Fun to see people in the mentions arguing about whether Pauline Kael was a hero or a menace. She died 19+ years ago, folks. That means she still wins. https://twitter.com/BWDR/status/1371881258179981312 …
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I’m not walking this one back—you’ll just have to stay mad at me for it. A lot of the complaints on here about Pauline Kael strike me as very petty and wrongheaded and insufficiently willing to acknowledge how much the profession owes to her in a good way.
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I’m not gonna weigh in on Kael but Adler is hugely influential especially her reporting and novels!
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I’m not saying I don’t respect her. I’m saying she didn’t have as vivid and persistent an impact on the culture.
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As someone who likes Pauline Kael (well, usually), I don't think whether Adler is famous or not is relevant to the accuracy/inaccuracy of her criticisms of Kael.
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I’m not talking about accuracy or inaccuracy. I was saying that the only reason one of these critics is remembered at all is because she came after the other one.
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Speedboad, Pitch Dark, and decades as a staff writer at the New Yorker might offer some other means by which people (like myself) know her work?
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I say this as someone who loves Kael and has referred to her work in several essays. It just seems a strange point ot make? It's like saying the only reason anyone knows Mary McCarthy is because she had beef with Lilian Hellman.
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As someone who purchased but has not read the NYRB reissue of Speedboat, allow me to be the first person to nitpick this tweet with reference to Adler's literary output
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It's not about the output!
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Can't agree. Speaking as a publisher, bookseller and writer who isn't tied to the film industry in any way, absolutely no one my age or younger knows Adler because of Kael. We know her as a novelist, particularly thanks to NYRB in recent years. Kael doesn't even cross my mind.
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I didn’t express myself clearly. I never liked that piece because it seemed marinated in professional resentment/jealousy while pretending to take a lofty, detached, intellectual point of view. That’s why I don’t think much of it as a trump card in discussions of Kael.
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