I Am Michiko Kakutani

I A M M I C H I K O K A K U T A N I
BY COLIN McENROE

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What started as a basically innocent college prank has gotten seriously out of hand, and, at the urging of the small group of people who know the truth, I have decided to come forward and admit it.

I am Michiko Kakutani.

Many people will have a hard time accepting the idea that a basically undistinguished middle-aged white man living in Hartford, Connecticut, is actually the brilliant, acerbic, reclusive, rarely photographed lynx-like New York Times book critic and Pulitzer winner.

But I am.

[read the rest here]

Meta-Misfirings

A rare moment of contentment: fresh Italian roast coffee, made super-strong with a dollop* of 2% milk; felines fed with no fur flying; Fred sleeps, his toothache apparently relieved; the rosy fingers of dawn are doing their thing, but in a more purpl-y way; the lotion I discovered last night (a "gift" from the hospital) still smells lightly of oranges, and is rich; The New York Times is on deck; and I have almost finished Andre Dubos' The Garden of Last Days**, which is terrific.

*dollop
1573, from E. Anglian dial. dallop "patch, tuft or clump of grass," of uncertain origin. Modern sense of "a lump or glob" is 1812.

? ON dolp, small dangling ball

**re: the Dubus novel -- Excuse me while I have one of my meta-moments. I made the mistake of looking up reviews a few minutes ago. Janet Maslin reviewed it for the NYT on June 9, 2008, and makes the statement: “The Garden of Last Days” explores the cultural chasm between Bassam’s world and Spring’s. Well, that is just wrong. But I'll not fuss about her, as I might were the rest of her review completely ridiculous, in the manner, say of Michiko Kakutani. Maslin purports to be a straightforward straight arrow, and you cannot get far without being told that she has a BA in Math. Starting out as a rock critic, then a longtime movie critic, she has been criticized in the literary genre for not being critical. Oh yeah, and she took a degree in maths. Edward Champion, sometimes my hero, notes: "Reading the New York Times’s daily book coverage makes me so disheartened that I’d rather watch Michiko and Maslin in a nude mud wrestling match."

My favorite line from a Dubus interview, from his appearance on The Bat Segundo Show: "Listen, I do believe that we live in our bodies." They were discussing the role of coffee in his novel.

Frank Rich's Op-Ed piece today is titled "40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans." It has been 40 years since Stonewall. He lays Obama bare, deservedly so, in the presence of his own promises. Remember last December, as the President-Elect attempted to stave off the critics of Pastor Rick Warren?

At a press conference in Chicago this morning, President-elect Barack Obama
responded to attacks from gay-rights advocates who say they his selection of
Pastor Rick Warren, a critic of gay rights, to deliver the invocation at his
inauguration.

Warren, a leader of the evangelical Saddleback Church in
Orange County,Calif., came out in favor of Proposition 8 — a ballot initiative
that stripped gays of the right to marry in the state. The hot-button initiative
narrowly passed, setting off a firestorm among gay rights advocates who took to
the streets in protests across the state.

Obama, who often mentioned his support of gay rights in stump speeches, though not gay marriage, said today that he is a “fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans,” adding, “It’s something I’ve been consistent on.”

Well, I ought to sign off, as clearly I've little original to say. That was, by the way, the source of my free-floating anxiety during the dissertation process, as the effort was to be "an original contribution to human knowledge." Egads.

Unless I manage to sleep, I'll be immersed in tennis today, as well as attempting to clean The Manor a bit. Tata, then.

Just Say No To Michiko

So Michiko Kakutani has touched upon nerves far more demyelenated than my own. It is gratifying to not be alone in my dislike. Not dislike of the person; I don't know the person. All I know is that someone in such a prestigious position ought to like some fiction now and again.

My concern over the state of extremely literal criticism has its own international symbol, its version of a yellow ribbon on an old decrepit oak tree. Thank you, Edward Champion.

His post from yesterday caught my eye, and made me laugh:

It’s quite possible that the folks at the New York Times were sitting on this obit for a while, waiting for Styron to kick the bucket. After all, Vincent Canby’s infamous Bob Hope obituary appeared three years after Canby himself had expired. Even so, it’s something of a shock to see that Michiko actually liking a novelist. Go through her archives and you’re not going to find a rave for a fiction book until her February review of Dana Spiotta’s Eat the Document.

So what are we to make of this? Is this a critic who can no longer feel
the thrills of ficitve immersion? I’m not against negative reviews (far from
it). And Michiko has had no problems these days passing plaudits for nonfiction
books.

I’m not asking for Michiko to turn into a Harriet Klausner. But
when a critic goes nine months without actually liking anything, one must ask
why she bothers to cover fiction in the first place. Sure, there are a lot of
dogs out there right now. (Lisey’s Story, I’m looking at you!) But this being
the autumn publishing season, there are any number of books to be enthusiastic
about right now.

A few years back, Scott noted: Reading [Kakutani's] reviews has become the literary equivalent of watching the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals.

(I thought I would bow out with a sporting comment, it being Super Bowl Sunday and all. Go Steelers!)

T. Coraghessan Boyle

Hooray! There is a new T. C. Boyle out and it is featured on the cover of this weekend's N.Y. Times Sunday Book Review. The Women, writes reviewer Joanna Scott, "is a mesmerizing story of women who invest everything, at great risk, in that mysterious 'bank of feeling' named Frank Lloyd Wright."

I don't recall any of Boyle's previous works as being of any great length -- in fact, I like his *short* fictions: this is 451 pages, A Real Book.

Scott charges Boyle with "writing his own fascinating, unpredictable, alternately hilarious and terrifying fictional history of utopian longing in America." She says utopian longing, I say fanaticism -- but most definitely is it all American. If one were to correctly and politely follow T.C. Boyle's road signs, one would say that it is all about addiction, or as his Dr. John Harvey Kellogg might put it, "auto-intoxication."

A dreary, tedious melodrama -- that's what the first NYT book reviewer said of The Women. Michiko Kakutani almost makes it sound like Boyle has been creatively hijacked by the likes of Kellogg and sexologist Kinsey. She does not seem to "get" that The Road to Wellville and The Inner Circle are not in the least qualified to be reductive, plodding historical fictions. I don't quite understand her theory that the Wagnerian quality of Wright's life overshadowed and outspoke, in a sense, T.C. Boyle's verbal abilities. [I believe T.C. would have had an inkling were that the case.]

I started to count the number of times Kakutani used the unlikely adjective "cheesy," but thought better of it after the first repetition. Two cheesies and the woman is automatically not my good gal pal. Am I a tad defensive of Boyle? Yes, and I know why, and I ain't gonna say, because it is kind of embarrassing.

And so I can't wait to read The Women -- whether it be a cheesy story of no appreciable depth or a sprightly and unique tale of utopian longing. It's bound to be, at least, *quirky* (and American) as all get out.


N.B. Hmmm! As I cleaned up this very messy entry that was initially made in the middle of excitement, and the night, I cruised through some old book reviews. Guess who did one of the NYT reviews for The Inner Circle? I will give you a big old honking hint. It begins:
Though author and subject are well matched, T. C. Boyle's novel about the sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey is a flat and flabby production. Michiko Kakutani, come on down!

I was hoping to avoid further flatus and, thank goodness, Wikipedia has come to my rescue, writing this about Ms. Kakutani:

Salman Rushdie has called her "a weird woman who seems to feel the need
to alternately praise and spank." In a June 2005 interview with Rolling Stone
magazine, author Norman Mailer criticized Kakutani as a "one-woman kamikaze"
(Kakutani is of Japanese descent) who "disdains white male authors" and
deliberately "bring(s) out your review two weeks in advance of publication. She
trashes it just to hurt sales and embarrass the author." Mailer also said that
New York Times editors were "terrified" of Kakutani, and "can't fire her"
because she's "a token," "an Asiatic, a feminist." Moreover, in recent years,
Kakutani's particularly harsh reviews of books by famous authors (e.g., Updike,
The Widows of Eastwick) are followed by (usually milder or openly positive)
reviews of the same titles by other NYT reviewers.

On July 19, 2007, The New York Times published a pre-release story
written by Kakutani about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. An account of
the ensuing controversy, including the critical comments of some Harry Potter
fans, can be found on the Times Public Editor's blog.

Kakutani was criticized for her alleged overuse of the word limn in
her reviews. She was also parodied in the essay "I Am Michiko Kakutani" by one
of her former classmates, Colin McEnroe.

I haven't had such a *pure* laugh in a while -- it was the "limn" comment that did it, as I was sure that The Great American Writer With Whom I Once Lived would have taken that honor...