sandbox pauline kael and 70s lookback book club thread

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.

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.

Yeah. Her dismissal of Altman's late seventies films mitigates the claim that she was a shill, but unquestionably the Pfeiffer thing bothered me.

imagine if you interacted with record companies as a de facto A&R rep and then reviewed your picks

You could say, I suppose, it would have been like Paul Nelson doing A&R for Mercury and editing the reviews page of Rolling Stone--jobs he held one after another, I think--simultaneously. Having said that, I do find Kael trustworthy on this issue.

obv pauline kael was far from a shill but lapses like the pfeiffer incident suggest egomania clouded her vision

egomania being one of sthe longtime critic's occupational hazzard

Please don't use phrases like "egomania clouded her vision" as I ride the Newt-wave.

between her freelance casting work & the paulette syndrome she sounds like a major league control freak

on the subway i got to the part where he finally compares her to joan crawford

another choice quote from the trip:
"At the New York Film Critics Cirlce voting that year, she had gotten behind Melvin And Howard, her friend Irvin Kirshner's sequel to Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and - inexplicably - Dressed To Kill for Best Picture..."

Dude manages to point out her hailing a "friend"'s work and declares another favorite "inexplicable" - despite rather dense explication of her fondness published in the New Yorker - in one sentence fragment.

I understand why Marcus thinks Kellow must have grown to hate Kael as he wrote the book. It's hard to imagine why the guy would have bothered to start if he'd held the opinions he has now all along.

lol, missed that he also makes a connection to crawford in the intro too.

On the one hand, the fact that he thought her love of Dressed to Kill was inexplicable. On the other, a passage like this, right towards the end:

One of the most powerful truths to be gleaned from examining Pauline's life is that it was, throughout its span, a triumph of instinct over an astonishing intellect. Her highly emotional responses to art were what enabled her to make so indelible a mark as a critic. On the surface, it might seem that any critic does the same thing, but it's doubtful that any critic ever had so little barrier between herself and her subject. She connected with film the way a great actor is supposed to connect with his text, and she took her readers to places they never could have imagined a mere movie review could transport them.

I can't adequately express how absurd I think it is that you fixate on Kellow's occasional disagreements with her evaluation of certain films as indicating that he had contempt for her in the face of passages like that.

I'm not at the end yet, dude! Not my fault he waits till the sum-up to write three complimentary sentences in a row.

also "a triumph of instinct over an astonishing intellect" and "doubtful that any critic ever had so little barrier between herself and her subject" are phrases made a little more loaded by the content of the book.

she often took me to places I didn't think were real.

I love how you conjure up visions of Mommie Dearest with "the part where he finally compares her to joan crawford." The passage in question:

Pauline was well liked by the magazine's support staff--the copy editors, fact-checkers, and messengers who were more or less at her service. Her rapport with them was not unlike Joan Crawford's camaraderie with the crew members on her movies. 'I don't think she had a snobby bone in her body toward such people,' said Menaker. 'But these people were no threat to her. She had a good, common touch, a good, decent comportment with them. There were occasions when I saw her get kind of cross in one way or another, but she very seldom got angry. What she would do is look or act sort of bewildered or flummoxed, and that was a sign of her displeasure.' Most often, Pauline would become aggravated when a fact-checker had unintentionally given away something in a review to a source, but she seldom made an issue of it.

Jesus.

how did I conjure up visions of mommie dearest by merely saying "he compares her to joan crawford" and he doesn't by bringing up how she had camradarie with people who "were no threat to her" (he also says she might have said the same thing Crawford did about Hollywood giving her education and everything she's ever earned).

Then what exactly did you mean by "finally compares her to Joan Crawford"?

if you're saying that by saying "he compares her to joan crawford" one would naturally assume he's suggesting she was a horrible mother, surely Kellow knew what he was doing by making connections twice in a book about a single mom with an obsessive relationship over her daughter. At the very least, he wasn't afraid to make the connection.

But seeing as you're arguing on the one hand that Kellow grew to hate her, and on the other hand you throw in the Joan Crawford line, then to me you're looking for someone who hasn't read the book to conclude that yes, he really must think she was some kind of a witch, he compares to her Joan Crawford. When in fact the two mentions of Crawford are quite innocuous--the one above casts her in a flattering light. (I'll grant that you have a point with the "people who were no threat to her" qualification, but those aren't Kellow's words, they're the words of somebody else.)

Variation on something I asked you on the other thread: are there any criticisms he makes of her anywhere in the book that you don't consider out of bounds, devious, ill-informed, etc.?

either Kellow's a total dope who has no idea why bracketing the story of a single mom who basically kept her daughter locked away till she was in her 30s with any kind of unnecessary comparison to Joan Crawford would be unkind, or he knew the potential effect. the fact that you so quickly harped on the implications makes clear how evident they are.

if you look above, i point out plenty of problems I have with kael, and i'm sure there's a tasteful way to acknowledge them in a biography. But the guy piles it on gratuitously and regularly, and it's not my job to equivocate about it like he does with her.

flipped ahead to the last three pages, and they're so tonally different from the majority of the book that alfred may be right - "hack job" might qualify more than "hatchet"

I mean the Husker Du bio was definitely pro-Husker Du, but the author regularly letting us know which songs were good or bad sure helped make it a shittier book

Again, the idea that he piles it on gratuitously is, I believe, absurd. And--what started this whole thing--I'll again say what I'm pretty sure you have said yourself on the other thread (and which, when we have access, I will try to retrieve--and I promise that I'll admit I'm wrong if no such post exists): that you are not the most objective judge of criticism directed at Kael. And I'm not harshly criticizing you by saying that (or, I believe, by agreeing with you)--I don't consider myselfthe most objective person in the world when it comes to her writing. But I believe I'm a little more objective than you are.

You also, in a couple of your earlier posts, seem to dwell on the fact that he's the editor of an opera magazine, like that makes him unqualified to write the book.

(I haven't read the Husker Du book, but I would very much want to know the author's opinion on specific songs.)

I love that you respond to direct quotes with "well you're biased"

all i said in the previous thread was that I was a "big pauline kael stan". try not to constantly hold against me that I'm an acknowledged fan of her work just because i contradict you.