Editor: Bradley Lubin
Part I: 52 pages, softcover, saddle-stitch binding
Part II: 50 pages, softcover, saddle-stitch binding
Pauline Kael and Robert Duncan met in the 1930s as students at the University of California-Berkeley. After both dropped out, they maintained a six year correspondence recording the trials, excitements, and discoveries of life after Berkeley. The Selected Letters, 1945-46 captures their singular friendship and the mutual interests and sensibilities that united them. Highlights include a dialogue on reading Herman Melville’s Pierre; reflections by Duncan on farm-life in Northern California; notes on his preparation of his manuscript The Years as Catches and Kael’s work on a play; and from New York, Kael’s reportage on art-shows, films, music, and discussion meetings tied to Dwight Macdonald’s journal Politics.
Author Biographies:
PAULINE KAEL (1919-2001) was the lead film critic for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991 and one of the reigning voices in American film criticism. Books by Kael include the bestseller I Lost it at the Movies (1965), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968), the National Book Award Winner Deeper into Movies (1974), and The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael (2011), edited by Sanford Schwartz for the Library of America.
ROBERT DUNCAN (1919-1988) was an American poet and key presence in post-War arts and letters. His works of poetry include The Opening of the Field (1960), Roots and Branches (1964), Bending the Bow (1968), and Ground Work: Before the War/In the Dark (2006). The Collected Works of Robert Duncan are currently being published by the University of California Press.
Selected Archives:
- Lilly Library, The University of Indiana-Bloomington, Bloomington, IN
- The Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA
Pauline Kael photo courtesy of Gina James; Robert Duncan photo courtesy of James Peter Cooney, editor of The Phoneix from The Poetry Collection, University of Buffalo.
