"The Story of Modern American Cultural Criticism Is the Story of Three California Girls Who Went East—Pauline Kael, Susan Sontag and Joan Didion"

"For Kael, Didion’s work suggested a familiarity with the high life that pushed all the wrong buttons. Kael was raised partly on a chicken farm and worked a string of bad jobs as a single mother before getting her feet set. She harbored a lot of bitterness toward people she thought had it easy, as Kellow shows. To be 'swank' was to risk her enduring disdain. The existential zero at the bone that Didion absolutely conquered often had nothing to do with material need. It was going to bother Kael no matter what. 'I did my own share of soul-wrestling,' Kael once said, 'and it’s not too tough to do.'"

Evan Hughes at The Awl resurrects a feud from the 1970s.