The Critics Who Shaped Me
/Hello, My Name Is Misunderstood
Recently, I went to a new dentist for a cleaning. As the hygienist prepared her instruments, she asked me questions about myself. When I told her I wrote book reviews, she said, “Oh, so you’re the one all the writers are afraid of!”
That wasn’t how I saw my role at all. In fact, the idea had never crossed my mind. Suddenly, I felt like a great big monster with no idea how ugly he is until people start screaming and running away.
I Blame Them
There are two people I credit for the way I write book reviews, neither of whom I’ve met and neither of whom were book critics. Pauline Kael and Annette Insdorf both wrote about film.
The Wiseguy
Pauline Kael was, for several years, a film critic at The New Yorker and widely regarded as the preeminent voice of 20th-century film criticism. She’s remembered for her contrarian opinions and her wisecracking voice.
Kael’s reviews are collected in volumes with provocative titles, including I Lost It at the Movies, When the Lights Go Down, and Taking It All In.
Fifteen years ago, I’d never heard of her. Then, one day in a Brooklyn coffeehouse, while waiting for my egg sandwich, I spotted the bright, collaged covers of one of her books. I was immediately sucked in.
Kael could unstuff a shirt like nobody’s business. She once compared the 1973 Barbra Streisand–Robert Redford blockbuster The Way We Were to “a torpedoed ship full of gaping holes which comes snugly into port.”
But she wasn’t just a takedown artist—she was also a tireless crusader for the work she believed in. She championed Bonnie and Clyde (1967) when other critics dismissed it, recognizing its revolutionary power: that audiences “are made to feel but are not told how to feel.”
Reading Kael’s reviews in succession is like reading a history of America. She understood everything in the culture as it was happening—and why it was significant.
The Scholar
Annette Insdorf is a film historian. She teaches at Columbia University and hosts the “Reel Pieces” film series at the 92Y. She’s written extensively about European filmmakers, including Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski, which was my introduction to her way of thinking.
In a 2014 interview in Columbia College Today, Insdorf explained her philosophy:
“My approach is, first and foremost, sympathetic. When I sit down to watch any movie, I try to appreciate it on its own terms—whether it’s mainstream, avant-garde, old, or new. I seem to have developed a simultaneous emotional and cerebral response. I am able to feel things with immediacy in the darkness while taking notes to grasp—and later understand—what I’m perceiving.”
Film School
Reading Kael and Insdorf, I learned to see as they saw. Watching the films they wrote about, I wasn’t just comparing my response to theirs—I was noticing what I responded to at all.
Later, this carried over into my reading.
Shaping My Critical Lens
When I review a book, my first instinct is to understand what the author is doing—what they are saying and why. Then I consider how well they say it.
A book isn’t measured against some golden standard; it’s measured against itself, against what the writing has already determined for itself.
As a reader, I always want authors to succeed. But part of being a critic is identifying where a book struggles and understanding why.
Writers usually know where the weak spots are. We hope against hope that no one will notice. When those problem areas are pointed out, it’s deflating, but it’s rarely surprising. Identifying what doesn’t work can help an author reconnect with their own instincts.
But if you focus only on the flaws, you miss the bigger picture of what the writing is telling you.
Meanwhile, Back in the Hot Seat
As it turned out, the hygienist at my dentist’s office was wary of critics because her husband is a screenwriter. Who knows what kind of reviews his work has received? (Sometimes, being overlooked feels like the worst slight of all.)
She avenged his critical reputation on my poor little mouth before I could explain: I don’t want to be the critic all the writers are afraid of. I want to be the one who helps people understand their own responses to what they’re reading—the way Pauline Kael and Annette Insdorf helped me.
Curious how great critics think about their work?
In this 1984 conversation at New York’s 92nd Street Y, Pauline Kael and Annette Insdorf discuss the role of critics in shaping cultural conversations, the tension between personal taste and professional judgment, and what it means to truly engage with art. Watch.
Who shaped the way you read, think, or see the world?
A book, a writer, a passing remark—sometimes influence comes from unexpected places. If you had to choose just one, what would it be? No overthinking. First instinct. Let me know in the comments below.