Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark

By Brian Kellow

Book Overview

Selected by "The New York Times Book Review" as a Notable Book of the Year The first biography of "The New Yorker's" influential, powerful, and controversial film critic. A decade after her death, Pauline Kael remains the most important figure in film criticism today, in part due to her own inimitable style and power within the film community and in part due to the enormous influence she has exerted over an entire subsequent generation of film critics. During her tenure at the "New Yorker" from 1967 to 1991 she was a tastemaker, a career maker, and a career breaker. Her brash, vernacular writing style often made for an odd fit at the stately "New Yorker."Brian Kellow gives us a richly detailed look at one of the most astonishing bursts of creativity in film history and a rounded portrait of this remarkable (and often relentlessly driven) woman. "Pauline Kael" is a book that will be welcomed by the same audience that made Mark Harris's "Pictures at a Revolution" and Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" bestsellers, and by anyone who is curious about the power of criticism in the arts.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670023124
• ISBN13: 9780670023127
• Release Date: October 2011
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 417 Pages
• Weight: 1.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher