Posted: Sun., August 15, 2004
Sontag & Kael, Opposites Attract Me
(Counterpoint) by Craig Seligman
By Allison Burnett
It is hard enough to find a good book of criticism; to find a good book of criticism about criticism is nearly impossible. Craig Seligman's new book, Sontag & Kael, Opposites Attract Me, (published by Counterpoint) is so good, however, that even a reader with absolutely no knowledge of either Pauline Kael or Susan Sontag will surely be enthralled.
What drives this remarkable work is the author's relationship to his two subjects. Seligman's feelings for the late Pauline Kael are proudly affectionate. As a young man, he devoured her writing; as a young adult, he was her typist and fact-checker at The New Yorker; later, he was her friend. His love for Kael is so powerful that it is never diminished by his clear-eyed understanding of her foibles as a human being and as a writer.
The author's feelings for Susan Sontag are more complex, and, while not as poignant, they are more compelling. Like Kael, Sontag is not an easy woman to like. Unlike Kael, she is even harder to love. If Kael was a prickly pear; Sontag is a porcupine. Perhaps, even, a hand grenade. She has a unique ability to alienate, even enrage, her readers -- as anyone who remembers her all-too-honest postscript to the tragedy of 9-11 knows only too well. Seligman's respect for Sontag as a thinker is vast, but his misgivings about her as a human being are numerous and deep, and make for good reading.
With an encyclopedic knowledge of both his subjects' work, Seligman explores every corner of his subjects' minds and hearts. He is at once a psychologist, a historian, a referee, and an Everyman. We are given anecdotes galore and scores of memorable quotations. One chapter is spent in assessing his subjects' harshest critics. Seligman is astoundingly fair. It is not a facsimile of fairness, created by mealy-mouthed compromise, risking only the gray. It is a true fairness, born of continually striving to honor both the black and white – and to understand the nature of both.
Another quality that makes the book so wonderful, and that separates it from so much critical thinking these days, is that Seligman invests not merely his intellect in his subject, but his whole heart, which means that it speaks to the same in the reader. The final pages, in which he remembers where he was when he first read certain reviews of Kael's, is such an exquisite piece of prose that anyone who's been alive long enough to look back with nostalgia will be profoundly moved.
When one puts the book down, whatever warm feelings one might have developed for the author, one's deepest affection and understanding are reserved for the subject. This, of course, is as it should be. Now, having been given a strong overview of their works and careers, and some glimpses into their minds and spirits, the reader is ready to approach (or reapproach) their work, enriched by the author's honest sentiment and sound judgment.