Lucy Sante on Pauline Kael, Film Criticism, and Pop Culture

In the second season premiere of Private Life, host Jarrett Earnest is joined by the writer and critic Lucy Sante to discuss Pauline Kael’s career, pop culture writing, and Sante’s writing for the Review, where she has been a frequent contributor since the 1980s. The conversation focuses on “The Perils of Pauline” (published in the magazine’s August 14, 1980, issue), Renata Adler’s blistering assessment of Kael’s film criticism; the legacy of staff film critics; and Sante’s relationship with popular music from Elvis to The Velvet Underground.  

Lucy Sante is the author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (1991), Six Sermons for Bob Dylan (2024), and the memoir I Heard Her Call My Name (2024). Her first essay for the Review, “Relic” (published in the December 17, 1981, issue), reviewed Albert Goldman’s controversial 1981 biography, Elvis. Sante taught writing and the history of photography at Bard College for twenty-four years. 

Next week’s episode will be a recording of Adler’s “The Perils of Pauline” read by the actress Holland Taylor. You can read the essays discussed in this episode with a subscription to The New York Review of Books, which, in addition to twenty print issues a year, gives you access to our full archive since 1963.