I started reviewing movies (not very well) in 1978, at the peak of Pauline Kael’s brilliant career and the height of my own wandering-in-the-desert phase. Alienated, aimless, and only just starting to believe that other people might be interested in what I had to say, I was still in the habit of damming up my opinions until they tumbled out in an often inchoate torrent.
My neo-hippie distrust of the mainstream media and instinctive allergy to the East Coast preppie-industrial complex prevented me from discovering Kael in the New Yorker, the elevated if uneasy perch she occupied from 1968 to early 1991, but her voice was strong enough to penetrate even my defensive fog. I don’t remember when or where I picked up a paperback copy of Reeling, Kael’s fifth fat collection of reviews and essays about the movies she loved, but I remember the thrill with which I first encountered her passionate, proselytizing prose and brilliant insights.
