Michiko Kakutani
How Many of the 20 NBA Finalists Did Times Critics Maslin and Kakutani Review? Two!
Twenty authors attended Wednesday night's National Book Awards ceremony as finalists, each of them selected by a committee of readers made up of poets, novelists, historians, and critics of all stripes. The judges on each of the four committees spent three and a half months reading over a hundred books (the non-fiction judges read 530) before settling on their short-lists last month.
The New York Times reported on the finalists here in a 400-word item that ran in the Arts section. In the case of several of the authors, it was the first time in years that their names had appeared there. read more »
Dwight Garner on The Times' Daily Book Reviewers in 1996: 'They Calcify Quickly'; Ten Years Later Critic is Contrite
Two things curious about Dwight Garner's new gig as daily book critic at The New York Times: One is that he had some not very nice things to say about his new colleagues back in 1996 when he worked at Salon, and two is his 1998 profile of Michiko Kakutani, where he quoted one book critic after another on how she didn't deserve her Pulitzer Prize. James Wolcott is in there quipping poisonously that while there is a pattern of Times critics going "downhill" after winning their Pulitzer, "We'll probably have no such luck with Michiko," and Jonathan Yardley making fun of her for reviewing lots of short books.
The 1996 piece takes the form of an interview, wherein Mr. Garner asks himself 10 questions about the state of book reviewing. Number nine is "Should there be term limits for daily book critics?" read more »
Longtime Times Book Review Senior Editor Dwight Garner to Join Kakutani and Maslin in Daily Paper
Dwight Garner, by far the most visible editor at The New York Times Book Review, told the folks over at the National Book Critics Circle on Friday that he's leaving the job and joining the rotation over at the daily paper's Arts section. Mr. Garner confirmed in an e-mail this morning that he'll soon be in the mix with Janet Maslin and Michiko Kakutani, reviewing one or two books per week.
Mr. Garner, whose prominent role at The Times' book blog Paper Cuts and his weekly column on the best-seller list made him better known than most of his colleagues at the NYTBR, said the paper's culture editor, Sam Sifton, was bringing him in as a replacement for William Grimes, the former food critic who moved to the obituaries desk several months ago. read more »
Jonathan Franzen: Michiko Kakutani Is 'The Stupidest Person in New York City'
Speaking at Harvard yesterday during a discussion with literary critic James Wood, Jonathan Franzen said that "the stupidest person in New York City is currently the lead reviewer of fiction for the New York Times.”
He was referring, of course, to Michiko Kakutani, who presumably got on Mr. Franzen's bad side with her brutal review of his recent memoir, The Discomfort Zone. In that review, Ms. Kakutani wrote: "there is something oddly preening about [Franzen's] self-inventory of sins, as though he actually reveled in being so disagreeable." Also: "Just why anyone would be interested in pages and pages about [Franzen's unhappy marriage] or the self-important and self-promoting contents of Mr. Franzen’s mind remains something of a mystery." read more »
Poster Children: Is Denis Johnson Too 'Important' to Be Ignored, However Bad His Books Get?
Can "Important Writers" ever go wrong? The Atlantic's B.R. Myers didn't like Denis Johnson's recent novel Tree of Smoke. But, he claims, reviewers are so blinded by the critical success of Johnson's Jesus' Son that they can't take a wary eye to his new works. read more »
Remains of the Day: Stolen Art; Michi on Sacks; Rowling's Latest
Former Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True went on trial in Athens yesterday on charges she conspired over a decade ago to acquire for the museum an ancient gold funerary wreath.
After the Battle of Brooklyn: East River Incognita II "further examines [artist Duke Riley's] fascination with and exploration of maritime history and events around the waterways of New York City. read more »
With His Pants Down: A Writer's Self-Portrait
Quiz: Who Is Michiko Kakutani?
1. "Dwight says 'dude' an awful lot, but boy, the guy is a real talker: he's got this voice that just grabs your attention and won't let go, even when you think you're not particularly interested in all the philosophy stuff he's always prattling away about like he's some sort of Walker Percy character or something."
2. "Lucky, I have to say, is pretty shagadelic herself, one smashing baby, baby. Listen to this description: 'Lucky was a slender, long-limbed woman with an abundance of shoulder-length jet curls; dangerous black opal eyes; full, sensual lips; and a deep olive skin.' She likes to wear red dresses slit up to her heinie, and her Dad calls her 'Miss Balls of Fire.' A Bond girl by another name -- am I right, or am I right?"
3. "Maybe you'd like to come by my office. Speaking frankly, I think you'd find that American men—or at least the specimens at my law firm—have a lot in common with the British variety you take apart in your journal. I mean, I so, so identified with the heartbreak you went through when that jerk Daniel What's-His-Name dumped you and announced he was going to marry someone else." read more »
4. "Also, I'm tired of being the skunk at the American literary garden party. Do you know what it took out of me to grab a whip and a chair, to go into a steel cage and get this whole Toni Morrison tiger under control?"
Answer Key: 1. Michiko Kakutani as "Holden Caulfield" (Review: Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel, August 23, 2005) 2. Michiko Kakutani as "Austin Powers" (Review: Dangerous Kiss by Jackie Collins. June 15, 1999) 3. Michiko Kakutani as "Ally McBeal" (Review: Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding, May 26, 1998) 4. Paul McEnroe as "Michiko Kakutani" (I Am Michiko Kakutani, January 23, 1999) —Matt HaberLugubrious and Repetitive
And Kakutani knows from ascendant lugubriousness. Six days earlier, the Pulitzer-winning critic labeled John Irving's latest work, Until I Find You, "bloated and lugubrious." Media Mob reader Peter Van Allen writes in to point out the recurring pattern: Besides McCarthy and Irving, Kakutani has applied the "lugubrious" label to Graham Swift, Don DeLillo, Mark Helprin, J.M. Coetzee and many more.
"Who will point out to Kakutani that she's overused 'lugubrious'?" Van Allen writes.
Consider it done. A quick search turns up 41 instances of "lugubrious," "lugubriously," or "lugubriousness" in Kakutani's work--about two a year, on average. At her peak, in 1998, she was using it approximately every two months. Other targets of the term have included Philip Roth, A.S. Byatt, Zola and John Kerry.
Her favorite victim appears to be Tim O'Brien. In 1994, criticizing his Lake of the Woods, Kakutani declared that it "it devolves into a painful collection of portentous clichés reminiscent of his lugubrious 1985 novel, The Nuclear Age." Four years later, she declared that the narrator of O'Brien's Tomcat in Love was "reminiscent of the tedious, long-winded hero of Mr. O'Brien's lugubrious 1985 novel The Nuclear Age." Four more years, and it was Mr. O'Brien's July, July claiming its own "lugubrious."
It's not Kakutani's only lexical rut--nor even her first in the L's. In a widely read 2002 New York magazine piece, Matt Gross noted her overreliance on "limn." read more »
Kakutani also describes those "lugubrious" McCarthy passages as "reminiscent of the most pretentious sections of earlier McCarthy novels." That's the third time she's called something "pretentious" since June 14.
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Susan Molinari...in her first journalistic ethics controversy.
