Pauline Kael

never read that Baby Mama review. H8 that dude now.

Kael was excellent at writing about unconventional beauty in actresses: Streisand, Ellen Barkin (I think), etc. (There are other examples, I just can't remember any right now.)

she was excellent at writing about the role pysical attraction plays in film viewership in general. her "man from dream city" essay about cary grant is super-otm.

that reminds me of when ellen barkin was on piers morgan a few months ago and the dude was such a horny creep to her. i mean dudes who are writing about film or into film or dealing with actresses certainly feel they have carte blanche to make it known that they want to fuck them.

http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/perilsofbeingpauline.html

Davis: There are a few other things I wanted to ask about you and Shawn. Everyone knows he objected to your use of what he considered crude language. But did he ever think that something you said about an actor or director was too cruel? Like when you described Dyan Cannon as “looking a bit like Lauren Bacall and a bit like Jeanne Moreau, but the wrong bits”?

Kael: Dyan Cannon roared over that one, I’m happy to say. She’s a very smart, very lively woman, and she was very sweet about it. I don’t recall if Shawn objected to that, but that was the sort of thing he often did object to. I sometimes gave in, because I thought maybe he was right. You know, sometimes you leave out things that seem part of the story you’re telling, because you don’t want to hurt people. That makes sense.

Yeah, Kael was best when she described how a star's sex appeal turned her on (i.e. Sean Connery).

Part of the frustration of her second-person usage is that when she drops the faux-universalization of her reactions, it's terrific.

I remember this old Tom Snyder Playboy interview where he said the only guest he ever openly drooled over was Liv Ullmann. Tom Snyder, highbrow cineaste.

btw you can find some long PK things including "Raising Kane" on that site:

http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael.html

In 1980, upon the release of her New Yorker colleague Pauline Kael's collection When the Lights Go Down, she published an 8,000-word review in The New York Review of Books that dismissed the book as "jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless,"[3] arguing that Kael's post-sixties work contained "nothing certainly of intelligence or sensibility," and faulting her "quirks [and] mannerisms," including Kael's repeated use of the "bullying" imperative and rhetorical question. The piece, which stunned Kael and quickly became infamous in literary circles,[4] was described by Time magazine as "the New York literary Mafia['s] bloodiest case of assault and battery in years."[5]

lol, i gotta read that

oh, its online!

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1980/aug/14/the-perils-of-pauline/#fnr3

i love kael, but i think that adler piece is kind of a masterpiece in its own right. i don't think i've ever seen any writer's quirks shredded quite so effectively. i gotta read more adler.

To the spectacle of the staff critic as celebrity in frenzy, about to “do” something “to” a text, Ms. Kael has added an entirely new style of ad hominem brutality and intimidation; the substance of her work has become little more than an attempt, with an odd variant of flak advertising copy, to coerce, actually to force numb acquiescence, in the laying down of a remarkably trivial and authoritarian party line.

adler otm

and christ, that allen barra piece is annoying as shit with his complaints about the biography 'second-guessing' some of kael's views. we get it, you knew pauline kael and you think she was right about everything. critics who don't just try to ape kael's style but also manage to parrot her every last opinion (charles taylor was a particularly awful offender) are so pukeworthy.

yes, taylor could be terrible and really adopted her nasty side

I used to love reading Barra on baseball in the Voice, but I found the Kael piece fawning too.

man i hadnt actually read that adler takedown until earlier this week. (i guess they put it up because of all the recent kael-related books?) she makes some good points -- the stuff not specific to kael, especially; the chunk about about the limitations and burn-out of "reviewing" versus writing essays was painfully (from a personal standpoint) otm -- but jesus what a windbag.

I think by her late work there was evidence of burn-out -- she was still fighting battles she'd long-ago won (haha except the general acceptance of the peerless awesome that is b.de palma etc) -- but some of her best writing and reviewing is in WtLGD, and Adler's "authoritarian" argument is a bit teenage. ("She strongly dissed a film I love, it's like HITLER WROTE THIS REVIEW!")

some of her best writing and reviewing is in WtLGD

I like her bits on Angela Lansbury and Ingrid Bergman playing grand dames.

trying to read that adler article and holy shit, paul stanley or lou reed could sum up those first few paragraphs in like a sentence

was adler being paid by the comma?

There may well be some good points in here, but it's hard to dig through the accusations of Kael being a columnist whore

I just don't see the motivation. What led Adler to devote 7 million words to an attack on Pauline Kael? Did the world need one?

"Then she sank down to her knees, grasped the cutter by both handles, took a deep breath, and plunged the long blade through the middle of the package, through the masking tape, through the cardboard, through the cushioning and (thud) right through the center of Terence Malick's film, which split slightly and caused little rhythmic arcs of cineasm to pulsate gently in the morning sun"

it's a shame this didn't come out at a time where people could just post a hatersgonnahate.jpg and the cover of Billy Joel's Glass Houses in the comments section

Camron's "U Mad" also feels appropriate

Didion's "Oh, wow."

The simple truth—this is okay, this is not okay, this is vile, this resembles that, this is good indeed, this is unspeakable—is not a day’s work for a thinking adult.

Seriously this sounds like something Gene Simmons would say

To The Editors:

I am writing to protest in the strongest possible terms your decision to publish Renata Adler’s depressing, vengeful, ceaseless tirade against that brilliant critic Pauline Kael. Adler’s criticism in The New Yorker was mediocre, mushy. How dare she lash out at Kael for using masturbatory slang and “we” or “you” for “I”? Can’t the little viper see the beauty, poetry, hilarity, and straight-forwardness in Kael’s critiques? Oops. I’m using “Kaeline” rhetorical questions! What a crime! You’d think I or she killed Kennedy or something!

Oh—while R.A.’s at contradictions,…she berates Kael for demanding punishment and crying guilt of her unfavored movie folk when she herself acts as if Kael knifed Gary Coleman—oops! I used a “violent” and “sadistic” metaphor! Okay, heat up the electric chair! So “line for line, When the Lights Go Down is worthless,” eh? What about the titles of her critiques of Seven Beauties and Carrie? I cracked up just reading them. And how about her punchy opening and closing lines, especially her closing line of her critique of Satyajit Ray’s Distant Thunder?

Adler’s “review” is bathed in bitterness. The final irony is that about half as many people will read “Perils of Pauline” as will read “Master Spy, Master Seducer”—by Pauline Kael.

Please print this!

Matthew Wilder

A loyal P. Kael fan, age 13

Des Planes, Illinois

nobody's gonna break his stride. not even renata adler.

"Adler’s criticism in The New Yorker was mediocre, mushy" <-- love the classic comma-for-and, as deployed by a 13-yr-old!

Kael finding humor in 2001 only in the spaceship ballet is just weirdly dense. There's plenty of chuckle-worthy humor in it -- the guarded conversation of the bureaucrats in the space station, the posing for the monolith photo on the moon, HAL's bland cheerleading and (to a degree) his pleas for mercy, etc.

More on MW here The Anti-Rockist Protests Too Much

"those who stan for kael will eventually become adlers."

I just don't see the motivation. What led Adler to devote 7 million words to an attack on Pauline Kael? Did the world need one?

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, November 4, 2011 10:21 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

im assuming some sort of oblique behind-the-scenes turf war between new york literary types

but also that's what adler does. everything i've ever read by her is a lengthy evisceration of a person or institution.

Worth reading.

God the Starr Report. I forgot about that piece of shit.

the Bork essay is awesome.

Lots of people who are smart about politics -- how it works, how to do it -- are pinheads about culture generally.

but also that's what adler does. everything i've ever read by her is a lengthy evisceration of a person or institution.

― horseshoe, Friday, November 4, 2011 11:10 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

well i bet shes a blast to hang out with

http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1248098159p5/74331.jpg

i think i actually read speedboat because of lloyd cole.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4dszj4xkU1qa0rqvo1_500.png

we're coming to get you, pauline. (my favorite shelley winters/bette davis movie)

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4dszj4xkU1qa0rqvo1_500.png

Pair of fun gals prove movie pans aren't just for kaelites anymore! :-)

is that a Gumby doll sticking out of Didion's hair?

whatevs. didion looking totally i'd wear what she's wearing: style icons of our lives in that pic

adler reminds me of robin gibb

http://s11.allstarpics.net/images/orig/m/a/mahwjj1zgobdmdhg.jpg

didion looking pimp there, adler has a bit of

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsS/15426-12196.gif