sandbox pauline kael and 70s lookback book club thread

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.

only reason i can even imagine another bio is if enough people are dissatisfied by this one

See, the Seligman bio is an example of a judicious biography written by one her so-called Paulettes (i.e. he shows her intellectual limits vis a vis Sontag, even though I still prefer Kael).

one OF her

the book's made me realize more of a connection between her and Lester Bangs, well-read but anti-academic country bumpkins so argumentative, thoughtful and passionate NY had to accept and love-hate them.

and i don't mean "anti-academic" as a compliment, per se. Raising Kane was definitely proof Kael didn't have the temperament and discipline to do that kind of historical analysis, and while it was cruel of Christgau to (allegedly) give Bangs shit for not going to college, there was a definite naivete about the guy that was somewhat his downfall.

xpost

give or take twenty years age difference and enough speed n romilar to kill a horse

bet they would have gotten along all the same

I see many, many links between Kael and Chuck. I would prefer not to go down that road.

I don't feel like typing out a very long passage, but your presentation of the Dangerous Liasions episode (or whatever), Alfred, just isn't accurate. It's on pg. 339--you should look at it again. There's no insinuating whatsoever:

--he recounts that Kael thought Close was miscast, and that she would later change her mind;
--that she and Frears had dinner, where she suggested a bunch of actresses to Mme. de Tourvel, Pfeiffer one of them;
--that she sent a tape of a Pfeiffer film to Frears;
--Pfeiffer got the part;
--and, in Kellow's opinion, Pfeiffer "gave a beautiful performance"

That's it--he recounts a series of events, and then chimes in in a way that supports Kael's judgement. There's no insinuation of anything unethical. Should he not have recounted that Kael had a hand in the casting of Pfeiffer?

the subjective analysis he offers is regularly unkind

This reminds me of Annie Hall, where Annie and Woody having sex four or five times a week is either constantly or hardly ever, depending upon who's doing the counting. You and Greil Marcus and some other people think the book is unkind; just as many people (more, I'd guess, if you took the trouble to wade through all the reviews) think it's very fair. I don't feel the book is unkind at all.

A woman biographer--as long as it's not Renata Adler.

bunch of actresses for

I don't feel like typing out a very long passage, but your presentation of the Dangerous Liasions episode (or whatever), Alfred, just isn't accurate. It's on pg. 339--you should look at it again. There's no insinuating whatsoever:

--he recounts that Kael thought Close was miscast, and that she would later change her mind;
--that she and Frears had dinner, where she suggested a bunch of actresses to Mme. de Tourvel, Pfeiffer one of them;
--that she sent a tape of a Pfeiffer film to Frears;
--Pfeiffer got the part;
--and, in Kellow's opinion, Pfeiffer "gave a beautiful performance"

Other than mentioning Kellow's opinion of Pfeiffer's performance (which is a mirror image of Kael's effusive one), how is this description any different than what I described?

Because Kellow doesn't correctly frame episodes like this, he exposes himself to conclusions like the one I drew. How easily, for example, could Kellow have noted: "If Kael's Hollywood sojourn may have been a failure on her own terms, she at least found a receptive audience from directors who took her casting advice seriously." Instead, the anecdote just sits there, another example of the unfurling-ball-of-yarn approach to narrative (e.g. THIS happened, then THIS happened).

If you drew such a conclusion, then I assume it's because you think there is something wrong about Kael praising an actress whom she herself recommended for the part. Many people would think there's something wrong with that. Now you're criticizing him not for intrusive interruptions, but for laying things out in sequential fashion and not "framing" things correctly.

how is this description any different than what I described?

Well, you didn't really describe much; you just insinuated that there was an insinuation on his part that doesn't exist. (And for what it's worth, he doesn't even mention Kael's own reaction to Pfeiffer's performance, just his own. You could just as easily argue that he's trying to spare her from the insinuation you accuse him of.)

If you drew such a conclusion, then I assume it's because you think there is something wrong about Kael praising an actress whom she herself recommended for the part

I don't know if I've got a problem with it, but Kellow's presentation is affectless. Maybe "insinuation" is the wrong word for what Kellow does. When he judges Kael, he sounds tinny; when he describes events without comment I don't know what kind of reaction he's trying to provoke.

Many people would think there's something wrong with that

Do you?

I've been mulling that over...a bit, yes; but I also realize there's a mountain of evidence that Kael was able to separate her friendships from her reviews, Altman being the best example. This is not quite the same thing, as praising Pfeiffer is in conflict not with a friendship, but with her judgement that she'd be good for the role; to criticize her performance would be to admit (to herself, although not in the review itself) that she was wrong. So even though I do trust Kael, I think it is a bit of a problem.

I should add that I've never seen Dangerous Liasions--not really my kind of film.

I just don't think he's trying to provoke any kind of a reaction there. He's just describing something that happened--he's writing a biography. In the very next lines, he says that "Pauline hailed Pfeiffer's arrival (in The Fabulous Baker Boys) with her usual flair," and then offers an excellent pull-quote from Kael's review. Conceding that there are criticisms in the book, to me it's so clearly the work of a fan.

damn, suddenly Kael, Kellow and Wolcott must be in the GOP primaries.

that she and Frears had dinner, where she suggested a bunch of actresses to Mme. de Tourvel, Pfeiffer one of them;
--that she sent a tape of a Pfeiffer film to Frears;
--Pfeiffer got the part;

and then she praises Pfeiffer to the skies? guys this is textbook example of crossing the line

If she were a reporter? No doubt.

no i think it's ethically inappropriate for a critic too. imagine if you interacted with record companies as a de facto A&R rep and then reviewed your picks. it creates the appearance of conflict of interest if nothing else.

Just wanted to mention one thing that was bothering me: conjecturing and fabricating--making stuff up--are not the same thing. Conjecture: "a conclusion deduced by surmise or guesswork." I don't think you can conjecture about the truth or non-truth of an event you're claiming to have been present for. It either happened, or you're making it up.