Ha, just read that last night and was tempted to do a "you're all so wrong about Anthony Lane" post.
What don't you like about Lane? (besides the content...)
baa, Labs's post on it here (with more in comments, of course), and previous discussion of Lane here.
Speaking of writers with irritating stylistic tics: I absolutely hate it when Tom Friedman talks about entire countries as though they were individual people.
About Kees himself: did you find that his letters (or at least the brief excerpts) were the sharpest of his writings?
I did, in fact, but that's partly because I've never gone in for poetry.
You should check out Albert Goldbarth's Saving Lives, I think you'd like it.
Ah, Amazon has a good and representative page you can see.
A little late, but I had the exact same thought, "wow I should mention on unfogged that this is a darn good Anthony Lany piece".
On the subject of articles about people who had difficult lives I also found this article about Billie Holiday to be quite moving.