You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm. My guest today is

Pauline Kale on the occasion of the publication by Dutton of her Memphis anthology for

Keepes, 30 years at the movies. And this is an interview that we're doing by telephone

simply because there's no way that Pauline Kale would be in California right now,

and there's no way that I would let this book come out without talking to her.

I wanted to begin by saying that for me, reading for Keeps is not to find out about the movies you reviewed for 30 years. I read it

the way I read a collection by Edmund Wilson or James Agee to see the characteristic tones of

excitement, contempt, enjoyment, thrill that were there at the time.

The publishers of books like this like to pretend that they're service for people checking

out things to play on the VCR. But for me, it's the writing that keeps these books alive.

What do you feel? Well, I hope that that's true,

but I also hope that in the course of writing, I illuminate something about the movies

of the past few decades, because it was a great period in movies, like the New Wave in France,

which came and went very quickly.

Ours lasted a little bit longer, but not much longer.

And I think people need to be reminded of that.

But of course, I've picked these pieces also in terms of what I thought showed off

the personality of the critic.

...