Pauline and Me: Farewell, My Lovely

The death of Pauline Kael (1919-2001) was announced on a

my first film class of the semester the next morning at Columbia.

I can't say I was as saddened as I had been a few days earlier by the death of

Jane Greer (1924-2001). Still, do not send for whom the bell tolls, it tolls

for thee, and all that. Pauline was 82, and I am 72, and who knows when the

Grim Reaper from Ingmar Bergman's The

Seventh Seal will come for me?

Long ago, Pauline and I were once a virtual figure of

speech, like Cain and Abel, as our critical feuding began back in 1963 and

never really ended-if not between the two of us personally, then between the

people who supported her and those who supported me. Yet truth to tell, we never

much liked each other, though we managed to co-exist in the embarrassingly

voyeuristic world of movie-reviewing.

Anyway, the next morning I was certain that no one from the

media would call to get my thoughts on her life and career. But I was wrong. The

phone rang just as I was about to leave for school. It was CBS Radio, and they

asked me to say some words about Pauline Kael. At one time, it would have

seemed like asking Mary McCarthy what she thought of Lillian Hellman. But maybe

38 years is a long time to carry-or even remember-a grudge. I trotted out

Northrop Frye's old insight that after

The Iliad , we in t