Pauline Kael by Brian Kellow Read Free Book Online Page A

and that the thought of returning for one more semester was anathema to her. She longed to be rid of the restrictive, unreal atmosphere of campus life and to go out in the world, finding her way as a writer. By summer she was desperate for money, and decided to join her sister Anne in a sublet apartment, where she began determining in what direction she would set out as a writer.
    At Berkeley she and Bob Horan had discovered the literary criticism of R. P. Blackmur, whose ability to illuminate the social context of great literature resonated deeply with both of them. Pauline loved the passionate tone of Blackmur’s writing, and later she would always be flattered when her criticism was compared with his. Reading his comments on Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove , one can easily see how his intensely personal voice had a profound influence on her:
    When I was first told, in 1921, to read something of Henry James—just as when I had been told to read something of Thomas Hardy and something of Joseph Conrad—I went to the Cambridge Public Library looking, I think, for The Portrait of a Lady . It was out. The day was hot and muggy, so that from the card catalogue I selected as the most cooling title The Wings of the Dove , and on the following morning, a Sunday, even hotter and muggier, I began, and by the stifling midnight had finished my first reading of that novel. Long before the end I knew a master had laid hands on me. The beauty of the book bore me up; I was both cool and waking; excited and effortless; nothing was any longer worth while and everything had become necessary. A little later, there came outside the patter and the cooling of a shower of rain and I was able to go to sleep, both confident and desperate in the force of art.
    The immediate question, though, was exactly how she was going to survive. Fortunately, during her student years, she had figured out how to live reasonably well on very little, and despite her horror at the thought of becoming a housewife, she mastered a number of solid, practical skills. She was adept at sewing and was a good cook, able to fix herself inexpensive meals by shopping at San Francisco’s markets, where the freshest produce was available for very little.
    Still, she needed something to live on, and she was lucky to be able to count on friends and relatives. Anne, by now teaching at Polytechnic High School near Commerce Street, was always a soft touch, and there was Robert Duncan, who had split from his lover in Philadelphia and by 1940 was living in Woodstock, New York, as part of a commune organized by James Cooney, editor of The Phoenix , a countercultural publication with a pacifist point of view. Duncan was working on the magazine and contributing pieces to it, and during this period he became friendly with Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, both of whom had recently returned to America after years of living in Europe. Both were impressed with Duncan’s talent and encouraged him to continue writing poetry. Duncan had a bit of money to send to Pauline, and did so on a few occasions, always with her assurance that she would pay him back when she could.
    In addition to working at her writing, Pauline took in everything on the local arts scene that piqued her interest. She had become addicted to reading The Partisan Review , a literary quarterly with a heavy accent on politics that had been published since the mid-’30s. On the musical front she had discovered Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations , in which the composer explored more abstract musical ideas than usual. She constantly attended art openings throughout the Bay Area and kept up with all the new movies, writing to Violet Rosenberg, who now lived in Santa Paula, her impressions of them. She enthused over John Ford’s The Long Voyage Home , which she considered “a wonderful movie . . . really the most exciting photography—at least the most sustained in quality, I’ve seen in the movies yet.” It’s an