name	Camille Paglia
birth date	April 02, 1947
birth place	Endicott, New York
occupation	Professor, cultural critic
education	Binghamton UniversityYale University
nationality	United States
period	1974–
subject	Popular culture, art, poetry, sex, film, feminism
notableworks	''Sexual Personae''
influences	Harold Bloom, Norman O. Brown, Jane Ellen Harrison, Sigmund Freud, James George Frazer, Simone de Beauvoir, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Pater, G. Wilson Knight, Marquis de Sade, Oscar Wilde
signature	}}

Camille Anna Paglia (), (born April 2, 1947) is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984. She is the author of the best selling 1990 work of literary criticism ''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'', and four other books, including essay collections, a study of Alfred Hitchcock's ''The Birds'', and ''Break, Blow, Burn'' on poetry. She writes articles on art, popular culture, feminism, and politics for mainstream newspapers and magazines. Paglia has celebrated Madonna and taken radical libertarian positions on controversial social issues such as abortion, homosexuality and drug use. She is known as a critic of American feminism, and is also strongly critical of the influence of French writers such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault.

Overview

Paglia, who has been characterized variously as a "contrarian academic" and a feminist "bête noire", a "witty controversialist", and a maverick, is known for her critical views of many aspects of modern culture, including feminism and liberalism. Margaret Wente has called Paglia "a writer in a category of her own...a feminist who hates affirmative action; an atheist who respects religion" and "a Democrat who thinks her party doesn't get it". Martha Duffy writes that Paglia "advocates a core curriculum based mostly on the classics" and rails against "chic French theorists Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan", and "has a strong libertarian streak — on subjects like pornography — that go straight to her '60s coming-of-age." Elaine Showalter has called Paglia a "radical libertarian", noting her libertarian stands on abortion, sodomy, prostitution, drug use, and suicide. Paglia has denounced feminist academics and women's studies, celebrated popular culture and Madonna, and become a media celebrity, writing op-eds and gossip columns, appearing on television and telling her story to journalists.

Paglia has said that she is willing to have her entire career judged on the basis of her composition of what she considers to be "probably the most important sentence that she has ever written": "God is man's greatest idea."

Paglia's ''Sexual Personae'' was rejected by numerous publishers, but when finally published, became a best seller, reaching seventh place on the paperback best-seller list, a rare accomplishment for a scholarly book. ''Sexual Personae'' was published by Yale University Press after being rejected by seven other publishers. Paglia called it her "prison book", commenting, "I felt like Cervantes, Genet. It took all the resources of being Catholic to cut myself off and sit in my cell." ''Sexual Personae'' has been called an "energetic, Freud-friendly reading of Western art", one that seemed "heretical and perverse", at the height of political correctness; according to Daniel Nester, its characterization of "William Blake as the British Marquis de Sade or Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson as 'self-ruling hermaphrodites who cannot mate' still pricks up many an English major’s ears."

Paglia is a devotee of Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater, cherishing "performance, artifice and play rather than earnestness." She has expressed admiration for Dorothy Parker and Mary McCarthy, as well as for models, singers and movie stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, and Barbra Streisand.

In 2005, Paglia was named as one of the top 100 public intellectuals by the journals ''Foreign Policy'' and ''Prospect''.

Personal life

Paglia was born in Endicott, New York, the elder daughter of Pasquale and Lydia Anne (Colapietro) Paglia. Both of her parents immigrated to the United States from Italy. Paglia attended primary school in rural Oxford, New York, where her family lived in a working farmhouse. Her father, a veteran of World War II, taught at the Oxford Academy high school. In 1957, her family moved to Syracuse, New York, so that her father could begin graduate school; he eventually became a professor of Romance languages at Le Moyne College. She attended the Edward Smith Elementary school, T. Aaron Levy Junior High and William Nottingham High School. In 1992, Carmelia Metosh, her Latin teacher for three years, said "She always has been controversial. Whatever statements were being made (in class), she had to challenge them. She made good points then, as she does now." Paglia thanked Metosh in the acknowledgements to ''Sexual Personae'', later describing her as "the dragon lady of Latin studies, who breathed fire at principals and school boards".

She took a variety of names when she was at Spruce Ridge Camp, including Anastasia (her confirmation name, inspired by the Ingrid Bergman film ''Anastasia''); Stacy; and Stanley. An iconic experience was the time the outhouse exploded when she poured too much lime into it. "It symbolized everything I would do with my life and work. Excess and extravagance and explosiveness. I would be someone who would look into the latrine of culture, into pornography and crime and psychopathology...and I would drop the bomb into it".

For over a decade, Paglia was the partner of artist Alison Maddex. Paglia legally adopted Maddex's son (who was born in 2002). In 2009, the couple separated.

Education

Paglia entered Harpur College at Binghamton University in 1964. The same year, Paglia's poem "Atrophy" was published in her local newspaper. She later wrote that the biggest impact on her thinking were the classes taught by poet Milton Kessler. "He believed in the responsiveness of the body, and of the activation of the senses to literature... And oh did I believe in that". She graduated from Harpur as class valedictorian in 1968.

According to Paglia, while in college she punched a "marauding drunk", and takes pride in having been put on probation for committing 39 pranks.

Paglia attended Yale as a graduate student, and she claims to have been the only open lesbian at Yale Graduate School from 1968 to 1972. While at Yale, Paglia quarreled with Rita Mae Brown, whom she later characterised as "then darkly nihilist", and argued with the New Haven, Connecticut Women's Liberation Rock Band when they dismissed the Rolling Stones as sexist.

At Yale, Paglia was mentored by Harold Bloom. ''Sexual Personae'' was then titled "The Androgynous Dream: the image of the androgyne as it appears in literature and is embodied in the psyche of the artist, with reference to the visual arts and the cinema".

Paglia read Susan Sontag, and aspired to emulate what she called her "celebrity, her positioning in the media world at the border of the high arts and popular culture." Paglia first saw Sontag in person on October 15, 1969 (Vietnam Moratorium Day), when Paglia, then a Yale graduate student, was visiting a friend at Princeton. In 1973, Paglia, a militant feminist and open lesbian, was working at her first academic job at Bennington College. She considered Sontag a radical who had challenged male dominance. The same year, Paglia drove to an appearance by Sontag at Dartmouth, hoping to arrange for her to speak at Bennington, but found it difficult to find the money for Sontag's speaking fee; Paglia relied on help from Richard Tristman, a friend of Sontag's, to persuade her to come. Bennington College agreed to pay Sontag $700 (twice what they usually offered speakers but only half Sontag's usual fee) to give a talk about contemporary issues. Paglia staged a poster campaign urging students to attend Sontag's appearance. Sontag arrived at Bennington Carriage Barn, where she was to speak, more than an hour late, and then began reading what Paglia recalled as a "boring and bleak" short story about "nothing" in the style of a French New Novel.

As a result of Sontag's Bennington College appearance, Paglia began to become disenchanted with her, believing that she had withdrawn from confrontation with the academic world, and that her "mandarin disdain" for popular culture showed an elitism that betrayed her early work, which had suggested that high and low culture both reflected a new sensibility. In 1992, Paglia attacked Sontag; according to Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock, this was a way of saying, "I'm the next stage of you." Questioned about Paglia by the Brazilian magazine ''Istoe'', Sontag said she should form a rock band. Sontag later said of Paglia, "We used to think Norman Mailer was bad, but she makes Norman Mailer look like Jane Austen".

Career

In the fall 1972, Paglia began teaching at Bennington College, which hired her in part thanks to a recommendation from Harold Bloom. At Bennington, she befriended the philosopher James Fessenden, who first taught there that very semester.

Through her study of the classics and the scholarly work of Jane Ellen Harrison, James George Frazer, Erich Neumann and others, Paglia developed a theory of sexual history that contradicted a number of ideas in vogue at the time, hence her criticism of Marija Gimbutas, Carolyn Heilbrun, Kate Millett and others. She laid out her ideas on matriarchy, androgyny, homosexuality, sadomasochism and other topics in her Yale Ph.D. thesis ''Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art,'' which she defended in December 1974. In September 1976, she gave a public lecture drawing on that dissertation, in which she discussed Edmund Spenser's ''Faerie Queene'', followed by remarks on Diana Ross, Gracie Allen, Yul Brynner, and Stephane Audran.

Paglia "nearly came to blows with the founding members of the women's studies program at the State University of New York at Albany, when they categorically denied that hormones influence human experience or behavior. Similar fights with feminists and academics culminated in a 1978 incident which led her to resign from Bennington a year later. After a lengthy standoff with the administration, Paglia accepted a settlement from the college and resigned the following year.

Paglia finished ''Sexual Personae'' in the early 1980s, but could not get it published. She supported herself with visiting and part-time teaching jobs at Yale, Wesleyan, and other Connecticut colleges. Her paper, "The Apollonian Androgyne and the Faerie Queen", was published in ''English Literary Renaissance'', Winter 1979, and her dissertation was cited by J. Hillis Miller in his April 1980 article "Wuthering Heights and the Ellipses of Interpretation", in ''Journal of Religion in Literature'', but her academic career was otherwise stalled. In a 1995 letter to Boyd Holmes, she recalled: "I earned a little extra money by doing some local features reporting for a New Haven alternative newspaper (''The Advocate'') in the early 1980s". She wrote articles on New Haven's historic pizzerias and on an old house that was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

In 1984, she joined the faculty of the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, which merged in 1987 with the Philadelphia College of Art to become the University of the Arts.

Paglia is on the editorial board of the classics and humanities journal ''Arion'' and has been writing a monthly column for Salon.com since the late 1990s (currently on hiatus). Paglia has announced that she is currently working on "a study of the visual arts intended as a companion book to ''Break, Blow, Burn''".

Paglia cooperated with Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock in their writing of ''Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon'', sending them detailed letters from which they quoted with her permission. Rollyson and Paddock note that Sontag "had her lawyer put our publisher on notice" when she realized that they were investigating her life and career.

Paglia and feminism

Some feminist critics have characterized Paglia as an "anti-feminist feminist", critical of central features of much contemporary feminism but holding out "her own special variety of feminist affirmation." Elaine Showalter notes Paglia's admiration for Simone de Beauvoir and ''The Second Sex'' ("the supreme work of modern feminism...its deep learning and massive argument are unsurpassed") as well as Germaine Greer, but Martha Duffy observes that Paglia "does not hesitate to hurl brazen insults" at several feminists including Greer, whom Paglia accused of becoming "a drone in three years" as a result of her early success; Paglia also called Diana Fuss' output "just junk - appalling!" Showalter calls Paglia "unique in the hyperbole and virulence of her hostility to virtually all the prominent feminist activists, public figures, writers and scholars of her generation", mentioning Carolyn Heilbrun, Judith Butler, Carol Gilligan, Marilyn French, Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, Susan Thomases, and Hillary Clinton as targets of her criticism.

Paglia has accused Kate Millett of starting "the repressive, Stalinist style in feminist criticism...". Paglia has repeatedly criticized Patricia Ireland, former president of the National Organization for Women, calling her a "sanctimonious", unappealing role model for women whose "smug, arrogant" attitude is accompanied by "painfully limited processes of thought". Paglia contends that under Ireland's leadership, NOW "damaged and marginalized the women's movement". Paglia has called feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum a "PC diva", and accused her of borrowing her ideas without acknowledgement. She further contends that Nussbaum's "preparation or instinct for sex analysis is dubious at best".

Many feminists have criticized Paglia; Christina Hoff Sommers calls her "Perhaps the most conspicuous target of feminist opprobrium", noting that the ''Women's Review of Books'' described ''Sexual Personae'' as a work of "crackpot extremism", "an apologia for a new post-Cold War fascism", and patriarchy's "counter-assault on feminism." Sommers relates that when Paglia appeared at a Brown University forum, feminists signed a petition censuring her and demanding an investigation into procedures for inviting speakers to the campus.

Naomi Wolf traded a series of sometimes personal attacks with Paglia throughout the early 1990s. In ''The New Republic'', Wolf labeled Paglia, "the nipple-pierced person's Phyllis Schlafly who poses as a sexual renegade but is in fact the most dutiful of patriarchal daughters" and characterized Paglia's writing as "full of howling intellectual dishonesty".

Gloria Steinem said of Paglia that, "Her calling herself a feminist is sort of like a Nazi saying they're not anti-Semitic." Paglia said that Steinem, who she accused of not having read her, had compared her to Hitler and ''Sexual Personae'' to ''Mein Kampf''. Paglia called Steinem "the Stalin of feminism."

Katha Pollitt has characterized Paglia as one of a "seemingly endless parade of social critics [who] have achieved celebrity by portraying not sexism but feminism as the problem." Pollitt writes that Paglia has glorified "male dominance", and has been able to get away with calling the Spur Posse California high school date-rape gang "beautiful", among other things "that might make even Rush Limbaugh blanch", because she is a woman.

Paglia's view that rape is sexually motivated has been endorsed by evolutionary psychologists Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer; they comment that, "Paglia...urges women to be skeptical toward the feminist 'party line' on the subject, to become better informed about risk factors, and to use the information to lower their risk of rape."

Paglia and French thought

Paglia is critical of the influence modern French writers have had on the humanities, claiming that universities are in the "thrall" of French Post-structuralists, that in the works of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault, she never once found a sentence that interested her and that Post-structuralism has broken the link between the word and the thing, and thus endangers the western canon. François Cusset writes that Paglia, like other major American public intellectuals after World War II, owes her broader recognition mainly to the political repercussions of polemics that first erupted on college campuses, in her case to a polemic against foreign intellectualism. He says she achieved phenomenal success when she called Foucault a "bastard", thereby providing (together with Alan Sokal's ''Social Text'' parody) the best evidence for Paul de Man's view that theory should be defined negatively, based on the opposition it arouses. However, Paglia's assessment of French writers is not purely negative. She has called Simone de Beauvoir's ''The Second Sex'' "brilliant" and "the only thing undergraduate sex study needs", and identified Jean-Paul Sartre's work as part of a high period in literature. Paglia has made positive comments about Roland Barthes' ''Mythologies'' and Gilles Deleuze's ''Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty'', while finding both men's later work flawed. Of Gaston Bachelard, who influenced Paglia, she wrote "[his] dignified yet fluid phenomenological descriptive method seemed to me ideal for art", adding that he was "the last modern French writer I took seriously".

Political views

Some of her views have been characterized as conservative, but Paglia characterizes herself as a Clinton Democrat and libertarian. She opposes laws against prostitution, pornography, drugs, and abortion. Paglia criticized Clinton for not resigning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which she says led to America being "blindsided by 9/11". In the 2000 US presidential campaign she voted for the Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, "[because] I detest the arrogant, corrupt superstructure of the Democratic Party, with which I remain stubbornly registered". In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Paglia supported Barack Obama.

Books

''Sexual Personae''

In ''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)'' Paglia argues that human nature has an inherently dangerous Dionysian aspect, especially in regard to human sexuality. Culture and civilization are created by men and represent an attempt to contain that force. Women are powerful, too, but as natural forces, and both marriage and religion are means to contain chaotic forces. A best seller, described by Terry Teachout in a ''New York Times'' book review as flawed, but "...every bit as intellectually stimulating as it is exasperating." Martha Duffy wrote that the book had a "neoconservative cultural message" which was well received, but rejected by many feminists. In a review of ''Sexual Personae'', feminist author Molly Ivins accused Paglia of historical inaccuracy, demagoguery of second-wave feminists, egocentrism, and writing in sweeping generalizations. In his review, Anthony Burgess described ''Sexual Personae'' as "a fine disturbing book..." that "...seeks to attack the reader's emotions as well as his / her prejudices."

Germaine Greer writes that Paglia's insights into Sappho are "vivid and extremely perceptive", but also "unfortunately inconsistent and largely incompatible with each other." Greer quotes Paglia writing that Sappho internalized rather than externalized her passion for the girls she fell in love with, and replies that, "No poet can be said to internalize passion." Greer also denies Paglia's claim that there is a "hostile distance between sexual personae" in Sappho's poetry, as well as her suggestion that the poet was "deprived of emotion", writing in response that "She is literally awash with emotion which comes from looking at the beloved for even the shortest time. Her emotional potency is on display, and implicitly compared with the nullity of the man who sits opposite her idol and hears her voice and laughter." Greer credits Paglia with making the point that "Sappho understood that there is no reciprocity in love, that harmony is not the human condition, and that the gods are not on our side", but believes that Paglia's "misreading" of the "Hymn to Aphrodite" conceals this from her.

''Sex, Art and American Culture''

''Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays'' (1992) is a collection of short pieces, many published previously as editorials or reviews, and some transcripts of interviews. It made the New York Times bestseller list for paperbacks.

''Break, Blow, Burn''

''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems'' (2005) is a collection of 43 short selections of verse with an accompanying essay by Paglia. The collection is primarily oriented to those unfamiliar with the works, but does not pander to the new reader. Clive James notes that Paglia tends to focus on American works as it moves from Shakespeare forward through time, with Yeats, following Coleridge, as the last European discussed, but emphasized her range of sympathy and her ability to juxtapose and unite distinct art forms in her analysis. In his review, Christopher Nield remarks that Paglia has "a rare gift to capture a poem’s mood and scene in terse, spiky phrases of descriptive insight" and exhibits moments of brilliance, but also notes that some of her selections from recent writers fall flat. He also praises her pedagogical slant towards basic interpretation, suggesting that her approach might be what is required to reinvigorate studies in the humanities.

Works

''Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art'' (Dissertation: 1974)

''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' (1990)

''Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays'' (1992)

''Vamps and Tramps: New Essays'' (1994) ISBN 0-679-75120-3

''The Birds (BFI Film Classics)'' (1998)

''Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems'' (2005) ISBN 0-375-42084-3

See also

Nouveau roman

References

External links

Salon Articles by Camille Paglia

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:American atheists Category:American feminist writers Category:American libertarians Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American political writers Category:American women writers Category:Binghamton University alumni Category:Bisexual writers Category:Criticism of feminism Category:American writers of Italian descent Category:LGBT feminists Category:LGBT parents Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:Media theorists Category:People from Syracuse, New York Category:University of the Arts (Philadelphia) faculty Category:Yale University alumni Category:American literary critics

de:Camille Paglia es:Camille Paglia fa:کامیی پالیا fr:Camille Paglia id:Camille Paglia it:Camille Paglia ja:カミール・パーリア pt:Camille Paglia fi:Camille Paglia sv:Camille Paglia

name	Susan Sontag
birth date	January 16, 1933
birth place	New York City, New York
death date	December 28, 2004
death place	New York City
occupation	Novelist, Essayist
nationality	American
genre	Fiction, essays, nonfiction
website	}}

Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American author, literary theorist, feminist, public intellectual and political activist; her published works include ''On Photography'' and ''Against Interpretation''.

Life

Sontag, born Susan Rosenblatt, was born in New York City to Jack Rosenblatt and Mildred Jacobsen, both Jewish. Her father managed a fur trading business in China, where he died of tuberculosis when Susan was five years old. Seven years later, her mother married Nathan Sontag. Susan and her sister, Judith, were given their stepfather's surname, although he never adopted them formally. Sontag did not have a religious upbringing. She claimed not to have entered a synagogue until her mid-twenties.

Sontag grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and, later, in Los Angeles, where she graduated from North Hollywood High School at the age of 15. She began her undergraduate studies at Berkeley but transferred to the University of Chicago in admiration of its famed core curriculum. At Chicago, she undertook studies in philosophy, ancient history and literature alongside her other requirements (Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon, Peter von Blanckenhagen and Kenneth Burke were among her lecturers) and graduated with an A.B. She did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard with Paul Tillich, Jacob Taubes and Morton White et al. After completing her Master of Arts in philosophy and beginning doctoral research into metaphysics, ethics, Greek philosophy and Continental philosophy and theology at Harvard, Sontag was awarded an American Association of University Women's fellowship for the 1957-1958 academic year to St Anne's College, Oxford, where she had classes with Iris Murdoch, J. L. Austin, Alfred Jules Ayer, Stuart Hampshire and others. Oxford did not appeal to her, however, and she transferred after Michaelmas term of 1957 to the University of Paris. It was in Paris that Sontag socialised with expatriate artists and academics including Allan Bloom, Jean Wahl, Alfred Chester, Harriet Sohmers and Maria Irene Fornes. Sontag remarked that her time in Paris was, perhaps, the most important period of her life. It certainly provided the basis of her long intellectual and artistic association with the culture of France.

At 17, while at Chicago, Sontag married Philip Rieff after a ten-day courtship. The philosopher Herbert Marcuse lived with Sontag and Rieff for a year while working on his book ''Eros and Civilization''. Sontag and Rieff were married for eight years throughout which they worked jointly on the study ''Freud: The Mind of the Moralist'' that would be attributed solely to Philip Rieff as a stipulation of the couple's divorce in 1958. The couple had a son, David Rieff, who later became his mother's editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as well as a writer in his own right.

The publication of ''Against Interpretation'' (1966), accompanied by a striking dust-jacket photo by Peter Hujar, helped establish Sontag's reputation as "the Dark Lady of American Letters." Movie stars like Woody Allen, philosophers like Arthur Danto, and politicians like Mayor John Lindsay met her.

Like Jane Fonda, Sontag went to Hanoi, and wrote of the North Vietnamese society with much sympathy and appreciation (see "Trip to Hanoi" in ''Styles of Radical Will''). She maintained a distinction, however, between North Vietnam and Maoist China and the Soviet Union, as well as East-European communism, which she all later criticized as "fascism with a human face."

Sontag died in New York City on 28 December 2004, aged 71, from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome which had evolved into acute myelogenous leukemia. Sontag is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery, in Paris. Her final illness has been chronicled by her son, David Rieff.

Work

Sontag's literary career began and ended with works of fiction. After teaching philosophy and theology at Sarah Lawrence College, City University of New York and Columbia University under Jacob Taubes from 1960 to 1964, Sontag ended her relationship with academia and devoted herself to full-time writing. At age 30, she published an experimental novel called ''The Benefactor'' (1963), following it four years later with ''Death Kit'' (1967). Despite a relatively small output, Sontag thought of herself principally as a novelist and writer of fiction. Her short story "The Way We Live Now" was published to great acclaim on 26 November 1986 in ''The New Yorker''. Written in an experimental narrative style, it remains a significant text on the AIDS epidemic. She achieved late popular success as a best-selling novelist with ''The Volcano Lover'' (1992). At age 67, Sontag published her final novel ''In America'' (2000). The last two novels were set during the past, which Sontag said gave her greater freedom to write in the polyphonic voice.

It was as an essayist, however, that Sontag gained early fame and notoriety. Sontag wrote frequently about the intersection of high and low art and the form/content dichotomy across the arts. Her celebrated and widely-read 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'" was epoch-defining, examining an alternative sensibility to that which considers the best art in terms of its seriousness. It gestured towards and expounded the "so bad it's good" concept of popular culture for the first time. During 1977, Sontag wrote the essay ''On Photography''. The essay is an exploration of photographs as a collection of the world, mainly by travelers or tourists, and the way we therefore experience it. She outlines the concept of her theory of taking pictures as you travel:

The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic – Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.

Sontag suggested photographic "evidence" be used as a presumption that "something exists, or did exist", regardless of distortion. For her, the art of photography is "as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are", for cameras are produced rapidly as a "mass art form" and are available to all of those with the means to attain them. Focusing also on the effect of the camera and photograph on the wedding and modern family life, Sontag reflects that these are a "rite of family life" in industrialized areas such as Europe and America.

To Sontag "picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with ever more peremptory rights - to interfere with, to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on". She considers the camera a phallus, comparable to ray guns and cars, which are "fantasy-machines whose use is addictive". For Sontag the camera can be linked to murder and a promotion of nostalgia while evoking "the sense of the unattainable" in the industrialized world. The photograph familiarizes the wealthy with "the oppressed, the exploited, the starving, and the massacred" but removes the shock of these images because they are available widely and have ceased to be novel.

Sontag championed European writers such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Antonin Artaud, E. M. Cioran, and W. G. Sebald, along with some Americans such as María Irene Fornés. During several decades she would study attention to novels, film, and photography. In more than one book, Sontag wrote about cultural attitudes toward illness. Her final nonfiction work, ''Regarding the Pain of Others'', re-examined art and photography from a moral consideration. It concerned how the media affects culture's ideas of conflict.

A new visual code

In her Essay ''On Photography'' Sontag says that the evolution of modern technology has changed the viewer in three key ways. She calls this the emergence of a new visual code.

Firstly, Sontag suggests that modern photography, with its convenience and ease, has created an overabundance of visual material. As photographing is now a practice of the masses, due to a drastic decrease of camera size and increase of ease in developing photographs, we are left in a position where “just about everything has been photographed” (Sontag, Susan, (1977), On Photography 3). We now have so many images available to us of: things, places, events and people from all over the world, and of not immediate relevance to our own existence, that our expectations of what we have the right to view, want to view or should view has been drastically affected. Arguably, gone are the days that we felt entitled to view only those things in our immediate presence or that affected our micro world; we now seem to feel entitled to gain access to any existing images. “In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notion of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe” (3). This is what Sontag calls a change in the “ethics of seeing” (3).

Secondly, Sontag comments on the effect of modern photography on our education, claiming that photographs “now provide most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the present”(4). Without photography only those few people who had been there would know what the Egyptian pyramids or the Parthenon look like, yet most of us have a good idea of the appearance of these places. Photography teaches us about those parts of the world that are beyond our touch in ways that literature can not.

Thirdly, Sontag also talked about the way in which photography desensitizes its audience. Sontag introduced this discussion by telling her own story of the first time she saw images of horrific human experience. At twelve years old, Sontag found images of holocaust camps and was so distressed by them she says “When I looked at those photographs something broke... something went dead, something is still crying” (20). Sontag argues that there was no good to come from her seeing these images as a young girl, before she fully understood what the holocaust was. For Sontag the viewing of these images has left her a degree more numb to any following horrific image she viewed, as she had been desensitized. According to this argument, “Images anesthetize” and the open accessibility to them is a negative result of photography (20).

Sontag examines the relationship between photography and reality. Photographs are depicted as a representation of realism. Sontag claimed that “such images are indeed able to usurp reality because first of all a photograph is not only an image, an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real (Sontag, Susan (1982), The Image World 350). It is a resemblance of the real as the photograph becomes an extension of the subject. However, the role of the photograph has changed, as copies destroy the idea of an experience. The image has altered to convey information and become an act of classification. Sontag highlights the notion that photographs are a way of imprisoning reality- making the memory stand still. Ultimately images are surveillance of events that trigger the memory. In modern society, photographs are a form of recycling the real. When a moment is captured it is assigned a new meaning as people interpret the image in their own manner. Sontag claims that images desensitize the reality, as people's perceptions are distorted by the construction of the photograph. However this has not stopped people from consuming images; there is still a demand for more photographs.

Sontag observed some uses of photography, “Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation” (Sontag,1977 10), such as memorizing and providing evidence. She also states that “to collect photographs is to collect the world.” (Sontag,1997 3)

Sontag believes that photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. She states that photography has ‘become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation’. She refers to photographs as memento mori, where to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability and mutability. The progression from written word to an image shifts the interpretation from the author to the receiver. Sontag believes however that ‘photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire’. It is a slice in time and in effect, is more memorable than moving images for example, videos. It fills the gaps in our mind of the past and present. Even though photography has such effect, there are limits to photographic knowledge of the world. The limitations are that it can never be interpreted ethical or political knowledge. It will always be some kind of sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanist.

Activism

In 1968, Sontag signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

During 1989 Sontag was the President of PEN American Center, the main U.S. branch of the International PEN writers' organization. This was the year when Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a ''fatwa'' death sentence against writer Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel ''The Satanic Verses''. Khomeini and some other Islamic fundamentalists claimed the novel was blasphemous. Sontag's uncompromising support of Rushdie was critical in rallying American writers to his cause.

A few years later, Sontag gained attention for directing Samuel Beckett's ''Waiting for Godot'' during the nearly four-year Siege of Sarajevo. Early in that conflict, Sontag referred to the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina as the "Spanish Civil War of our time". She started controversy among U.S. leftists for advocating U.S. and European military intervention. Sontag lived in Sarajevo for many months of the Sarajevo siege.

Sontag continued to theorize about the role of photography in real life in her essay "Looking at War: Photography's View of Devastation and Death" which appeared in the December 9th, 2002 issue of ''The New Yorker''. In it she acknowledges that the problem of our reliance on images and especially photographic images is not that "people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs, .... that the photographic image eclipses other forms of understanding--and remembering. .... To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture" (94). She re-examines the arguments she posed in ''On Photography.''

Controversies

Sontag drew fire for writing (in the Partisan Review, 1967) that:

"Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, ''et al.'' don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history."

According to journalist Christopher Hitchens, Sontag later recanted this statement, saying that "it slandered cancer patients".

In "Sontag, Bloody Sontag," an essay in her book ''Vamps and Tramps'', Camille Paglia describes her initial admiration for Sontag and her subsequent disillusionment. Paglia writes,

Sontag's cool exile was a disaster for the American women's movement. Only a woman of her prestige could have performed the necessary critique and debunking of the first instant-canon feminist screeds, such as those of Kate Millett or Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, whose middlebrow mediocrity crippled women's studies from the start. No patriarchal villains held Sontag back; her failures are her own.

Paglia mentions several criticisms of Sontag, including Harold Bloom's comment on Paglia's doctoral dissertation, of "Mere Sontagisme!" This "had become synonymous with a shallow kind of hip posturing." Paglia also describes Sontag as a "sanctimonious moralist of the old-guard literary world", and tells of a visit by Sontag to Bennington College, in which she arrived hours late, ignored the agreed-upon topic of the event, and made an incessant series of ridiculous demands.

Ellen Lee accused Sontag of plagiarism when Lee discovered at least twelve passages in ''In America'' that were similar to passages in four other books about Helena Modjeska. Those books included a novel by Willa Cather. (Cather wrote: "When Oswald asked her to propose a toast, she put out her long arm, lifted her glass, and looking into the blur of the candlelight with a grave face, said: 'To my coun-n-try!'" Sontag wrote, "When asked to propose a toast, she put out her long arm, lifted her glass, and looking into the blur of the candlelight, crooned, 'To my new country!'" "Country," muttered Miss Collingridge. "Not 'coun-n-try.'") The quotations were presented without credit or attribution.

Sontag said about using the passages, "All of us who deal with real characters in history transcribe and adopt original sources in the original domain. I've used these sources and I've completely transformed them. I have these books. I've looked at these books. There's a larger argument to be made that all of literature is a series of references and allusions."

"Fascism with a human face"

At a New York pro-Solidarity rally during 1982, Sontag stated that "people on the left", like herself, "have willingly or unwillingly told a lot of lies". She added that they

Sontag's speech "drew boos and shouts from the audience". ''The Nation'' published her speech, excluding the passage comparing the magazine with ''Reader's Digest'', and reactions to the speech from fellow intellectuals. Responses varied, with some claiming that she had betrayed her ideals.

Personal life

Sontag became aware of her homosexuality during her early teens and at 15 wrote in her diary, "so now I feel I have lesbian tendencies (how reluctantly I write this)." At 16, she had her first sexual encounter with a woman: "Perhaps I was drunk, after all, because it was so beautiful when H began making love to me .... It had been 4:00 before we had gotten to bed ... I became fully conscious that I desired her, she knew it, too...."

During the early 1970s, Sontag was involved romantically with Nicole Stéphane (1923–2007), a Rothschild banking heiress turned movie actress. Sontag later engaged in a committed relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz, with whom she was close during her last years; choreographer Lucinda Childs, writers María Irene Fornés and Harriet Sohmers Zwerling, and other women.

In an interview in ''The Guardian'' during 2000, Sontag was quite open about her bisexuality:

:"Shall I tell you about getting older?", she says, and she is laughing. "When you get older, 45 plus, men stop fancying you. Or put it another way, the men I fancy don't fancy me. I want a young man. I love beauty. So what's new?" She says she has been in love seven times in her life, which seems quite a lot. "No, hang on," she says. "Actually, it's nine. Five women, four men."

Many of Sontag's obituaries failed to mention her significant same-sex relationships, most notably that with Leibovitz. In response to this criticism, ''The New York Times''' Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, defended the newspaper's obituary, stating that at the time of Sontag's death, a reporter could make no independent verification of her romantic relationship with Leibovitz (despite attempts to do so). After Sontag's death, ''Newsweek'' published an article about Leibovitz that made clear reference to her decade-plus relationship with Sontag, stating: "The two first met in the late '80s, when Leibovitz photographed her for a book jacket. They never lived together, though they each had an apartment within view of the other's." Susan Sontag's son, David Rieff, the executor of her estate, has said that only sentimental items were bequeathed to Leibovitz.

Sontag was quoted by Editor-in-Chief Brendan Lemon of ''Out'' magazine as saying "I grew up in a time when the modus operandi was the 'open secret'. I'm used to that, and quite OK with it. Intellectually, I know why I haven't spoken more about my sexuality, but I do wonder if I haven't repressed something there to my detriment. Maybe I could have given comfort to some people if I had dealt with the subject of my private sexuality more, but it's never been my prime mission to give comfort, unless somebody's in drastic need. I'd rather give pleasure, or shake things up."

Cultural references

In the film ''Bull Durham'', Kevin Costner as "Crash" Davis declares that "the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap."

In the musical "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson", the song "Illness as a Metaphor" makes reference to Susan Sontag's cancer.

Works

Fiction

(1963) ''The Benefactor'' ISBN 0-385-26710-X

(1967) ''Death Kit'' ISBN 0-312-42011-0

(1977) ''I, etcetera'' (Collection of short stories) ISBN 0-374-17402-4

(1991) ''The Way We Live Now'' (short story) ISBN 0-374-52305-3

(1992) ''The Volcano Lover'' ISBN 1-55800-818-7

(1999) ''In America '' ISBN 1-56895-898-6 (National Book Award for fiction in 2000)

Plays

(1991) "A Parsifal" [one-act play, first published in _Antaeus_ 67 (1991): 180-185.]

(1993) ''Alice in Bed'' Library of Congress catalog card number 93-71280

(1999) "Lady from the Sea" [adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's play of the same name; first published in _Theater_ 29.1 (1999): 89-91.]

Nonfiction

Collections of essays

(1966) ''Against Interpretation'' ISBN 0-385-26708-8 (includes Notes on "Camp")

(1969) ''Styles of Radical Will'' ISBN 0-312-42021-8

(1980) ''Under the Sign of Saturn'' ISBN 0-374-28076-2

(2001) ''Where the Stress Falls'' ISBN 0-374-28917-4

(2002) ''Regarding the Pain of Others'' ISBN 0-374-248583

(2007) ''At the Same Time: Essays & Speeches'' ISBN 0-374-10072-1 (edited by Paolo Dilonardo and Anne Jump, with a foreword by David Rieff)

Sontag also published nonfiction essays in ''The New Yorker'', ''The New York Review of Books'', ''Times Literary Supplement'', ''The Nation'', ''Granta'', ''Partisan Review'' and the ''London Review of Books''.

Monographs

(1977) ''On Photography'' ISBN 0-374-22626-1

(1978) ''Illness as Metaphor'' ISBN 0-394-72844-0

(1988) ''AIDS and Its Metaphors'' (a continuation of ''Illness as Metaphor'') ISBN 0-374-10257-0

(2003) ''Regarding the Pain of Others'' ISBN 0-374-24858-3

Films

(1969) Duett för kannibaler ''(Duet for Cannibals)''

(1971) Broder Carl ''(Brother Carl)''

(1974) Promised Lands

(1983) Unguided Tour ''AKA Letter from Venice''

Other

(2004) Contribution of phrases to Fischerspooner's third album "Odyssey."

(2002) Liner notes for Patti Smith album ''Land''.

(2008) ''Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963''

Books and articles on Susan Sontag

''Sontag and Kael'' by Craig Seligman ISBN 1-58243-311-9.

''The Din in the Head.'' Essays by Cynthia Ozick ISBN 978-0-618-47050-1 See Forward: On Discord and Desire.

''Conversations with Susan Sontag.'' Edited by Leland Poague ISBN 0-87805-833-8 Susan Sontag in her own words.

''Susan Sontag: The Elegiac Modernist'' by Sohnya Sayres ISBN 0-415-90031-X

''Swimming in a Sea of Death'' by David Rieff A memoir about Susan Sontag's death by her son.

''Notes on Sontag'' by Phillip Lopate

''Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag'' by Sigrid Nunez

Awards and honors

1978: National Book Critics Circle Award for ''On Photography''

1990: MacArthur Fellowship

1992: Malaparte Prize, Italy

1999: Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France

2000: National Book Award for ''In America''

2001: Was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, which is awarded every two years to a writer whose work explores the freedom of the individual in society.

2002: Received her second George Polk Award, for Cultural Criticism for "Looking at War," in The New Yorker

2003: Received the ''Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels)'' during the Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse).

2003: Won the Prince of Asturias Award on Literature.

2004: Two days after her death, the mayor of Sarajevo announced the city would name a street after her, calling her an "author and a humanist who actively participated in the creation of the history of Sarajevo and Bosnia." An initiative by Sarajevo Mayor Muhidin Hamamdzic to pay tribute to Susan Sontag, who has died recently, by renaming Theatre Square outside the National Theatre Susan Sontag Theatre Square, was accepted on Thursday (27 January) at a session of the Sarajevo City Council. It took long 5 years for that to become official, since nationalist political parties ignored that promise. On March 30, 2009. it was officially announced that Theater Square in front of National Theater in Sarajevo will get the name of Susan Sontag. 2010: On 13. January 2010 City of Sarajevo post a plate with a new street name for Theater Square - Theater Square of Susan Sontag.

References

External links

"with Ramona Koval", ''Books and Writing,'' ABC Radio National, 30/1/2005

Susan Sontag, official website

Susan Sontag – Photos by Mathieu Bourgois.

The ''Friedenspreis'' acceptance speech (2003-10-12)

''Fascinating Fascism'' illustrated text of Sontag's seminal 1974 article on Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl's aesthetics, from ''Under the Sign of Saturn''

Sontag's comments in the New Yorker, September 24, 2001 about the September 11th attack on the United States

Terry Castle, ''Desperately Seeking Susan'', London Review of Books, March 2005

Sheelah Kolhatkar, "Notes on camp Sontag" ''New York Observer'', January 8, 2005

'Susan Sontag: The Collector', by Daniel Mendelsohn, ''The New Republic''

A review of "Reborn" - by James Patrick

Category:1933 births Category:2004 deaths Category:Alumni of St Anne's College, Oxford Category:American activists Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists Category:American dissidents Category:American feminist writers Category:American historical novelists Category:American tax resisters Category:American women writers Category:Bisexual writers Category:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Deaths from leukemia Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:Harvard Centennial Medal recipients Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:University of Paris alumni Category:Jewish American writers Category:Jewish feminists Category:Jewish women writers Category:LGBT feminists Category:LGBT Jews Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:LGBT parents Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Recipients of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Category:People from New York City Category:Photography critics Category:Sarah Lawrence College faculty Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery

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name	Bob Costas
birth date	March 22, 1952
birth name	Robert Quinlan Costas
birth place	Queens, New York, U.S.
occupation	Sportscaster
spouse	Jill Sutton (2004–present)Carole Krumenacher (1983–2001, divorced, 2 children)
parents	Jayne and John Costas
children	Keith and Taylor }}

Robert Quinlan "Bob" Costas (born March 22, 1952) is an American sportscaster, on the air for the NBC network since the early 1980s.

Early life

Bob Costas was born in Queens, New York. He is the son of Jayne (née Quinlan) of Irish American descent and John George Costas of Greek American descent, who was an electrical engineer. In Ken Burns' Baseball (TV Series), Costas indicated that he had a very poor relationship with his father, but did not go into specifics. He grew up in Commack, New York, graduating from Commack High School South. Following high school, he majored in Communications & Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University where he dropped out of school. Later he received an honorary degree from S. I. Newhouse School of Communications.

Broadcasting career

Early career

His sportscasting career started while attending Syracuse University, as an announcer for the Syracuse Blazers minor-league hockey team playing in the Eastern Hockey League and North American Hockey League.

Costas' career as a professional began at KMOX radio in St. Louis, where he served as a play-by-play announcer for the Spirits of St. Louis of the American Basketball Association. He also called Missouri Tigers basketball for KMOX, and co-hosted the station's ''Open Line'' call-in program.

Costas was a prominent contributor to the ABA book ''Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association''. He is extensively quoted on many topics, and the book includes his reflections of ABA life during his tenure as radio voice of the Spirits of St. Louis.

Costas later did play-by-play for Chicago Bulls broadcasts on WGN-TV during the 1979–1980 season. He was briefly employed by the CBS network prior to joining NBC Sports in 1980.

NBC Sports

When Costas was first hired by NBC, Don Ohlmeyer, who at the time ran NBC Sports, told the then 28-year-old Costas that he looked like a 14-year-old. Ohlmeyer presumably based his reaction on Costas' modest stature (Costas is 5' 7" in height) and boyish, babyfaced appearance.

He has been an in-studio host of National Football League coverage and play-by-play man for the NBA and for Major League Baseball. Costas has teamed with Isiah Thomas and Doug Collins for basketball telecasts (from 1997–2000) and Tony Kubek (from 1983–1989), Joe Morgan and Bob Uecker (from 1994–2000) for baseball telecasts. Before becoming the studio host for ''The NFL on NBC'' in 1984, Costas did play-by-play with analyst Bob Trumpy for NFL games.

Since 2001, he has been the co-host of the Kentucky Derby. Since 1995, Costas has also hosted NBC's coverage of the U.S. Open golf tournament.

In 2009, he hosted Bravo's coverage of the 2009 Kentucky Oaks.

Olympics

Costas has frontlined many Olympics broadcasts for NBC. They include the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992, Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000, Salt Lake City in 2002, Athens in 2004, Torino in 2006, Beijing in 2008, and Vancouver in 2010. He discusses his work on the Olympic telecasts extensively in a book by Andrew Billings entitled ''Olympic Media: Inside the Biggest Show on Television''. A personal influence on Costas has been legendary ABC Sports broadcaster Jim McKay, who hosted many Olympics for ABC from the 1960s to the 1980s.

During the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Opening Ceremonies, Costas' remarks on the China Team's possible drug use caused an uproar among the American Chinese and international communities. Thousands of dollars were raised to purchase ads in the ''Washington Post'' and Sunday ''New York Times'', featuring an image of the head of a statue of Apollo and reading: "Costas Poisoned Olympic Spirit, Public Protests NBC." However, Costas' comments were made subsequent to the suspension of Chinese coach Zhou Ming after seven of his swimmers were caught using steroids in 1994. Further evidence of Chinese athletes' drug use came in 1997 when Australian authorities confiscated 13 vials of Somatropin, a human growth hormone, from the bag of Chinese swimmer Yuan Yuan upon her arrival for the 1997 World Swimming Championships. At the World Championships, four Chinese swimmers tested positive for the banned substance Triamterene, a diuretic used to dilute urine samples in order to mask the presence of anabolic steroids. Including these failed drug tests, 27 Chinese swimmers were caught using performance enhancing drugs from 1990 through 1997; more than the rest of the world combined.

Major League Baseball

One of Bob Costas' most memorable broadcasts occurred on June 23, 1984 (in what would go down in baseball lore as ''The Sandberg Game''). Costas, along with Tony Kubek, was calling the Saturday baseball ''Game of the Week'' from Chicago's Wrigley Field. The game between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals in particular was cited for putting Ryne Sandberg (as well as the 1984 Cubs in general, who would go on to make their first postseason appearance since 1945) "on the map." In the ninth inning, the Cubs trailed 9–8, and faced the premier relief pitcher of the time, Bruce Sutter. Sandberg, then not known for his power, slugged a home run to left field against the Cardinals' ace closer. Despite this dramatic act, the Cardinals scored two runs in the top of the tenth. Sandberg came up again in the tenth inning, facing a determined Sutter with one man on base. Sandberg then shocked the national audience by hitting a second home run, even farther into the left field bleachers, to tie the game again. The Cubs went on to win in the 11th inning. Costas said when Sandberg hit that second home run, ''"Do you believe it?!"'' Willie McGee hit for the cycle in the same game.

While broadcasting Game 4 of the 1988 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Athletics on NBC, Costas angered many members of the Dodgers (especially the team's manager, Tommy Lasorda) by commenting that the team quite possibly had the weakest-hitting lineup in World Series history. Later (while being interviewed by NBC's Marv Albert), after the Dodgers had won Game 4 (en route to a 4–1 series victory), Lasorda sarcastically suggested that the MVP of the 1988 World Series should be Bob Costas.

Besides calling the 1989 American League Championship Series for NBC, Costas also filled-in for a suddenly ill Vin Scully, who had come down with laryngitis, for Game 2 of the 1989 National League Championship Series. Game 2 of the NLCS occurred on Thursday, October 5, which was an off day for the ALCS. NBC then decided to fly Costas from Toronto to Chicago to substitute for Scully on Thursday night. Afterwards, Costas flew back to Toronto, where he resumed work on the ALCS the next night.

Bob Costas anchored NBC's pre and post-game for NFL broadcasts and the pre and post-game shows for numerous World Series and Major League Baseball All-Star Games during the 1980s (the first being for the 1982 World Series). Costas didn't get a shot at doing play-by-play (as the games on NBC were previously called by Vin Scully) for an All-Star Game until 1994 and a World Series until 1995 (when NBC split the coverage with ABC under "The Baseball Network" umbrella). It wasn't until 1997 when Costas finally got the chance to do play-by-play for a World Series from start to finish. Costas ended up winning a Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Personality, Play-by-Play.

In 1999, Costas teamed with his then-NBC colleague, Joe Morgan to call two weekday night telecasts for ESPN. The first was on Wednesday, August 25 with Detroit Tigers playing against the Seattle Mariners. The second was on Tuesday, September 21 with the Atlanta Braves playing against the New York Mets.

National Basketball Association

When NBC gained the NBA network contract from CBS in 1990, Costas hosted the telecasts and was teamed in the studio with ex-Lakers coach Pat Riley. He also hosted the studio program ''Showtime'' and did play-by-play for the 1991 All-Star Game. In 1997, Costas began a three year stint as the lead play-by-play man for ''The NBA on NBC''. NBC enlisted Costas' services after they were forced to (temporarily) remove Marv Albert from their broadcasts due to lingering personal and legal problems at the time. Costas stepped aside following the 2000 NBA Finals, in favor of a returning Marv Albert.

While this, in essence, ended his active role on the ''NBA on NBC'' program (by this point, Hannah Storm and briefly Ahmad Rashad had replaced Costas on studio anchoring duties), Costas would return to do play-by-play for selected playoff games. Costas also anchored NBC's NBA Finals coverage in 2002, which was their last to date as Hannah Storm also anchored it with Costas.

National Football League

In 2006, Costas returned to studio hosting duties on ''The NFL on NBC'' (under the ''Football Night in America'' banner), which was returning after a near ten year hiatus. Costas last hosted NFL telecasts for NBC in 1992.

Costas is nicknamed "Rapping Roberto" by ''New York Daily News'' sports media columnist Bob Raissman. Al Michaels also called him "Rapping Roberto" during the telecast between the Indianapolis Colts and the New York Giants on September 10, 2006, in response to Costas calling him "Alfalfa."

National Hockey League

Costas hosted NBC's coverage of the 2008, 2009 and the 2010 NHL Winter Classic. He was scheduled to host coverage of the 2011 event as well, however due to the game's postponement Costas only hosted pre-game coverage before leaving to go to Seattle for his duties with NBC's NFL coverage the next night.

Talk show hosting

Costas also hosted the syndicated radio program ''Costas Coast to Coast'' from 1986–1996, which was later revived as ''Costas on the Radio''. ''Costas on the Radio'', which ended its three year run on May 31, 2009, aired on 200 stations nationwide each weekend and syndicated by the Clear Channel owned Premiere Radio Networks. Like ''Later'', Costas' radio shows have focused on a wide variety of topics, and have not been limited to sports discussion.

Costas hosted ''Later with Bob Costas'' on NBC from 1988 until 1994. This late night show created by Dick Ebersol, coming on at 1:30 a.m. as the third program in NBC's nightly lineup after ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' and ''Late Night With David Letterman'', was something of a break from the typical TV talk show format of the era, featuring Costas and a single guest having a conversation for the entire half hour, without a band, opening monologue or studio audience. On several occasions, Costas held the guest over for multiple nights, and these in-depth discussions won Costas much praise for his interviewing skills. The show was taped in GE Building's studio 8H at the Rockefeller Plaza with Costas interviewing the guest for 45 minutes to an hour before turning the material over to editors who condensed it down to 22 minutes plus commercial breaks.

In June 2005, Costas was named by CNN president, Jonathan Klein, as a regular substitute anchor for Larry King's ''Larry King Live'' for one year. Costas, as well as Klein, have said that Costas was not trying out for King's position on a permanent basis. Nancy Grace was also named a regular substitute host for the show.

On August 18, 2005, Costas refused to host a ''Larry King Live'' broadcast where the subject was missing teenager Natalee Holloway. Costas said he had no hard feelings about the subject, but that he was uncomfortable with it.

HBO Sports

In 2001, Costas was hired by HBO to host a 12 week series called ''On the Record with Bob Costas''. ''On the Record with Bob Costas'' was similar to the format of the old ''Later'' program as they both concentrated on in-depth interviews.

In 2002, Costas began a stint as co-host of HBO's long running series ''Inside the NFL''. Costas remained host of ''Inside the NFL'' through the end of the 2007 NFL season. He hosted the show with Cris Collinsworth and former NFL legends Dan Marino and Cris Carter. The program aired each week during the NFL season.

In 2005, ''On the Record with Bob Costas'' was revamped to become ''Costas Now'', a monthly show that would focus more on sports and air year-round in a 9 p.m. ET/PT time slot. ''Costas Now'' was more akin to HBO's ''Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel''.

Costas left HBO to sign with MLB Network in February 2009.

MLB Network

Costas agreed to become a contributor to MLB Network. At the channel's launch on January 1, 2009, he hosted the premiere episode of ''All Time Games'', a presentation of the recently-discovered kinescope of Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. During the episode, he held a forum with Don Larsen, who pitched MLB's only postseason perfect game during that game, and Yogi Berra, who caught the game.

Costas joined the network full-time on February 3, 2009. He hosts a regular interview show titled ''MLB Network Studio 42 with Bob Costas'' as well as special programming, and provides play-by-play for select live ''Thursday Night Baseball'' games.

Other appearances

Costas provided significant contributions to the Ken Burns, PBS mini series ''Baseball'' as well as its follow-up ''The 10th Inning''. He also appears in another PBS film, ''A Time for Champions'', produced by St. Louis' Nine Network of Public Media.

Interests

Love of baseball

Costas is a devoted baseball fan (he's been suggested as a potential commissioner) and wrote ''Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball'' in 2000. For his 40th birthday, then Oakland Athletics manager Tony La Russa allowed Costas to manage the club during a spring training game. The first time Costas visited baseball legend Stan Musial's St. Louis eatery, he left a $3.31 tip in homage to Musial's lifetime batting average (.331). Costas delivered the eulogy at Mickey Mantle's funeral. In eulogizing Mantle, Costas described the baseball legend as ''"a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic."'' Costas has even carried a 1958 Mickey Mantle baseball card in his wallet.

Costas has been fairly outspoken about his disdain for Major League Baseball instituting a wild card. Costas believes that it diminishes the significance of winning a divisional championship. He prefers a system in which winning the wild card puts a team at some sort of disadvantage, as opposed to on an equal level with teams by which they were outplayed over a 162 game season. Or, as explained in his book ''Fair Ball'', have only the three division winners in each league go to the postseason, with the team with the best record receiving a bye into the League Championship Series. Once, on the air on HBO's ''Inside the NFL'', he mentioned that the NFL regular season counted for something, but baseball's was beginning to lose significance.

Costas serves as a member of the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro League players through financial and medical difficulties.

Political views

Costas declared on June 27, 2007, that the presidency of George W. Bush had "tragically failed."

''Some people may wonder about the [political] feelings that I've expressed, and I won't get into all the particulars. I think it is now overwhelmingly evident, if you're honest about it, even if you're a conservative Republican, if you're honest about it, this is a failed administration. And no honest conservative would say that George W. Bush was among the 500 most qualified people to be President of the United States. That's not based on political leaning. If a liberal, and I tend to be liberal, disagrees with a conservative, they can still respect that person's competence and the integrity of their point of view. This administration can be rightly criticized by a fair-minded person smack in the middle of the political spectrum on a hundred different counts, and by now they're all self-evident."

The following summer, Costas would interview Bush, as he made an appearance during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Personal life

Costas was married from 1983 to 2001 to Carole "Randy" Randall Krummenacher. They had two children, son Keith (born 1986) and daughter Taylor (born 1989). Costas once jokingly promised Minnesota Twins center fielder Kirby Puckett that if he was batting over .350 by the time his child was born he would name the baby Kirby. Kirby was hitting better than .350, but Bob's son initially was not given a first (or second) name of Kirby. After Puckett reminded Costas of the agreement, the birth certificate was changed to "Keith Michael Kirby Costas". On March 12, 2004, Costas married his second wife, Jill Sutton. Costas resides in St. Louis, Missouri.

Awards and honors

Bob Costas has won multiple National Sportcaster of the Year awards from the National Sportcasters and Sportswriters Association and the American Sportscasters Association (1989, '91, '92 and '93), and nearly 20 Emmy Awards for outstanding sports announcing. In 1999, Costas was a recipient of the Curt Gowdy Award, which is awarded to members of the electronic and print media for outstanding contributions to baseball. He is also an honorary board member of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation

He was selected as the Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism recipient in 2004.

In 2006, Costas was also awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Loyola College in Maryland.

He is a Honorary Trustee of Webster University, a private college located in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves. He is a frequent supporter of the school, to include numerous radio commercials

In popular culture

Costas has occasionally played himself on various programs.

Costas once appeared on the television program, ''NewsRadio'', as himself. He hosted an award show and later had some humorous encounters with the crew of WNYX.

Costas also once appeared as a guest on the faux talkshow cartoon ''Space Ghost Coast to Coast''. Costas appeared on the ''The War to Settle the Score'', a pre-''WrestleMania'' program that The WWF aired on MTV.

Costas appeared as himself along with his rival/counterpart Al Michaels (who now works for NBC) from ABC in the movie ''BASEketball''.

On January 30, 2009, Costas guest starred as himself on the television series ''Monk'' in an episode titled ''Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs''. He mentions to Captain Stottlemeyer about how Adrian Monk once helped him out of a problem several years ago with regards to a demented cat salesman. Of course, it wasn't the cat salesman who was demented: he sold demented cats. He apparently sold Costas a cat that was going to try and kill him with a squeeze toy (in fact, when he signs off, he says "The cat was definitely trying to kill me").

Costas also appeared as himself in the movie ''Pootie Tang'' where he remarks that he saw "the longest damn clip ever". *Costas was "supposed" to appear in the fourth season premiere of ''Celebrity Deathmatch'' (ironically titled "Where is Bob Costas?") as a guest-commentator, but about halfway through the episode it was revealed that John Tesh had killed him before the show to take his place. Tesh had been criticized all-around for Gymnastics coverage during the 1996 Olympics.

Apart from his normal sportscasting duties, Costas has also presented periodic sports blooper reels, and announced dogsled and elevator races, on ''Late Night with David Letterman''.

Bob Costas has been impersonated several times by Darrell Hammond on ''Saturday Night Live''.

In a supposed effort to fulfill a deal he made on ''The Late Late Show'' with Craig Kilborn, as coverage of a game resumed he sipped a glass of pink lemonade and said ''"Ah, that's restaurant quality lemonade."''

Costas has been alluded to in popular music. Arguably his most honorable accomplishment was having his named mentioned in the Mac Dre song "Mafioso"-"Got game like Bob Costas." Costas was "name checked" in a Ludacris song after he mentioned the rapper on the late night talk show ''Last Call with Carson Daly''.

On September 11, 2001 (the day of the terrorist attacks), Costas was in New York City for an appearance on NBC's ''Today Show'' to discuss with Katie Couric basketball legend Michael Jordan's return to the NBA. The interview started off at approximately 7:03 a.m. Eastern Time.

In 2002, Bob was the play-by-play announcer, alongside Harold Reynolds, for ''Triple Play 2002'' during the ballgame for PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

In 2006, Costas voiced the animated character Bob Cutlass, a race announcer, in the movie ''Cars''.

On October 18, 2007, Costas appeared along with former Baseball Commissioner, Fay Vincent at Williams College for "A Conversation About Sports" moderated by Will Dudley, Associate Professor of Philosophy.

On June 13, 2008, Costas appeared on MSNBC's commercial-free special coverage of ''Remembering Tim Russert (1950~2008)''.

On February 11, 2010, Stephen Colbert jokingly expressed his desire to stab Costas at the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Costas later made a cameo appearance on the February 25, 2010 edition of Stephen's show.

He guest-voiced as himself in ''The Simpsons'' 2010 episode, "Boy Meets Curl", when Homer and Marge make the U.S. Olympic curling team.

Memorable calls

Career timeline

1974–1976: Spirits of St. Louis Play-by-play, KMOX radio

1976-1981: Missouri Tigers men's basketball Play-by-play, KMOX radio

1976-1979: ''NFL on CBS'' Play-by-play

1979–1980: Chicago Bulls Play-by-play, WGN-TV

1980-1983: ''NFL on NBC'' Play-by-play

1983–1989: ''MLB on NBC'' #2 play-by-play

1984–1992, 2006–present: ''NFL on NBC'' Studio Host 1988–1994: ''Later'' Host 1992–present: Summer Olympics Primetime Host

1994–2000: ''MLB on NBC'' Lead play-by-play

1997–2000: ''NBA on NBC'' Lead play-by-play

2001–2009: ''On the Record with Bob Costas'' and ''Costas Now'' Host

2002–present: Winter Olympics Primetime Host

2002–2008: ''Inside the NFL'' Host 2008–present: AMP Energy NHL Winter Classic Host

2009–present: MLB Network ''Studio 42 with Bob Costas'' Host, ''Thursday Night Baseball'' Play-by-play

References

External links

Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:American Basketball Association broadcasters Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American horse racing announcers Category:American people of Greek descent Category:American sports radio personalities Category:American sportswriters Category:American talk radio hosts Category:Missouri Democrats Category:American television sports announcers Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Chicago Bulls broadcasters Category:College basketball announcers in the United States Category:College football announcers Category:Figure skating commentators Category:Golf writers and broadcasters Category:Major League Baseball announcers Category:Missouri Tigers men's basketball broadcasters Category:MLB Network personalities Category:National Basketball Association broadcasters Category:National Football League announcers Category:NBC Sports Category:People from St. Louis, Missouri Category:People from Suffolk County, New York Category:Spirits of St. Louis Category:Sports Emmy Award winners Category:Sportspeople from Queens Category:Syracuse University alumni Category:Tennis commentators

it:Bob Costas ru:Костас, Боб

Name	Chaz Bono
Birth name	Chastity Sun Bono
Birth date	March 04, 1969
Birth place	Los Angeles, California, US
Nationality	American
Known for	Sonny & Cher's only child together, LGBT activism, writing, acting
Occupation	Actor, writer, musician, activist
Years active	1972–present
Parents	Sonny Bono, Cher
Website	}}

Chaz Salvatore Bono (born Chastity Sun Bono; March 4, 1969) is an American transgender advocate, writer, actor, and musician. Bono is the only child that American entertainers Sonny and Cher had together, though each had children from other relationships. Bono is a female-to-male transgender man.

In 1995, after several years of being outed as lesbian by the tabloid press, Bono publicly declared himself as such in a cover story in a leading American gay monthly magazine, ''The Advocate''. Bono went on to discuss the process of coming out to oneself and to others in two books. ''Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families'' (1998) includes the author's coming out account. The memoir, ''The End of Innocence'' (2003) discusses the author's outing, music career, and partner Joan's death from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Around age 39, Bono underwent female-to-male gender transition. A two-part ''Entertainment Tonight'' feature in June 2009 explained that Bono's transition had started a year before. In May 2010, Bono legally changed gender and name. Bono made a documentary about his life which debuted on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.

Early life and education

Bono is the only child together of Cher and Sonny Bono of the well-known pop duo Sonny & Cher, who had a top-rated television variety show on which the young child often appeared. Bono was named ''Chastity Sun Bono'' after the film ''Chastity'', which was produced by Sonny, and in which Cher—in her first feature film—plays a bisexual woman. The film had its première shortly before Bono's birth in 1969.

Bono came out to both parents as lesbian at age 18. In ''Family Outing'', Bono wrote that, "as a child, I always felt there was something different about me. I'd look at other girls my age and feel perplexed by their obvious interest in the latest fashion, which boy in class was the cutest, and who looked the most like cover girl Christie Brinkley. When I was 13, I finally found a name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay."

Ceremony

Bono began a short music career with the band Ceremony, which released one album, ''Hang Out Your Poetry'', in 1993. The band featured Bono on vocals, acoustic guitar, and percussion. Other members were Steve March Tormé (backup vocals), Heidi Shink a.k.a. Chance, Pete McRae, Steve Bauman, Louis Ruiz, and Bryn Mathieu. All but one of the band's songs were written or co-written by Bono, Shink, and Mark Hudson. They used no synthesizers or digital effects on the album; Shink noted, "We turned our back on technology. [ ... ] It's reminiscent of the 60s, but more a tip of the hat than emulating it. We took the music we love and rejuvenated it, made it 90's."

The song "Could've Been Love" was released as a single from the album. The album's other tracks are "Goodbye Sunshine", "Steal Your Heart", "Day by Day", "Ready for Love", "Ready for Love (Refrain)", "Hang Out Your Poetry", "Turn It Over", "Trust", "2 of 1", "First Day of My Life", "Breathless", "Living in a Paradise", and "Livin' It Up". Sonny and Cher recorded backing vocals (uncredited) for the last song.

LGBT activism and spokesperson

In April 1995, Bono came out as lesbian in an interview with ''The Advocate'', a national gay and lesbian magazine. The 1998 book ''Family Outing'' detailed how Bono's coming out "catapulted me into a political role that has transformed my life, providing me with affirmation as a lesbian, as a woman, and as an individual." In the same book, Bono reported that Cher, who was both a gay icon and ally to LGBT communities, was quite uncomfortable with the news at first, and "went ballistic" before coming to terms with it: "By August 1996, one year after I came out publicly, my mother had progressed so far that she agreed to 'come out' herself on the cover of ''The Advocate'' as the proud mother of a lesbian daughter." Cher has since become an outspoken LGBT rights activist.

Bono's paternal relationship became strained after Sonny became a Republican Congressman from California. The differences in their political views separated them, and the two had not spoken for more than a year at the time of Sonny's fatal skiing accident in January 1998.

Bono worked as a writer at large for ''The Advocate''. As a social activist, Bono became a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, promoting National Coming Out Day, campaigning for the reelection of Bill Clinton for US President, campaigning against the Defense of Marriage Act, and serving as Entertainment Media Director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Bono was one of the team captains for ''Celebrity Fit Club 3'' (2006) and was supported by girlfriend Jennifer Elia, who orchestrated exercise and training sessions.

Gender transition

In mid-2008, Bono began undergoing a physical and social gender transition from female to male. This was confirmed in June 2009 by his publicist, who identified Bono's preferred name as ''Chaz Bono'' and said, "It is Chaz's hope that his choice to transition will open the hearts and minds of the public regarding this issue, just as his coming out did." GLAAD and the Empowering Spirits Foundation were quick to offer praise and support for the announcement. Bono's legal transition was completed on May 7, 2010, when a California court granted his request for a gender and name change. Bono made ''Becoming Chaz'', a documentary film about his sex change that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network acquired the rights to the documentary and debuted it on May 10, 2011.

Bibliography

''Family Outing'' (with Billie Fitzpatrick) (1998) ISBN 0-316-10233-4

''The End of Innocence: A Memoir'' (with Michele Kort) (2003) ISBN 1-55583-795-6

Bono, Chaz, and Billie Fitzpatrick. ''Transition: the story of how I became a man.'' New York: Dutton, 2011. Print.

Footnotes

External links

[ Allmusic.com entry on Bono's band Ceremony]

The Official Chaz Bono Website

Category:1969 births Category:American child actors Category:Cher Category:Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School alumni Category:Living people Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Celebrity Fit Club participants Category:Transgender and transsexual musicians Category:Transgender and transsexual actors Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:Transgender and transsexual writers Category:Sonny & Cher Category:Children of Entertainers

cy:Chastity Bono de:Chaz Bono es:Chaz Bono it:Chaz Bono pt:Chaz Bono ru:Боно, Чез

name	Pauline Kael
birth date	June 19, 1919
birth place	Petaluma, California
death date	September 03, 2001
death place	Great Barrington, Massachusetts
occupation	Film critic
period	1951 - 1991
influenced	Paul Schrader, Wes Anderson, David Denby, David Edelstein, Anthony Lane, Greil Marcus, Elvis Mitchell, A. O. Scott, Michael Sragow, Quentin Tarantino, Armond White, Stephen Hunter, Tom Shales
website	}}

Pauline Kael (June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in ''City Lights'', ''McCall's'' and ''The New Republic''.

Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated, and sharply focused" reviews, her opinions often contrary to those of her contemporaries. She is often regarded as the most influential American film critic of her day.

She left a lasting impression on many major critics, including Armond White, whose reviews are similarly non-conformist, and Roger Ebert, who has said that Kael "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades." Owen Gleiberman said she "was more than a great critic. She re-invented the form, and pioneered an entire aesthetic of writing. She was like the Elvis or the Beatles of film criticism."

Early life and career

Kael was born on a chicken farm in Petaluma, California, to Isaac Paul Kael and Judith Friedman Kael, Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her parents lost their farm when Kael was eight, and the family moved to San Francisco, California. She matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1936; she studied philosophy, literature, and the arts but dropped out in 1940 before completing her degree. Nevertheless, Kael intended to go on to law school but fell in with a group of artists and moved to New York City with the poet Robert Horan.

Three years later, Kael returned to San Francisco and "led a bohemian life," marrying and divorcing three times, writing plays, and working in experimental film. In 1948, Kael and filmmaker James Broughton had a daughter, Gina, whom Kael would raise alone. Gina had a serious illness through much of her childhood; and, to support Gina and herself, Kael worked a series of such menial jobs as cook and seamstress, along with stints as an advertising copywriter. In 1953, the editor of ''City Lights'' magazine overheard Kael arguing about films in a coffeeshop with a friend and asked her to review Charlie Chaplin's ''Limelight.'' Kael memorably dubbed the film "slimelight" and began publishing film criticism regularly in magazines.

Even these early reviews were notable for their informality and lack of pretension; Kael later explained, "I worked to loosen my style—to get away from the term-paper pomposity that we learn at college. I wanted the sentences to breathe, to have the sound of a human voice." Kael disparaged the supposed critic's ideal of objectivity, referring to it as "saphead objectivity," and incorporated aspects of autobiography into her criticism. In a review of Vittorio De Sica's 1946 neorealist ''Shoeshine'' (Sciuscià) that has been ranked among her most memorable, Kael described seeing the film

Kael broadcast many of her early reviews on the alternative public radio station KPFA, in Berkeley, and gained further local-celebrity status as Berkeley Cinema Guild manager from 1955 to 1960. As manager of a two-screen theater, Kael programmed the films that were shown "unapologetically repeat[ing] her favorites until they also became audience favorites." She also wrote "pungent" capsule reviews of the films, which her patrons began collecting.

Going mass market

Kael continued to juggle writing with other work until she received an offer to publish a book of her criticism. Published in 1965 as ''I Lost It at the Movies,'' the collection sold 150,000 paperback copies and was a surprise bestseller. Coinciding with a job at the high-circulation women's magazine ''McCall's,'' Kael (as ''Newsweek'' put it in a 1966 profile) "went mass".

During the same year, she wrote a blistering review of the phenomenally popular ''The Sound of Music'' in ''McCall's''. After mentioning that some of the press had dubbed it "The Sound of Money," Kael called the film's message a "sugarcoated lie that people seem to want to eat." Although, according to legend, this review led to her being fired from ''McCall's'' (''The New York Times'' printed as much in Kael's obituary), both Kael and the magazine's editor, Robert Stein, denied this. According to Stein, "I [fired her] months later after she kept panning every commercial movie from ''Lawrence of Arabia'' and ''Dr. Zhivago'' to ''The Pawnbroker'' and ''A Hard Day's Night.''"

Her dismissal from ''McCall's'' led to a stint from 1966 to 1967 at ''The New Republic,'' whose editors continually altered Kael's writing without permission. In October 1967, Kael wrote a lengthy essay on ''Bonnie and Clyde'', which the magazine declined to publish. William Shawn of ''The New Yorker'' obtained the piece and ran it in the ''New Yorker'' issue of October 21. Kael's review raved about the then controversial film ''Bonnie and Clyde.'' According to critic David Thomson, "she was right about a film that had bewildered many other critics." A few months after the essay ran, Kael quit the ''Republic'' "in despair," Kael was asked by Shawn to join ''The New Yorker'' staff as one of its two film critics (she alternated every six months with Penelope Gilliatt until 1979, after which she became sole film critic),

Initially, many considered her colloquial, brash writing style an odd fit with the sophisticated and genteel ''New Yorker''. Kael remembered "getting a letter from an eminent ''New Yorker'' writer suggesting that I was trampling through the pages of the magazine with cowboy boots covered with dung." During her tenure at the ''New Yorker'', however, she took advantage of a forum that permitted her to write at length and with presumably minimal editorial interference; and Kael achieved her greatest prominence. By 1968, ''Time'' magazine was referring to her as "one of the country's top movie critics." Kael noted that, during this period, her reviews were so interesting because the films were so compelling.

''New Yorker'' tenure

In 1970, Kael received a George Polk Award for her work as a critic at the ''New Yorker.'' She continued to publish hardbound collections of her writings, many with (deliberately) suggestive titles such as ''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,'' ''When the Lights Go Down,'' and ''Taking It All In.'' Her fourth book, ''Deeper into Movies'' (1973), was the first non-fiction book about films to win a National Book Award.

Kael also wrote philosophical essays on filmgoing, the modern Hollywood film industry, and the lack of courage on the part of audiences (as she perceived it) to explore lesser-known, more challenging films (she rarely used the word "film" to describe films because she felt the word was too elitist). Among her more popular essays were a damning review of Norman Mailer's semi-fictional ''Marilyn: a Biography'' (an account of Marilyn Monroe's life); an incisive look at Cary Grant's career; and an extensively researched examination of ''Citizen Kane'', entitled ''Raising Kane'' (later reprinted in ''The Citizen Kane Book''). She argued that Herman J. Mankiewicz, ''Citizen Kane'''s co-screenwriter, deserved as much credit for the film as Orson Welles, a thesis that provoked controversy and hurt Welles to the point that he considered suing Kael for libel. Pauline Kael's accusations were subsequently rebutted by scholarly research by Robert L. Carringer, James Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum who have established that Orson Welles significantly contributed to the film's conception and development. Most significantly, Charles Lederer who is cited by Kael as a source, himself claimed that Kael's research was largely distorted and poorly researched. Peter Bogdanovich noted that Kael did not interview anyone then alive who was actively involved in the production of the film.

Bogdanovich also quotes Woody Allen's observation about Kael, "She has everything that a great critic needs except judgment. And I don't mean that facetiously. She has great passion, terrific wit, wonderful writing style, huge knowledge of film history, but too often what she chooses to extol or fails to see is very surprising."

Kael battled the editors of the ''New Yorker'' as much as her own critics. She fought with William Shawn to review the 1972 pornographic film ''Deep Throat,'' though she eventually relented. According to Kael, after reading her negative review of Terrence Malick's 1973 film ''Badlands,'' Shawn said, "I guess you didn't know that Terry is like a son to me." Kael responded, "Tough shit, Bill", and her review was printed unchanged. Other than sporadic confrontations with Shawn, Kael said she spent most of her work time at home, writing.

Upon the release of Kael's 1980 collection ''When the Lights Go Down,'' her ''New Yorker'' colleague Renata Adler published an 8,000-word review in ''The New York Review of Books'' that dismissed the book as "jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless." Adler argued that Kael's post-sixties work contained "nothing certainly of intelligence or sensibility," and faulted her "quirks [and] mannerisms," including Kael's repeated use of the "bullying" imperative and rhetorical question. The piece, which stunned Kael and quickly became infamous in literary circles, was described by ''Time'' magazine as "the New York literary Mafia['s] bloodiest case of assault and battery in years." Although Kael refused to respond, Adler's review became known as "the most sensational attempt on Kael's reputation"; twenty years later, Salon.com (ironically) referred to Adler's "worthless" denunciation of Kael as her "most famous single sentence."

In 1979, Kael accepted an offer from Warren Beatty to be a consultant to Paramount Pictures but left the position after only a few months to return to writing criticism.

Later years

In the early 1980s, Kael was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. As her illness worsened, she became increasingly depressed about the state of American films, along with feeling that "I had nothing new to say." In a March 11, 1991, announcement which ''The New York Times'' referred to as "earth-shattering," Kael announced her retirement from reviewing films regularly. At the time, Kael explained that she would still write essays for ''The New Yorker,'' along with "some reflections and other pieces of writing about movies." During the next ten years, however, she published no new work besides an introduction to her 1994 compendium, ''For Keeps.'' In the introduction (which was reprinted in ''The New Yorker''), Kael stated, in reference to her film criticism, "I'm frequently asked why I don't write my memoirs. I think I have."

Though she published no new writing of her own, Kael was not averse to giving interviews, in which she alternately praised and derided newly released films and television shows. In a 1998 interview with ''Modern Maturity'', she said she sometimes regretted not being able to review: "A few years ago when I saw ''Vanya on 42nd Street'', I wanted to blow trumpets. Your trumpets are gone once you’ve quit." She died at her home in Massachusetts in 2001, aged 82.

Opinions

Kael's opinions often ran contrary to consensus critical opinion. Occasionally, she energetically championed films that were considered critical failures, such as ''The Warriors'' and ''Last Tango in Paris''. Soon after the latter film's release, Kael won the 1973 ''Harvard Lampoon'' Bosley Award, named after ''New York Times'' film critic Bosley Crowther and given to "that critic who consistently explores the farthest limits of bad taste." She was described by the Award's judges as "Pauline Kael, whose hysterical encomium loosed Bertolucci's ''Last Tango in Paris'' on an all-too-trusting world." She was not especially cruel to some films that had been roasted by many critics, such as the 1972 ''Man of La Mancha'', in which she praised Sophia Loren's performance. She also condemned films that elsewhere attracted admiration, such as ''It's a Wonderful Life'', ''West Side Story'', and ''Shoah''. The originality of her opinions, as well as the forceful way in which she expressed them, won her ardent supporters as well as angry critics.

Notable film reviews by Kael included a venomous criticism of ''West Side Story'' that drew harsh replies from the film's supporters; ecstatic reviews of ''Z'' and ''MASH'' that resulted in enormous boosts to those films' popularity; and enthusiastic reviews of Brian De Palma's early films. Her 'preview' of Robert Altman's 1975 film ''Nashville'' appeared several months before the film was actually completed, in an attempt to prevent the studio from re-cutting the film and to catapult it to box office glory.

Views on violence

Kael had a taste for anti-hero films that violated taboos involving sex and violence, and this reportedly alienated some of her readers. She also had a strong dislike for films that she felt were manipulative or appealed in superficial ways to conventional attitudes and feelings. She was particularly critical towards Clint Eastwood and her reviews of his films and acting, even if generally well-favored, were resoundingly negative; she became known as his arch nemesis.

She was an enthusiastic supporter of the violent action films of Sam Peckinpah and early Walter Hill, as evidenced in her collection ''5001 Nights at the Movies'', which includes positive reviews of Hill's ''Hard Times'' (1975), ''The Warriors'' (1979), and ''Southern Comfort'' (1981), as well as Peckinpah's entire body of work. Although she initially dismissed John Boorman's ''Point Blank'' (1967) for what she felt was its pointless brutality, she later acknowledged it was "intermittently dazzling" with "more energy and invention than Boorman seems to know what to do with...one comes out exhilarated but bewildered."

However, Kael responded negatively to some action films that she felt pushed what she described as "right-wing" or "fascist" agendas. She labeled Don Siegel's ''Dirty Harry'' (1971), starring Clint Eastwood as "right-wing fantasy [that is] a remarkably single-minded attack on liberal values". She also called it "fascist medievalism". In an otherwise extremely positive critique of Peckinpah's ''Straw Dogs'', Kael concluded that the controversial director had made "the first American film that is a fascist work of art".

In her negative review of Stanley Kubrick's ''A Clockwork Orange'', Kael explained how she felt some directors who used brutal imagery in their films were de-sensitizing audiences to violence:

Accusations of homophobia

In preface to a 1983 interview with Kael for the gay magazine ''Mandate'', Sam Staggs wrote that "she has always carried on a love/hate affair with her gay legions....like the bitchiest queen in gay mythology, she has a sharp remark about everything." In the early 1980s, however, largely in response to her review of the 1981 drama ''Rich and Famous,'' Kael faced notable accusations of homophobia. First remarked on by Stuart Byron in ''The Village Voice'', according to gay writer Craig Seligman the accusations eventually "took on a life of their own and did real damage to her reputation."

In her review, Kael called the straight-themed ''Rich and Famous'' "more like a homosexual fantasy", saying that one female character's affairs "are creepy, because they don't seem like what a woman would get into." Byron, who "hit the ceiling" after reading the review, was joined by ''The Celluloid Closet'' author Vito Russo, who argued that Kael equated promiscuity with homosexuality, "as though straight women have never been promiscuous or been given the permission to be promiscuous."

In response to her review of ''Rich and Famous'', several critics reappraised Kael's earlier reviews of gay-themed films, including a wisecrack Kael made about the lesbian-themed ''The Children's Hour'': "I always thought this was why lesbians needed sympathy—that there isn't much they ''can'' do." Craig Seligman has defended Kael, saying that these remarks showed "enough ease with the topic to be able to crack jokes—in a dark period when other reviewers....'felt that if homosexuality were not a crime it would spread.'" Kael herself rejected the accusations as "craziness," adding, "I don't see how anybody who took the trouble to check out what I've actually written about movies with homosexual elements in them could believe that stuff."

Alleged Nixon quote

On December 28, 1972, in the wake of Richard Nixon's landslide victory in the 1972 presidential election, the ''New York Times'' reported a lecture Kael gave before the Modern Language Association, quoting her as saying: }}

According to a 2008 ''Boston Globe'' editorial written by Robert David Sullivan, Kael was "widely ridiculed" for this statement, though it was usually misquoted as, "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don't know anybody who voted for him." In his 2001 ''New York Times'' best-seller ''Bias'', former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg cited this incident in support of ''New York Post'' writer John Podhoretz' claim that New Yorkers "can easily go through life never meeting anybody who has a thought different from their own."

In 2004, blogger Steven Rubio wrote that Bloomberg News film critic Craig Seligman had e-mailed him that Kael told Seligman that "she never said it," although Seligman added that Kael said she did tell a reporter that "she didn't even know anyone who had voted for Nixon." In 2006, ''CBS Evening News'' writer Greg Khandra wrote that Kael "never really said" the quote. The following year, ''Wall Street Journal'' writer James Taranto cited one reader as attributing a similar sentiment to ''New York Times'' publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger following Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984; in 2008, in an open letter to Susan Estrich on the ''Slate'' website, writer David Brooks attributed the original quote to Joan Didion.

Influence

Almost as soon as she began writing for ''The New Yorker'', Kael carried a great deal of influence among fellow critics. In the early seventies, Cinerama distributors "initiate[d] a policy of individual screenings for each critic because her remarks [during the film] were affecting her fellow critics." In the seventies and eighties, Kael cultivated friendships with a group of young, mostly male critics, some of whom emulated her distinctive writing style. Referred to derisively as the "Paulettes," they came to dominate national film criticism in the 1990s. Critics who have acknowledged Kael's influence include, among many, A. O. Scott of ''The New York Times'', David Denby and Anthony Lane of ''The New Yorker'', David Edelstein of ''New York Magazine'', Greil Marcus, Elvis Mitchell, Michael Sragow, Armond White, and Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com. It was repeatedly alleged that, after her retirement, Kael's "most ardent devotees deliberate[d] with each other [to] forge a common School of Pauline position" before their reviews were written. When confronted with the rumor that she ran "a conspiratorial network of young critics," Kael said she believed that critics imitated her style rather than her actual opinions, stating, "A number of critics take phrases and attitudes from me, and those takings stick out—they’re not integral to the writer’s temperament or approach."

When asked in 1998 if she thought her criticism had affected the way films were made, Kael deflected the question, stating, "If I say yes, I’m an egotist, and if I say no, I’ve wasted my life." Several directors' careers were indisputably affected by her, though, most notably that of ''Taxi Driver'' screenwriter Paul Schrader, who was accepted at UCLA Film School's graduate program on Kael's recommendation. Under her mentoring, Schrader worked as a film critic before taking up screenwriting and directing full-time. Also, film critic Derek Malcolm claimed that, "If a director was praised by Kael, he or she was generally allowed to work, since the money-men knew there would be similar approbation across a wide field of publications." Alternately, Kael was said to be able to prevent filmmakers from working; David Lean claimed that her criticism of his work "kept him from making a movie for 14 years." (He was most likely referring to the 14-year break between ''Ryan's Daughter'' in 1970 and ''A Passage to India'' in 1984.)

In 1978, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.

Though he began directing films after she retired, Quentin Tarantino was also influenced by Kael. He read her criticism voraciously growing up and said that Kael was "as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic." Wes Anderson recounted his efforts to screen his film ''Rushmore'' for Kael in a 1999 ''The New York Times'' article titled "My Private Screening With Pauline Kael". He later wrote Kael that "your thoughts and writing about the movies [have] been a very important source of inspiration for me and my movies, and I hope you don't regret that."

The career of Pauline Kael is discussed at length in ''For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism'', by critics whom she helped with their careers, such as Owen Gleiberman and Elvis Mitchell, as well as by those who fought with her, such as Andrew Sarris. This 2009 documentary film also shows several Kael appearances on PBS, including speaking together with Woody Allen.

In his 1988 film ''Willow'', George Lucas named one of the villains "General Kael," after the critic. Kael had often reviewed Lucas' work without enthusiasm; in her own (negative) review of ''Willow'', she described the character as an "''hommage à moi''."

Bibliography (partial)

Books

''I Lost It at the Movies'' (1965)

''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'' (1968) ISBN 0-31648-163-7

''Going Steady'' (1969) ISBN 0-55305-880-0

''Deeper into Movies'' (1973) ISBN 0-7145-0941-8

''Reeling'' (1976)

''When the Lights Go Down'' (1980) ISBN 0-03042-511-5

''5001 Nights at the Movies'' (1982, revised in 1984 and 1991) ISBN 0-8050-1367-9

''Taking It All In'' (1984) ISBN 0-03069-362-4

''State of the Art'' (1987) ISBN 0-71452-869-2

''Hooked'' (1989)

''Movie Love'' (1991)

''For Keeps'' (1994)

''Raising Kane, and other essays'' (1996)

Selected reviews and essays

"Trash, Art, and the Movies", essay published in the Feb. 1969 issue of ''Harper's''.

"Raising Kane", book-length essay on the making of ''Citizen Kane'' published in the Feb. 20, 1971 and Feb. 27, 1971 issues of ''The New Yorker''.

"Stanley Strangelove", review of ''A Clockwork Orange'' from a January 1972 issue of ''The New Yorker''.

"The Man From Dream City", profile of Cary Grant from the July 14, 1975 issue of ''The New Yorker''.

"Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers", essay published in the June 23, 1980 issue of ''The New Yorker''.

Reviews Mrs. Soffel, directed by Gillian Armstrong and The Cotton Club, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Reviews A Passage to India, directed by David Lean. Reviews Micki and Maude, directed by Blake Edwards; Starman, directed by John Carpenter; The Flamingo Kid, directed by Garry Marshall.

Pauline Kael articles at Byliner

Footnotes

References

Brantley, Will, ed. (1996). ''Conversations with Pauline Kael''. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 0-87805-899-0.

External links

Pauline Kael in Conversation, a video interview from 1982

Pauline Kael and Jonathan Demme

Pauline Kael Archives, a collection of articles and commentary about Kael

The Pearls of Pauline from Brights Lights Film Journal

CityLights interview Pauline Kael interviewed on CityLights by Brian Linehan

Interview magazine q&a; Pauline Kael interviewed by Polly Frost and Ray Sawhill

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