Pauline Kael - Brian Kellow [56]
On March 11, 1965, I Lost It at the Movies was published. It had an advance sale of 5,227 copies—an excellent showing for a book about film by an author whose name was still relatively unknown to the general reading public. The Atlantic Monthly Press gave it a significant push with full-page ads in trade publications such as Library Journal and the American Library Association’s Booklist, and smaller ads in such prestigious venues such as The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, and The New York Times Book Review. The prepublication reviews from the trade press were encouraging. Library Journal stated, “There are very few American film critics whose collected writings would maintain the high level of this book,” while Publishers Weekly found “the artistry, literacy, fine style and clearheaded reasoning of this criticism is outstanding” and predicted that it should be an “explosively controversial book.” The exacting Kirkus Reviews wrote, “Never dull, blazingly personal, provokingly penetrating . . . Miss Kael is a ‘find.’”
But one review counted the most—that of The New York Times Book Review, which appeared on March 14, 1965. The reviewer was Richard Schickel, a former editor at Look magazine and the author of the acclaimed study The Movies. His review began:
I am not certain just what Miss Kael thinks she lost at the movies, but it was assuredly neither her wit nor her wits. Her collected essays confirm what those of us who have encountered them separately over the last few years, mostly in rather small journals, have suspected—that she is the sanest, saltiest, most resourceful and least attitudinizing movie critic currently in practice in the United States.
After calling Pauline’s “the surest instinct for movies and movie-making since James Agee,” Schickel concluded:
That she is able to analyze her instinct so well and so wittily and to convey its findings without the slightest sense of strain makes her criticism seem like art itself, something of a mystery and something of a miracle. In the end, one is a little awed by the mystery, more than a little grateful for the miracle. Miss Kael may have lost something at the movies, but in her book we have found something—the critic the movies have deserved and needed for so long.
Among the congratulatory letters she received was one from James Broughton, who wrote that it was “always gratifying when a friend who has worked hard for a long time finally makes a substantial breakthrough.” He signed it, “My good wishes to you and Gina.”
Pauline was pleased by the attention she received from the personnel at the Atlantic Monthly Press, particularly the senior editor William Abrahams, who would work closely with her for years to come. (She would always address him as “Billy dear” in her letters.) Although she was quick to point out when something was not to her liking, the publisher’s staff generally found her to be a very cooperative author, eager to comply with most of the interviews that she was asked to do.
In late March she spent the better part of a month in New York, doing publicity for the book. During that trip, she began giving more serious thought to an idea she had recently been tossing around—returning to New York full-time. Maintaining payments on the Oregon Street house had become a burden, and while she had an attractive offer of $10,300 from UCLA to lecture during the 1965–66 academic year, she admitted to Bob Mills, “I don’t really want to do it—I’d rather be in the east for awhile. So I’m stalling on acceptance.”
Although the thought of paying Manhattan rents was unappealing, she could no longer come up with any excuses for not living in the nation’s publishing capital. Besides, now that she had a solid success under her belt with I Lost It at the Movies, she would in a sense be going back a star. Still, after all her years of struggle, and having on some level adjusted herself to being in a state of perpetual difficulty, the prospect of major success was somewhat daunting, somewhat complicated.