From the monthly archives: November 2011
Before she was Pauline Kael, New Yorker movie critic, Pauline Kael was one of many young American writers in the sway of the great critics of the 1930s. In his recently published biography, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, Brian Kellow singles out R.P. Blackmur as a [...]
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Asked about a common thread in her early stories, Ann Beattie answered that they were “filled with my personal worry beads: music, more music, dogs, digs at Nixon.” Now, as if to do penance for all of those digs, she has written a book about Mrs. Nixon. Not Pat Nixon, [...]
Continued →My essay on rereading is up at The Millions.
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The deluge of praise heaped on Joan Didion’s Blue Nights has been excessive, bordering on sycophantic. The New York Times has run three pieces about the book (a daily review, a Sunday review, and an essay about Didion as a “polarizing force”). The Los Angeles Review of Books ran a whole [...]
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According to her biographer, Jean Strouse, Alice James knew she would be judged a failure: “She was not socially useful, particularly virtuous, or even happy.” Yet she wanted her life to mean something, even if it was that she was the most successful of the James family invalids. “When I am gone pray don’t [...]
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A blog by Lisa Levy about dead critics, a few live critics, and the nature of critical inquiry
