I owe Pauline Kael three big things.
The first was showing me the kind of writer I wanted to be. But no one can be Pauline Kael except Pauline Kael, and I had to make a living, so I became a college teacher instead—and a pretty good writer, once I had discarded everything about writing I had learned to do in graduate school.
The second was entertaining me for decades. There were weeks when the brightest light in my week was the arrival of The New Yorker.
The third was my second (and still) husband. I had seen him in an elevator, in the corner, in a threadbare, dirty beige jacket and hair down to his shoulders and I gasped a little (silently.) “That gorgeous WASP is going to be in my life.” I was certain of it. I had no idea who he was.
A couple of days later, I saw him at a party and found out he was a Professor of Russian Language and Literature. I was drunk and chain-smoking and dressed like a D.H. Lawrence heroine, and I was very bold in those days. We ended the night back at his one-room basement apartment. A baby grand piano took up most of the room, and cardboard boxes were set up to serve as shelves. He was too polite to tell me that he found my chain-smoking revolting. He was shocked that I wanted to have sex the same night we met.
Before that happened he had played Scriabin for me on the piano he shared the room with, I had fallen in love, and we talked for hours. Pauline Kael came up in the conversation. We both loved her reviews, and the next day I found her latest— on Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye”—taped on the door of my office. (I was a part-time secretary and part-time student in the philosophy department at the time.) I figured maybe he liked me after all, despite the smoking and sex.
The next night we went to actually see “The Long Goodbye” and we raved about Altman and some more about Pauline Kael and her review afterward and he made me eggs that were terribly over-cooked. He cut his own in four quarters, put each quarter on a quarter of toast. I had never seen anyone eat eggs that way.
I’m fairly certain that one of two things is true. Either we were meant to be together, or would never have lasted past the first night were it not for Pauline Kael’s intervention.
Thank you Pauline.
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