Renata Adler

Sont is a longtime contributor to the Review, beginning with her essay, Relic, published in the December 17, 1981 issue, which takes on an unscrupulous biography of Elvis by Albert Goldman, and which we talk about in this conversation.

But our primary focus is an incendiary essay that came out the year before, called The Perils of Pauline by Renata Adler, which takes to task the beloved and long-standing film critic Pauline Kael, analyzing her collection When the Lights Go Out, of her film criticism from 1975 to 1980.

The Perils of Pauline was published in the August 14th, 1980 issue of The Review and And I'm happy to say that next week's episode will be a reading of it in its entirety by the actor Holland Taylor.

Before we dive into this kind of vivisection that Renata Adler does of Pauline Kael, maybe it would be helpful if you could lay out the cultural position that Pauline Kael occupied, because I don't think there's anyone quite like that now.

And for people who don't know, how did you relate to her criticism and how would you understand what she represented at this moment?

Okay, so she came into view in, I mean, she started in the West Coast in the early 60s.

So you enter New York Review of Books world in 1980.

And your first piece is the piece on Elvis, which I want to talk about.

She first entered my consciousness in that great period, I think, you know, in the late 70s, early 80s, that great sort of the first Picador era.

So I associate her absolutely with those Picador books, such as Speedboat by Renata Adler, The Richard Broughtigan books, you know, back then, Penguin Modern Classics were a guarantee of sort of quality.

But Picador was a bit more sort of hippie-ish and sort of, yeah.

And, you know, what else? There was also God, Gurdjieff, or I've just been rereading Rabbit is Rich.