed because a) kael didn't attack the researcher, she used his work without credit

I wasn't comparing the acts themselves, just the idea that this one act (or review) would define a career.

adler says from the get-go in her kael piece that regular reviewing is no job for a thinking person (what "job" is for a thinking person?) so the rest of her piece is gratuitous before we even get to the content. schickel and adler may well have done good work elsewhere (though i've never been impressed by a time movie review), but based on the observatons in their kael pieces I have no reason to believe I'd prefer their worlds to Kael's.

As for Sarris, I haven't read much of his stuff but everything re: kael has just been bile, conjecture and gossip. There's plenty to criticize about her work, and the book's doing a good job of sharing her more embarrassing moments (though looking back at the reviews in full he quotes he's being pretty unkind in his selectivity, sharing her emptier euphoria while ignoring the substance around it). But I don't feel much need to give these guys respect when they're indulging in such blatant hatorade.

of course it wouldn't define a career, but kael definitely would play a nice part in either sarris or adler's biography if they got one.

Bile, conjecture, and gossip? Sarris gives a first-hand account of the first time Kael ever got in touch with him, right after "Circles and Squares." You either believe him or you don't; he's either making something up, or recounting something that actually happened--to him. It's not conjecture or gossip.

i consider telling everyone that this lady who just died once gay-baited you in a limo to be gossip

he's either making something up

Which IS conjecture!

Sarris doesn't have a biography, but I'm pretty sure there was a book where a whole bunch of film writers paid tribute to his influence on them...I'll try to find a link.

If you believe he's making it up. I don't.

i don't either. A guy making up a story about his chosen rival to put in an obituary is just too sad to fathom.

http://books.google.ca/books/about/Citizen_Sarris_American_film_critic.html?id=96RZAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

I find it somewhat odd that you've twice referred to the biography now as a measure of Kael's fame/importance, a book that you seem to agree is a hatchet job.

a critic earning a large hatchet job of a book is a pretty solid measure of their fame/importance

Truce--dinner calls.

and re: "hatchet job." it obviously isn't named PAULINE KAEL: THE MARGARET THATCHER OF THE MOVIES. Kellow definitely tries to equivocate and compliment her, but the narrative he pulls from her reviews and the subjective analysis he offers is regularly unkind, unfair and atypical of a bio of a person who won't be earning many more bios.

I don't know how far you've gotten, but I particularly didn't like insinuations like the one he inserts near the end: she recommend that Stephen Frears cast Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liasions, then praised her performance to the skies; it's like she's a crony capitalist or something.

If there is another kael bio, I hope its written by a woman. Not saying that's a guarantee of quality, but I think the most interesting part of the book is the ways she was ahead and behind of feminism, political awareness, etc in her life and work. That "Sontag & Kael" book got into it a bit, but I'd like to read more from someone who might be a little more sympathetic than Kellow, and doesn't use it to underscore what an unpleasant, tragic figure she was.

funnily enough, I vividly remember Kael writing approvingly that Jack's dopey hitman in Prizzi's Honor played like a cross between Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton.

Of course, I prefer Prizzi's Honor to the first Godfather film.

thx for reminding me that I need to see Prizzi's Honor

Huston had to explain to a flummoxed Nicholson that it's a comedy.

Something else came up yesterday that I'd never thought about, and I've probably seen Chinatown 15-20 times: Huston saying to Nicholson "Are you sleeping with my daughter" at a time when in real life he was.

Huston supposedly said of P'sH, "Jack, everything you've done is infused with intelligence, and we can't have any of that here."