Word: adler
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Cries and whispers punctuated the sweltering heat from East Hampton to Greenwich Village last week, as members of the New York literary Mafia exchanged notes on their crowd's bloodiest case of assault and battery in years. The perpetrator: New Yorker Writer Renata Adler, 41. The victim: fellow New Yorker Writer, Film Critic and 1974 National Book Award Winner Pauline Kael...
Reviewing Kael's latest book of movie reviews, When the Lights Go Down (Holt, Rinehart & Winston; $18.95), in the Aug. 14 New York Review of Books, Adler not only calls the volume "worthless," she proceeds to incinerate Kael on the gravest imaginable grounds for a New Yorker writer: vulgarity, shoddy writing and sloppy thinking. Adler admits that until recently she had been an admirer of Kael's because "she was the critic everyone knew and talked about." But on closer analysis-something Adler feels that no one has accorded Kael's writing in years-a different conclusion...
...support these claims, Adler marches out dozens of painstakingly excerpted examples from the book: "Swallowing this movie is an unnatural act" (I Will, I Will ...for Now); "a belch from the Nixon era" (Rooster Cogburn); "the same brand of sanctifying horse manure" (Bound for Glory); and "his way of pissing on us" (The Entertainer). Worse, says Adler, long sections of Kael's writing suffer from lapses in logic and an irritating habit of relying on rhetorical questions to make a point. Adler's evidence: 26 examples gleaned from the book: "Is it just the pompadour...
...made others in the word business a bit nervous. "Unfortunate," sniffed New Yorker Editor William Shawn, who quickly added that "every writer has a right to express himself." "Absolutely terrific!" said New York Times Critic Frank Rich. "I'm just glad it wasn't written about me." "Adler," said New York Magazine Critic David Denby, "had an 'oldfashioned' notion of prose." "I don't think that Pauline is a rigorous, logical thinker," volunteered National Review Film Critic John Simon, a past nemesis of Kael's. "But I don't think that...
Kurt Herbert Adler, 75, is one veteran opera maestro whose tempos are non ritardando. Just six months ago he became a grandfather for the first time, courtesy of Son Ronald. Now the director of the San Francisco Opera has again become a father. Adler was conducting a concert in Iceland when word came that his second wife, Nancy, 35, had borne him the first child of their 15-year marriage. Sabrina Sif (after the Nordic fertility goddess) Miller Adler is already showing performing promise. "She's a camera ham, and her voice is strong and healthy," says Dad. Adds...