When I was a kid: Interview with the Los Angeles Reader, 1982, in Conversations with Pauline Kael, ed. Will Brantley (University Press of Mississippi, 1996), 76.
Pauline, let’s start positively: See Ed and Pauline, dir. Christian Brando (2014).
I would like to talk about the collapse: Ibid.
Welles not only teases: Ibid.
For 5½ years: “Owner and Employe [sic] Feud over ‘Art’; Guess Who Has to Take Powder?” Variety, November 16, 1960.
fifty-nine thousand dollars in back wages and profits: “Wife Wants Artie Operators ‘Wages,’“ Variety, May 31, 1961.
It began to seem like True Confession: “Fantasies of the Art House Audience,” Sight and Sound, Winter 1961.
There is, in any art: “Is There a Cure for Film Criticism?” Monthly Film Bulletin, Spring 1962.
the second premise of the auteur theory: Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” Film Culture, Winter 1962–63.
The smell of a skunk: “Circles and Squares,” Film Quarterly, Spring 1963.
Pauline acted as if I were a great menace: Quoted in Kellow, Pauline Kael, 78.
What’s the matter?: Ibid. This entire story is drawn from Kellow. Pauline Kael, 78.
Were we to infer: “Movie vs. Kael,” Film Quarterly, Autumn 1963.
why that offensive, hypocritical, “alas”: Ibid.
I’ve always been a little surprised: Interview with Allen Barra in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 28, 1991, in Conversations with Pauline Kael, 135.
charges her with careerism: See Kellow, Pauline Kael, 78.
Despite your implacable harassment of me: Letter from Dwight Macdonald to Pauline Kael, November 27, 1963, in Pauline Kael Papers, Lilly Library, quoted in Kellow, Pauline Kael, 70.
rather fruitless to care: Letter from Elizabeth Hardwick to Pauline Kael, September 14, 1963, in the Pauline Kael Papers, Lilly Library.
Too hard on her personally: Letter from Susan Sontag to Pauline Kael, October 25, 1963, in the Pauline Kael Papers, Lilly Library.
Pauline was deaf to feminism: Karen Durbin, quoted in Kellow, Pauline Kael, 174.
Not being used to the role: “The Making of The Group,” in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Little Brown, 1968), 97.
My job is to show him: Kellow, Pauline Kael, 91.
one of her books: This would be Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Susan Sontag published an extraordinary essay: Pauline Kael, I Lost It at the Movies (Dell, 1965), 17.
disclaims ideas: See Sontag, Against Interpretation, 229.
she is the sanest, saltiest, most resourceful: Richard Schickel, “A Way of Seeing a Picture,” New York Times, March 14, 1965.
we respond most and best to work: “Circles and Squares.”
the destructive emotionality: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Review of I Lost It at the Movies, Sight and Sound, Summer 1965.
Whom could it offend?: “The Sound of …” in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 177.
Miss Kael became more and more critical: “Sez McCall’s Stein: Kael Pans Cinema Profit Motives,” Variety, July 20, 1966.
How do you make a good movie in this country: “Bonnie and Clyde,” New Yorker, October 21, 1967.
deliberately crude: Interview with Marc Smirnoff for Oxford American, Spring 1992 in Conversations with Pauline Kael, 155.
getting a letter from an eminent New Yorker writer: Ibid., 156.
Your picture on the dust cover: Letter from Louise Brooks to Pauline Kael, May 26, 1962, quoted in Kellow, Paulin Kael.
Zest but No Manners: See Variety, December 13, 1967.
shouldn’t need to tear a work apart: “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” Harper’s, February 1969.
shallow masterpiece: “Raising Kane,” New Yorker, February 20, 1971.
shallow work, a shallow masterpiece: Mordecai Richler, “The Citizen Kane Book,” New York Times, October 31, 1971.
just a lot of people telling jokes: “The Art of Fiction No. 13: Dorothy Parker.”
Orson Welles is not significantly diminished: Andrew Sarris, “Films in Focus,” Village Voice, April 1, 1971.
I support her war: Kenneth Tynan, “The Road to Xanadu,” Observer, January 16, 1972.
crying in his lawyers’ office: See Barbara Leaming, Orson Welles: A Biography (Limelight Editions, 2004), 476.
Mankiewicz’s contribution: Peter Bogdanovich, “The Kane Mutiny,” Esquire, October 1972.
Marvelous as Mankiewicz’s script was: “Raising Kael,” interview with Hollis Alpert in the Saturday Review, April 24, 1971, in Conversations with Pauline Kael, 13.
the E. B. White elf academy: James Wolcott, Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York (Anchor, 2011), 67.
Don’t answer: Kellow, Pauline Kael, 167.
an arrogantly silly book: John Gregory Dunne, “Pauline,” in Quintana and Friends (Penguin, 2012).
Chapter Ten: Didion
a princess fantasy: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” New Yorker, November 11, 1972.
Two tough little numbers: Dunne, “Pauline.”
I didn’t realize then: “Joan Didion: The Art of Nonfiction No. 1,” Paris Review, Spring 2006.
Her father, Frank: Details about Didion’s family here drawn from Tracy Daugherty, The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion (St. Martin’s, 2015).
Really?: Where I Was From (Vintage, 2003), 211.
nothing was irrevocable: “Farewell to the Enchanted City,” Saturday Evening Post, January 14, 1967, republished as “Goodbye to All That” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968).
Talk to anyone whose work: “Jealousy: Is It a Curable Illness?” Vogue, June 1961.
I was writing pieces that I just sent out: “Telling Stories in Order to Live,” Interview on the occasion of the National Book Award, June 3, 2006, formerly available online, copy author’s own files.
a stunningly predictable Sarah Lawrence girl: “Finally (Fashionably) Spurious,” National Review, November 18, 1961.
The smoke of creation rises: “The Current Cinema,” New Yorker, November 11, 1972.
Self-absorption is general: “Letter from ‘Manhattan,’“ New York Review of Books, August 16, 1979.
What man in his forties: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema,” New Yorker, October 27, 1980.
Let me lay it on the line: “Movies,” Vogue, February 1, 1964.
possibly the only seduction ever screened: “Movies,” Vogue, March 1, 1964.
tends to play these things: “Movies,” Vogue, June 1, 1964.
try to pass off as sociological: “Movies,” Vogue, November 1, 1964.
More embarrassing than most: “Movies,” Vogue, May 1, 1965.
it is easy to Dial-a-Devotion: “How Can I Tell Them There’s Nothing Left,” Saturday Evening Post, May 7, 1966, republished as “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
We recognize these feelings: Letter to the editor by Howard Weeks, Saturday Evening Post, June 18, 1966.
frail, lazy and unsuited: “The Big Rock Candy Figgy Pudding Pitfall,” Saturday Evening Post, December 3, 1966.
Some instinct, programmed by all the movies: “Farewell to the Enchanted City.”
She has told me that the governor: “Pretty Nancy,” Saturday Evening Post, June 1, 1968.
I thought we were getting along: Nancy Skelton, “Nancy Reagan: Does She Run the State Or the Home?” Fresno Bee, June 12, 1968.
I ask a couple of girls what they do: “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Saturday Evening Post, September 23, 1967.
The majority of the flower children: Letter to the editor by Sunnie Brentwood, Saturday Evening Post, November 4, 1967.
one of the least celebrated and most talented: “Places, People and Personalities,” New York Times, July 21, 1968.
Journalism by women is the price: “Her Heart’s with the Wagon Trains,” Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 1968.
Joan Didion: Writer with Razor’s Edge: See article of this
title in the Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1970.
Slouching Towards Joan Didion: See article of this title in Newsday, October 2, 1971.
a creature of many advantages: Alfred Kazin, “Joan Didion, Portrait of a Professional,” Harper’s, December 1971.
some of the guys are going out: The Year of Magical Thinking (Vintage, 2006), 111.
My husband switches off the television set: “A Problem of Making Connections,” Life, December 9, 1969.
very New England: “The Women’s Movement,” New York Times, July 30, 1972.
enslaved because she persists: Didion was quoting from Wendy Martin, ed. The American Sisterhood: Writings of the Feminist Movement from Colonial Times to the Present (Harper and Row, 1972).
this litany of trivia: “The Women’s Movement.”
The impulse to find solutions: “African Stories,” Vogue, October 1, 1965.
Isn’t it interesting: Susan Brownmiller, letter to the editor, New York Times, August 27, 1972.
We tell ourselves stories: “The White Album,” in The White Album (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 11.
all the day’s misinformation: Ibid., 142.
I used to wonder how Pauline Kael: “Hollywood: Having Fun,” New York Review of Books, March 22, 1973.
A possible reason: Letter to the editor, New York Review of Books, April 19, 1973.
Self-absorption is general: “Letter from ‘Manhattan.’“
Oh, wow: “They’ll Take Manhattan,” New York Review of Books, October 11, 1979.
Donner Party: Wolcott, Lucking Out, 61.
all the elements in the puzzle: “Love and Death in the Pacific,” New York Times Book Review, April 22, 1984.
a special kind of practical information: Salvador (Vintage, 2011), 17.
The narrative is made up: “Insider Baseball,” New York Review of Books, October 27, 1988.
Chapter Eleven: Ephron
The first day: Heartburn (Knopf, 1983), 3.
be the heroine of your life: Commencement address to Wellesley College, 1996, available online at http://www.wellesley.edu/events/commencement/archives/1996commencement.
frail and tiny and twinkly: “Dorothy Parker” in Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble (Vintage, 1972), 168.
to see if it was good enough: See Henry Ephron, We Thought We Could Do Anything (Norton, 1977), 12–13.
If I haven’t raised you: Eulogy for Phoebe Ephron, printed as “Epilogue,” in We Thought We Could Do Anything, 209.
She was not doctrinaire: Ibid., 211.
One day she wasn’t an alcoholic: “The Legend,” from I Remember Nothing (Random House, 2010), 37.
She knew, I think, that she was dying: “Epilogue,” in We Thought, 210.
strictly infantile: Bosley Crowther, “The Screen,” New York Times, December 20, 1944.
P.S. I’m the only one in my class: Henry and Phoebe Ephron, Take Her, She’s Mine (Samuel French, 2011), 18.
Tempest of Mirth: Thomas R. Dash, “Bringing Up Father Theme Yields Tempest of Mirth,” Women’s Wear Daily, December 26, 1961.
told interestingly: “Take Her, She’s Mine,” Variety, November 29, 1961.
Writers are always selling somebody out: Preface to Slouching Towards Bethlehem, xiv.
It would never have crossed my mind: “Journalism: A Love Story,” in I Remember Nothing.
I feel bad: “Dorothy Schiff and the New York Post,” Esquire, April 1, 1975.
People who are drawn to journalism: Introduction to Wallflower at the Orgy (Bantam, 2007), 18.
she’d never marry if she read too much: New York Post, September 23, 1967.
As in let them read schlock: “Dorothy Schiff and the New York Post.”
I think she’s a spider: A clip of this interview appears in Everything Is Copy, dir. Jacob Bernstein (2016).
more devoted to language than to people: Meg Ryan, interview, in Everything Is Copy, dir. Jacob Bernstein (2016).
Twenty-five years ago, Howard Roark laughed: “A Strange Kind of Simplicity,” New York Times, May 5, 1968.
I also got letters asking me: “Dick Cavett Reads Books,” New York Times, June 2, 1968.
a saucy, snoopy, bitchy man: Review of Do You Sleep in the Nude? New York Times, July 21, 1968.
lunch is two hours out there: “Where Bookmen Meet to Eat,” New York Times, June 22, 1969.
ten thousand dollars a year before 1974: Interview with Michael Lasky, Writer’s Digest, April 1974, reprinted in Nora Ephron: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Melville House, 2015).
something a little embarrassing: “Women’s Wear Daily Unclothed,” Cosmopolitan, January 1968, reprinted in Wallflower at the Orgy.
She is demonstrating: “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help,” Esquire, February 1970, reprinted as “If You’re a Little Mouseburger, Come with Me. I Was a Mooseburger and I Will Help You,” in Wallflower at the Orgy.
the little princess: Joan Didion, “Bosses Make Lousy Lovers,” Saturday Evening Post, January 30, 1965.
forgave Ephron: Nora Ephron: The Last Interview.
kitsch killed: “Mush,” Esquire, June 1971.
There are times: Introduction to Wallflower at the Orgy.
Why not use a Band-Aid: “Some Words About My Breasts,” Esquire, May 1972.
Writing a column on women in Esquire: “Women,” Esquire, July 1972.
If I could know for sure: Alix Kates Shulman, Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen (Knopf, 1972), 17.
an ugly girl in America: “On Never Having Been a Prom Queen,” Esquire, August 1972.
It’s her baby, damn it: “Miami,” Esquire, November 1972.
blood, birth and death: “Vaginal Politics” in Crazy Salad.
I think that piece: Interview with Joan Didion by Christopher Bollen, V, available online at http://www.christopherbollen.com/archive/joan_didion.pdf.
a deodorant for the external genital area: “Dealing with the uh, Problem,” Esquire, March 1973.
Once I tried to explain to a fellow feminist: “On Never Having Been a Prom Queen.”
recurring ironies of this movement: “Truth and Consequences,” Esquire, May 1973.
Dashiell Hammett used to say: “A Star Is Born,” New York Magazine, October 1973.
As near as possible: Quoted in “Guccione’s Ms. Print,” New York, October 29, 1973.
As one journalist put it: “Women: The Littlest Nixon,” New York, December 24, 1973.
full of nonsense: See, e.g., “The Legend,” in I Remember Nothing, 37.
You can be malevolent: This clip appears in Everything Is Copy.
You can write the most wonderful piece: Jurate Karickas, “After Book, Friends No More,” Atlanta Constitution, August 3, 1975.
there are certain magazines: Nora Ephron: The Last Interview.
We decided to get married on Sunday: Peter Stone, “Nora Ephron: ‘I Believe in Learning the Craft of Writing,’“ Newsday, December 5, 1976.
We meet outside a Chinese restaurant: “The Story of My Life in 5,000 Words or Less,” in I Feel Bad About My Neck (Knopf, 2006).
When you slip on a banana peel: Ibid., 86.
Nora is a much classier person: Jesse Kornbluth, “Scenes from a Marriage,” New York Magazine, March 14, 1983.
Chapter Twelve: Arendt & McCarthy & Hellman
HEINRICH DIED: Telegram from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, November 1–2, 1970, reprinted in Between Friends.
I am now sitting: Letter from Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, November 22, 1970, reprinted in Between Friends.
The first time I heard her: “Saying Good-By to Hannah,” New York Review of Books, January 22, 1976.
on her bare shriveled arms: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Ben O’Sullivan, February 26, 1980, in the Mary McCarthy Papers at Vassar.
The only one I can think of: The Dick Cavett Show, October 17, 1979, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 673.
reckless: Irving Howe, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 674.
with th
at smile of hers: Jane Kramer, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 674.
I guess I never thought of you: Dick Cavett, “Lillian, Mary and Me,” New Yorker, December 16, 2002.
I haven’t seen her: “Miss Hellman Suing a Critic for $2.25 Million,” New York Times, February 16, 1980.
They are both splendid writers: Norman Mailer, “An Appeal to Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy,” New York Times, May 11, 1980.
my unspecialized study of apocryphism: Martha Gellhorn, “Guerre de Plume,” Paris Review, Spring 1981.
It was quite a while: Nora Ephron, introduction to Imaginary Friends (Vintage, 2009).
Chapter Thirteen: Adler
Mr. Shawn felt: Lili Anolik, “Warren Beatty, Pauline Kael, and an Epic Hollywood Mistake,” Vanity Fair, February 2017.
Now, When the Lights Go Down, a collection: “The Perils of Pauline,” New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980.
depressing, vengeful, ceaseless tirade: Letter from Matthew Wilder to the editor, New York Review of Books, February 5, 1980.
the staff critics I know: John Leonard, “What Do Writers Think of Reviews and Reviewers?” New York Times, August 7, 1980.
I’m sorry that Ms. Adler: Time, July 27, 1980.
as assertively and publicly ‘private’: Jesse Kornbluth, “The Quirky Brilliance of Renata Adler,” New York, December 12, 1983.
thin, rather Biblical-looking: Letter from Mary McCarthy to Carmen Angleton, August 29, 1961, quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 499.
I was surprised: Quoted in Kiernan, Seeing Mary Plain, 500.
His book begins: Review of John Hersey’s Here to Stay, Commentary, April 1963.
included a coloring book: “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker, December 8, 1962.
In literary criticism, polemic is short-lived: “Polemic and the New Reviewing,” New Yorker, July 4, 1964.
After the Second World War: Ibid.
To Miss Arendt’s quiet, moral, rational document: “Comment,” New Yorker, July 20, 1963.
If anyone was … sitting adoringly: Gone: The Last Days of the “New Yorker” (Simon and Schuster, 1999), 82.
strict parent: Interview with Christopher Bollen, Interview, August 14, 2014.
did not care for Ms. Sontag: Gone, 33.
It’s not that Hannah Arendt: Adler said this during a Q&A for a lecture given on the research in progress for this book at the New York Institute for the Humanities in November 2015.
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