are overwrought,” Pauline wrote, “with too much filtered light, too much poetic license, and too damn much romanticized insanity.”
By this time Gina and Warner Friedman had separated. Pauline had feared that marriage would destroy their relationship, and she had wanted to save them both the heartbreak. Gina and Will moved in with Pauline briefly before finding another house nearby. Warner continued to visit Pauline after he and Gina were divorced. One thing they had in common was a love of watching boxing matches on television, and they were often joined by Allen Barra.
One person for whom Pauline showed unconditional affection was Will. Her friends were amazed by how completely she doted on him—and he in turn adored her. Will always called her “Pauline”—never “Grandma.” Once, when Will was a small child, Warner and Gina had gone away for an overnight trip and left Will in Pauline’s care. Gina asked her mother to be sure to keep a close eye on him, and Pauline replied, ‘I’ll watch him with my own life.”
She continued to love life in Great Barrington and the big house with its spacious rooms and overflowing bookshelves. She enjoyed going to several of the local restaurants, including the Inn on the Green and the Castle Street Grill. But if she dined at a place that was under par, she would sigh, “I can do better than this myself.” She did enjoy cooking at home and typically preferred simple meals with fresh ingredients—lots of vegetables and pasta. By now she had stopped drinking as a general health precaution. She missed her strong shots of Myers’s Rum and Wild Turkey, but learned to get the utmost out of endless pots of tea and bottles of water.
Her relations with most of the local business owners were fairly harmonious, with the occasional ripple. Once, Warner had taken her to a hardware store to buy some supplies. It happened to be Mother’s Day, and the proprietor gave her a gift, adding in a condescending tone, “Because you look like you’re a mother or a grandmother.” “Fuck you, Charlie,” Pauline replied. “Do you know I’ve written ten books?”
Pauline continued to work hard to promote younger writer friends that she considered had something exceptional to offer. Ray Sawhill by now had a serious girlfriend, a bright and attractive young writer named Polly Frost. Many of the male Paulettes felt that Pauline was unduly harsh on their wives and girlfriends, but in this case, Pauline had introduced the couple. She had immediately taken to Frost, who had studied the harpsichord but now had a serious interest in being a writer. Pauline sensed in Frost what she had sensed in Sawhill: Neither of them was interested in her as a cult leader or career champion, but as an entertaining, warm, lively person who was fun to talk with over a meal. Her conversations with Frost revolved around clothes, food, and animals more than it did movies. Frost’s gift was for humor, and Pauline helped her get several pieces published in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. But she almost always believed that criticism was the path her protégés should take, and she began prodding Frost to write movie reviews.
One of the flaws in her mentoring style was that her pride in her own past often led her to give bad career advice to young writer friends. “She was about to go back to San Francisco when Shawn gave her a buzz and hired her at The New Yorker,” said Sawhill. “But somehow, in her mind, this turned into: She got what she worked for—it wasn’t just a great stroke of luck that turned her life around. It was—finally, the universe has been proven a just one.” And Pauline was certain that if the writers she was encouraging would only sit down and write a big piece on spec, magazine editors would see how brilliant they were and have to hire them. “She would be let down if I would say, ‘I’m killing myself writing these pieces and nobody’s publishing them,’” said Sawhill. “Somehow, she really thought it would work, and in many cases, it didn’t.”
Pauline also continued to advocate strongly for both David Edelstein and James Wolcott. She had been trying for some time to interest Shawn in Wolcott, but the editor always demurred, saying that he didn’t think Wolcott was quite right for The New Yorker. She also tried to persuade Billy Abrahams to bring out a book of Wolcott’s collected pieces. As early as