I've Written a Letter To Daddy

A propos of nothing in particular, this new book Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me by Craig Seligman is getting a really puzzling amount of attention. Of course it isn't puzzling to see the excogitating classes talking about a critical book, but this one seems to have actual buzz, and I just can't figure out why anybody under the age of 100 would care about a critical reading of the critical readings of Susan Sontag or the late Pauline Kael, let alone a reading that combines them in some crabbed dialectic. Kael's movie reviews (for me at any rate) have not exactly aged like fine wine, and Sontag's latest efforts have been interesting mostly as fodder for mockery. I'm open-minded! Plenty of smart people seem to dig this book, and Seligman is as good a litterateur as any—though he once called a book review I wrote for Salon "dry." But is it really possible there are so many readers who don't get a sinking feeling at the thought of spending 200 pages with these old broads? I can only figure that Seligman is setting up a Kael-Sontag feud as a kind of critical Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, with Seligman taking the coveted Victor Buono role.