I had half an hour to kill before my movie started today, so I went to the bookstore and picked up Francis Davis' Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael. It's a slight volume, a rearranged transcript of a radio interview Davis did with Kael not long before she died, with a pleasant introduction from Davis. I listened to the interview when it was first broadcast, and loved hearing Kael's aged voice, but had let the book version slip by until today.
It's nicely done, especially if you take it for what it is, a "last conversation" ("afterglow" describes the book's tone perfectly). It's not the best Kael-gets-interviewed book (that would be Conversations with Pauline Kael, edited by Will Brantley), but it'll do as a welcome postscript to her career.
I've done a lot of writing in my life; I know I'm good at it. But I'm truly proud of only a few of those many things I've written. One of those was my obituary/celebration of Kael and Michael Rogin after they had both passed away. I feel like I've said this before, perhaps in this very blog, but it bears repeating like a mantra: every sentence I write has something of Pauline Kael in it.
Here's an anecdote I don't believe I've trotted out for awhile. We were at the 10th anniversary celebration for the National Women's History Project, and one speaker asked us to think of the woman who had the most influence on us. We then took turns telling the stories of our influential women to whoever was sitting next to us. Most people seemed to pick their mother, or their lover, or something similar, and I know if I'd been completely honest I would have made the obvious choice and picked my wife, since Robin really is in a class of her own as far as my life is concerned. But this little exercise we were given seemed to invite some kind of Statement, and so, when it was my turn, I looked at the person next to me and said "the most influential woman in my life was Pauline Kael."
It's just as true now as it was then.
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