Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [224]
Her younger friends admired her for hanging on to her democratic spirit; spending time with Pauline was a teaching experience that went beyond the bounds of talking about writing. Charles Taylor remembered, “I once said, in a fit of frustration, ‘Stupid people drive me crazy.’ And she said, ‘You know, some people just aren’t bright. They can’t help that.’” Another time, Polly Frost was with Pauline at a party where one of the other guests was complaining about her recent experience on jury duty. “These people were all housewives, and what do they know?” she snapped. Pauline turned to her and said, “And what did your mother do?”
In late 1994, with several of Pauline’s earlier volumes having gone out of print, Dutton published For Keeps, a huge compendium of her reviews, spanning her entire career. By February 1995 it appeared in the number-six position on The Village Voice Literary Supplement’s list of hardcover bestsellers. (By January 1996, it had sold more than 18,000 copies in hardcover—an excellent run.) Pauline had gone carefully through all of her published reviews and essays, in conjunction with Billy Abrahams, and carefully excerpted the pieces of writing she considered her best. (Perhaps because she had battle fatigue, she omitted several of her more controversial reviews, including the ones of The Children’s Hour, The Sergeant, Rich and Famous, and Shoah.) In her author’s note she discussed the pleasures of a lifetime of reviewing films. “I’m frequently asked why I don’t write my memoirs,” she wrote. “I think I have.” Many friends and colleagues continued to prod her to do a memoir, however, including Peggy Brooks, who spent a weekend with Pauline and Charles Simmons in Great Barrington in September of 1994. “I kept bringing up the idea of her work on an autobiography,” Brooks wrote to Abrahams. “She was resistant at first, but it seemed both to Charles and me, that towards the end, she was starting to think about it seriously. I know it’s difficult for her physically to write now, but her head is in such sharp shape, I think she could do a fascinating book, different from any other of hers.” The memoir never came to pass.
One of her greatest pleasures continued to be her grandson. Will, now ten, was an energetic, quixotic boy who didn’t seem particularly interested in either his studies or athletics—several friends observed that he seemed to live almost in a world of his own. His interests were few but intense. He loved action figures and action movies—Bruce Lee was a favorite. He was fascinated by space—any television documentary on black holes was certain to capture his attention—and he loved his enormous collection of big, unbreakable Carnegie animals. Pauline indulged him in all of these, never attempting to steer him toward a more “serious” path. She thought that children should be left alone, allowed to find their own way, and she happily joined him in watching Bruce Lee movies. She seemed intent on giving her seal of approval to Will’s uncomplicated pursuit of pop culture in the same sense that she had once tried to tell her readers that there was no need to feel guilty about enjoying kitsch and trash.
Warner Friedman often worried that his son’s interests weren’t broad enough and would try to encourage him to paint and to attend museums with him. He also asked Allen Barra to try to get Will interested in sports. Barra spent a fair amount of time practicing baseball with him; while Will was a very good batter, he lacked the patience to master fielding. When Barra came for visits, he often brought his young daughter, Maggie, to play with Will. Barra had taken an active role in helping to shape Maggie’s reading tastes and had instructed her to read both Tom Sawyer and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Pauline’s reaction bordered on hostility. “Oh, just let her grow up,” she would say. “I never understood her attitude on things like that,” Barra recalled. “Here was a perfect opportunity for Will to learn about art. And Pauline could have given so