Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [21]
Pauline enjoyed the stimulating environment at Capricorn, and Horan saw to it that she was a frequent weekend guest. Designed by the architect William Lescaze, Capricorn was later described by Horan as “a modern but not moderne chalet set into the side of the mountain and overlooking Croton Lake and the hills.” The house was spacious and spare, with a terrace in back that was ideal for summertime lunches. “One would have to be an imbecile, not to succumb to the beauty and the quiet. I feel miserable when I have to catch a train back to the city,” Pauline wrote to Vi.
Horan frequently stayed with Pauline when he was in New York, and she seemed relieved that their relationship had become less complicated. “Bob is terribly sweet to me these days when he comes to stay,” she told Vi, “but there’s a kind of bony structure missing there that I think I should always be too well aware of—despite his obvious talents and mind, and the very good understanding we have.... I’ve never felt so good about living alone.”
Her low opinion of much of the mainstream fare being offered in New York continued unabated. She was shocked by the quality of most of the plays of the 1943 fall season and was especially dismayed by Dream Girl, Elmer Rice’s female version of the Walter Mitty fantasy, and baffled by the acclaim for the performance of Mrs. Rice, Betty Field. But by early 1944, there were more personal concerns nagging at her—one of which was the prospect of her sister Rose’s visit in late February. By now Rose had married Myron Makower and embarked on a teaching career, but her proper, settled status seemed only to inflame the animosity between the two sisters.
Pauline was also becoming extremely possessive about her spare time, trying to protect as much of it as she could in order to work at her writing. But with too many friends and acquaintances dropping by the Twenty-eighth Street apartment in the evenings or on weekends, she was beginning to feel as if she had never left Berkeley. In the meantime, Horan’s own writing flourished: Some of his poems had been accepted by The Kenyon Review, and he was providing the text for The Unicorn, a dance work that Menotti was composing for Martha Graham. Pauline, stalled in her tracks, was not entirely enthusiastic about her friend’s full-speed-ahead career progress. She told Vi that she found Horan’s recent work “hurried and a little too chic. Success doesn’t come that easily if you’re really serious—and I just don’t think he is at the moment.” Deep down, she feared that Horan might never turn out anything of real substance.
She was far more impressed with the progress of Robert Duncan. In 1944, the distinguished editor Dwight Macdonald had launched an exciting new magazine of contemporary thought called Politics. Pauline considered it the finest publication of political commentary she had come across; it reflected Macdonald’s strong, anarchist point of view, and it never cheated the issues. For some time she had admired Macdonald’s work as editor of The Partisan Review, and she was excited when she learned he was starting up a rival magazine. In late 1943 she had written him a kind of fan letter: “I am looking forward to a magazine which will stand for the principles and position you represented on Partisan Review; if there are to be policy-forming discussions, I should be very interested in attending them.”
In August 1944 Politics published a groundbreaking essay by Duncan called “The Homosexual in Society,” a gutsy and powerful piece of work in which Duncan spoke up for