Word: yorkerism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...savage family quarrel erupts at The New Yorker...
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...
...Finally, Kael is accused of a tendency to wander, hogging space in the magazine until "other pieces, on which serious intermittent writers had worked for years, were being overwhelmed." Why did Adler go to such pains to skewer Kael? Some associates say she merely wants to uphold The New Yorker's usually high standards. Others cite personal differences with Kael. Adler is not talking...
...review, which comes not long after Kael returned from a desultory nine-month stint as a Hollywood consultant, 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...