the owl and the olive tree

For some reason, I once chewed my way through an entire huge volume of criticism by John Updike -- 'Hugging the Shore' -- and in his very shallow, unperceptive, dismissive review of Jean Rhys, he quoted some passages from her autobiography that made me run out to my favourite bookstore (o tempora o mores) and buy it immediately, and then all her novels, her short stories, her letters, biographies....altho that's not quite what you were talking about. I remember loving but viscerally disagreeing with Pauline Kael's movie reviews; if she raved about something I knew I'd hate it, and vice versa.