Pauline Kael

'my only friends are grown-up nerds like gore vidal. and he's kissed more boys than i ever will.' -- lisa simpson

PK wasn't into feuds; as far as i know she only wrote about sarris in 'circles and squares,' and refused to respond to any of his subsequent attacks on her (which were generally vicious and personal in a way that her own piece was not).

according to kellow (I've read about a third of the bio now), pauline took regular pot-shots at other critics in her published essays before she reached the new yorker. "mr. shawn" (whom she called bill) insisted she cease & desist. she almost sounds like jim derogatis in kellow's description, trying to make a splash w/gratuitous attacks on other critics

the robin gibb/renata adler comparison nearly strangled me, had to suppress my real-life LOLz so as not to wake up the family

when adler's hit piece came out in the 80s i dutifully tried to read her novel speedboat and [insert nautical metaphor] didn't get too far

i can't stand didion's novels but i like her journalism

i'm tempted to argue that there's a built-in clash here, of professional ethos: critics and journalists and novelists -- if they're true to their calling -- can't quite have compatible value systems, same as lawyers and policemen tend to despise one another (we need/pay all of them to clash on our behalf)

on the one hand, i think that's true, but on the other hand i think there can be be good critic/novelists. it must be really hard, though, and involve a lot of compartmentalizing. i guess some people would call themselves good journalist/novelists, but those people's journalistic ethos is kind of fucked imo. by "those people" i basically mean truman capote.

didion is kind of a critic, isnt she? a "cultural critic"? her journalism is of the... critical variety. and she certainly had opinions about movies!

yeah she would be an example to me, but i like her novels. mark s does not ;_;

i like dfw's updike review

bellow has a buncha good essays but i can't remember if any of them are criticism

updike would be an example to me of a good novelist/critic. i like dfw's essays a lot better than his short stories, but i never read infinite jest.

what is this thread about again?

it's not about dfw since we have pieces of 839257238952 other threads for that and i already apologize for even mentioning him.

norman mailer is kind of one of "those people" too probz?

i feel like calling mailer a critic is a little too generous but he is a journalist/novelist...i guess. really he's just a novelist to me. new journalism is ethically suspect.

i love mailer though and can't stand capote.

There's plenty of good novelist-critics. Here's four:

Henry James
D.H. Lawrence
V.S. Pritchett
Gore Vidal

i remember william goldman having a column somewhere in which he was clowning bad scripts. this was around the time he adapted 'dreamcatcher'.

itt i list people i love and hate

also: Woolf

theres a lot of mnstrm criticism written by novelists! lost of reviews of novels in the NYTRB and the NYRB are written by novelists

gore vidal is not a great novelist, though. i feel like gidal skews critic, james skews novelist, d.h. lawrence is godawful. i never read any pritchett. most people are better at one than the other. the things that make a good critic make it hard to write a novel, i think.

but yes, lots of people do it.

zadie smith is trying to make a career out of being a novelist/critic

woolf is a really good example.

zadie smith is a terrible critic. v promising novelist.

i am fascist, also.

salman rushdie writes some criticism iirc.

nick tosches?

gore vidal is not a great novelist, though.

Totally disagree but then again we don't agree on Lawrence's worth either.

some really technically singular writers like nabokov and tolstoy end up writing pretty blinkered criticism (maybe because all their analytical energy goes into working on their own specific craft rather than fairly observing other people's?) although it's always fun to read.

i prefer zadie smith as a critic than as a novelist but i've only read white teeth

umberto eco

tolstoy trying to tackle l.a. confidential was an awkward match

nabokov is a good example. tolstoy was a crazy man. his criticism is hard to take seriously.

some really technically singular writers like nabokov and tolstoy end up writing pretty blinkered criticism (maybe because all their analytical energy goes into working on their own specific craft rather than fairly observing other people's?) although it's always fun to read.

James is one of those; he had no patience for anyone who didn't ponder the same questions of form. On individual writers he's almost insane. But give him the space to write at length about the novel's possibilities and he's one of the best theorists.

what about poet-critics

Alfred i will fight you about everything you are saying!

not as awkward as nabokov's densely allusive 211-page takedown of reds xxxp

the poet-critic thing is a thing. allen grossman iirc.

ts eliot

what about poet-critics

Oof. The list is very long! Off the top of my head:

Dryden
Wordsworth
Baudelaire
Eliot
Heaney
Hecht

i am turning this into a thread where i look at books on my shelf and write down the names of the authors

yeah i give poetics people a wide berth but a lot would say there's no distinction between being a poet and a critic. whatever that means.

tom clancy

paul muldoon has a great book of poetry lectures that function as critical essays

jason elam

J. Cole.

wow, u guys have made this thread a deeply uninteresting catchall.

jason elam, poet-critic-novelist-journalist-football player-truthteller

sorry dr. morbs i think that was my fault