"Taking It All In," Pauline Kael

I started reading Pauline Kael as a very young child, when I would pick up copies of "The New Yorker" in my parents' bedroom. The only things I could properly understand were the cartoons and the movie reviews. I'd like to say that this reading made a deep impression on me, and perhaps on some subconscious level it did, but consciously all I remember is snickering at a review of "Spanking the Monkey," which must have been published long after Kael retired. My first genuine contact with her film reviews was her first book, "I Lost it at the Movies," which I have read over and over, to the point where the cover is falling off and the pages are bent at the edges. ("Fantasies of the Art-House Audience" and "Hud, Deep in the Divided Heart of Hollywood" are some of the best take-downs of goopy Hollywood "liberalism" that I've read.)

It's hard to find Kael's longer reviews and essays, so when I ran across "Taking It All In," I snapped it up. The movies reviewed are from the early 80s, and I didn't find that the writing had the same snap as in her earlier works (Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease around this time, although with essays like "Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, the Numbers", it could have just been sheer weariness at work). Nevertheless, there's a sense of pleasure in this book that's unmistakable, and Kael cares deeply about what she's reviewing in a way that you don't get with, say, David Denby (all right, I just want to bitch about David Denby).

A collection of Kael's capsule reviews.

"Fingersmith," Sarah Waters

I read over "Fingersmith" over two nights, and it took two nights only because the necessity of sleep intervened. It's hard for me to describe the plot of the novel, because it would take a lot of "and then... and then!" sort of description and also because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't picked it up yet. I'm shallow, so I admit that I started the book with the thought "ooh, Victorian lesbian erotica!" in mind, but Waters is really playing with the tropes of 19th-century sensation fiction here. (How could she top the ending of "Woman in White," anyway? Ménage à trois with two sisters...) There's a madhouse, an evil uncle, kidnapping, orphans, a criminal trial, and everything in between.

I found the first section the strongest - I'm a sucker for Victorian street urchins, what can I say? Since the section told from Maud's point of view is a retelling of what we've already seen through Sue's eyes, I found it a bit slow going, and I have to say that if I see one more book where the protagonist is redeemed by the act of writing I'll cry. All right, that's a bit far, but is it really necessary to justify the act of writing in the text itself? (I'm being unfair to Waters, who really doesn't go as far with this concept as many other authors I've read.)

Bonus: much of the action takes place in my neighborhood; Sue's haunt is close to the tube station I take almost every day.

"The Portrait of Dorian Gray," Oscar Wilde

I know I'm revealing a defect deep within my soul, but I never found Lord Henry Wotton that witty a character. I always pictured him as carrying around a book of aphorisms, which he would study intensely so that he would always have a good reverse aphorism at hand. Then he would deploy his reverse aphorism, and polite laughter ensued!

Apparently Dorian was so awful that his portrait turned into a Marc Chagall!

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Ken Kesey

I've read this book before and I've always found it an easy read, despite it being incredibly misogynistic. The women in the book are mostly Bad: borderline-incestuous, overbearing mammas, oversexed bimbos, or sexually unappealing spinsters who take out their frustrations on the poor suffering maniacs under their care. Add a redemptive Christ figure, who uses rape as a tool against the (Wo)Man, and a lot of 60s bitching about "ticky-tacky houses" and the "Combine," and it's really pretty noxious. Yet I tear through it every time. I guess the idea of the glorious return to nature is just that appealing.

The movie is a much better bet - Milos Forman cut out a lot of the scenes from the book and re-imagined the rest, and it's just less gross overall. And you can't beat Jack Nicholson, Christopher Lloyd, Brad Dourif, and... Danny DeVito. Plus Kai Winn as Nurse Ratched! (All respect to Louise Fletcher - nobody can rock a goofy hat of evil like this lady.)