Fucked Nihonjin on Fucked Nihonjin

[Mulboyne]

Nothing special in the review but...

IHT: "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro reviewed by Michiko Kakutani

In this novel, Ishiguro has set aside the windy Kafkaesque pretensions of his last two books to tell a tight, deftly controlled story.

Isn't Murakami's new book called "Kafka on the Beach"?

[Charles]

Isn't Murakami's new book called "Kafka on the Beach"?

All Japanese internationalist authors write about Kafka. My J Lit professor used to continuously, tediously lecture about how all Japanese international literary sensibilities came from Russia, but it was far too boring an issue to try to make any sense of it.

[amdg]

...all Japanese international literary sensibilities came from Russia...

Wasn't Kafka Czech?

[cstaylor]

I think Charles may be mixing Kafka (who lived in what became Czechoslovakia after WW1) with Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) and Tolstoy (War and Peace).

[Charles]

Ah, those Europeans all look alike to me. Maybe I should have paid more attention to those lectures, but writers like Kafka, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky bore the hell out of me.

[Mulboyne]

Telegraph: Mailer savages 'kamikaze' critic who panned his books
Norman Mailer has demonstrated that neither age nor his status as one of the grand old men of American letters has withered his loathing of a bad review by savaging the most powerful book critic in America. The 82-year-old author has torn into Michiko Kakutani, chief critic of the New York Times, for a series of unfavourable reviews of his books, and taken to writing to tabloid gossip columns to defend his attacks. Mailer said: "She is a one-woman kamikaze. She disdains white male writers, and I am her number one favourite target. She trashes it just to hurt sales and embarrass the author. But the Times editors can't fire her. They're terrified of her. With discrimination rules and such, well, she's a threefer: Asiatic, feminist and, ah, what's the third? Well. Let's just call her a twofer."...Mailer is unrepentant about the attack on Miss Kakutani. He said, "And what [is the Times] gonna do? Come and shoot me? That's when my Brooklyn comes out, 'Hey, mother******, whatcha gonna do? Make a martyr outta me?'"

[Taro Toporific]

Telegraph: Mailer savages 'kamikaze' critic who panned his books
Norman Mailer ... has torn into Michiko Kakutani, chief critic of the New York Times,....Mailer said: "....With discrimination rules and such, well, she's a threefer: Asiatic, feminist and, ah, what's the third? Well. Let's just call her a twofer."...

That's a precious lesbian insult for a washed-up old hack like Mailer.
However, I've gotta wildly agree with what Kakutani's book reviews in general. I read Mailer's "The Gospel According to the Son" and think Kakutani nailed down that crappy book correctly in her observation:
"It is a silly, self-important and at times inadvertently comical book that reads like a combination of Godspell, Nikos Kazantzakis's Last Temptation of Christ and one of those new, dumbed-down Bible translations."

[Maths Dude]

Fuck critics! Who died and made those fuckers God? Thier opinions are just as good as anyone elses, i.enot worth a bag of shit, just like this one!

[Greji]

Telegraph: Mailer savages 'kamikaze' critic who panned his books

Kakutani is a cockroach!

[Mulboyne]

Link may expire - whole article posted

Independent: Michiko Kakutani: You know when you've been Kakutanied
Wolfe. DeLillo. Atwood. Sontag. Nobody is safe from the poison pen of America's most powerful literary critic. Norman Mailer, her latest victim, called her 'a one-woman kamikaze' with a hatred of white, male authors. But who is she? And why is she so mysterious?
You might think Norman Mailer would have mellowed by now. But the 82-year-old literary icon is still settling old scores. In a rant to Rolling Stone magazine, the author lashed out at The New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani, calling her "a one-woman kamikaze. She disdains white, male authors, and I'm her number one favourite target." Other prominent authors may disagree. Plenty have seen Kakutani rip apart their books. Publishers have even coined a word for these brutal reviews: getting "Kakutanied".

So what is all the fuss about this book critic? Why does Kakutani inspire both fear and fascination? The quick answer is that she is the most powerful book critic in America. As the lead critic for The New York Times, Kakutani wields enormous clout. In fact, she's such a large presence in publishing circles that she is often referred to by a single name. Just as Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfry rule over their professions, Michiko presides over the book world.

She is also highly opinionated and often scathing in her reviews. She recently slammed the new novels by young hotshot Jonathan Safran Foer and old warhorse Tom Wolfe. And she's famous for dishing out withering reviews of the biggest names in literary fiction, from Don DeLillo and John Updike to Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood.

Kakutani called Atwood's dystopian novel Oryx and Crake a "lumpy hodgepodge of a book" that's "didactic and thoroughly unpersuasive". Atwood shrugged off the criticism. "What can I say, critics are critics," she told me. "She does have a reputation in the literary world for praising you one time, and then nuking you the next, just so you don't get complacent."

Kakutani also panned Nicholson Baker's novel A Box of Matches. She described the narration as full of "ludicrously microscopic examinations" spelled out in "absurd and numbing detail". Baker's reaction? "It was really a horrible review. I mean, it was like having my liver taken out without anaesthesia."

The late Susan Sontag was more combative after Kakutani panned her last book, Regarding the Pain of Others. Michiko dismissed Sontag's analysis as "belated and common-sense statements of the obvious". The review infuriated Sontag: "Her criticisms of my books are stupid and shallow and not to the point," she told me. "It was a dumb, bad review as opposed to a smart, bad review. I expected better of her."

Of course, Kakutani's ruthlessness is one reason she's so widely read. With Michiko, you won't find the bland, careful reviews that are so common elsewhere. If she doesn't like a book, she eviscerates it. "I think she's extraordinary," said Michael Janeway, a Pulitzer Prize juror when Kakutani won the prize for criticism in 1998. "You can start reading a piece of hers without looking at the by-line, and her voice is so strong, and her sense of what a book is about is so clear, I say to myself, well, that's obviously Kakutani's review as distinct from a review by another daily Times book reviewer." She is considered "destination programming" - compulsory reading for the literati.

Michiko's toughness has turned her into a cultural icon unlike any other book critic. In fact, her name figured prominently in one episode of Sex in the City. When Carrie Bradshaw publishes a new book, she's "terrified" of an upcoming Kakutani review.

Despite her public prominence, though, Kakutani is notoriously reclusive. She does not hobnob with writers or hang out on the literary circuit. She will not grant interviews. Even publishing industry veterans have rarely seen her. A rumour that she once dated Woody Allen has obstinately remained just that, a rumour. One long-time book publicist joked: "We know more about J D Salinger." And, as with Salinger, rumours chase after Kakutani - about her dates and what she's really like.

For the record, Kakutani is 50 and single, a Yale graduate who joined the Times as a cultural reporter in 1979. Her father was a Yale mathematician, her mother a second generation Japanese-American. Michiko is an avid Yankees fan and, according to one of her colleagues, her friends include fellow Times scribes Maureen Dowd and Alessandra Stanley.

All the speculation about Kakutani adds to her mystique. "There's this amusing tradition of the dark lady of American letters - mysterious, powerful," said Michael Janeway. "Mary McCarthy was the first, then Susan Sontag. But they were both very public personalities." By contrast, Kakutani seems to channel all her creative work into her reviews. But you have to wonder if Michiko has her own critical prejudices. Does she take special relish in "discovering" new writers and knocking down others with lofty reputations? Then again, is all the griping about this one-woman wrecking crew just the latest chapter in the age-old war between authors and critics?

John Updike has plenty of experience getting "Kakutanied". Reviewing his novel Seek My Face, Kakutani told me it's "impossible for the reader to find a single believable character". Updike, for his part, said he does not expect much from "professional reviewers like Michiko Kakutani, who handles so many books that there's a secret hatred of all books that runs through, or a wish to dismiss". Does that mean he no longer cares if Michiko takes him down? "Let's hope," he laughed. "But so many writers get harsh reviews that we're collectively hardened. And it's never been clear that reviews matter tremendously."

So, can Kakutani make or break a book? Some writers are convinced a bad review will kill a book. But a rave can launch an unknown writer. Mary Karr was an obscure poet when she published her memoir The Liars' Club. Kakutani called it "one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs" in years. "It was like having the good fairy touch you on your shoulder with her wand," Karr said. "She's a very important reviewer." Karr's book ended up on the bestseller list for over a year. Perhaps Kakutani's rave made that happen.

But Paul Bogaards, publicity director for publishers Alfred A Knopf, doubts that any single reviewer has that power, not even Michiko. "No one, with the exception of Oprah, has the ability to advance a book singlehandedly to a mainstream audience," he said. "But there remains a coterie of readers - readers who might be described as the high-minded literary, earnest academics and the media élite - who view her as destination programming."

It would be more accurate to describe Kakutani as a literary taste-maker, a critic who sets the tone for how other people respond to a book. Her penchant for stirring up controversy certainly gives her reviews an extra bite. And it's still one reason a lot of people pick up the Times in the morning. They want to know: what did Michiko think?

[Mike Oxlong]

New York Times Book Critic Michiko Kakutani Has Started a Fake Twitter War

It seems not everyone is enjoying the work of @CriticMichiko, the fake Twitter written in the voice of the famously cutting New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani that popped up a few days after Christmas. Last night, new user @ActualNYTMK directed a message to the fake Kakutani: "Please stop impersonating me. I am me." It's unclear @ActualNYTMK is the actual Kakutani or the inevitable copy-of-a-copy that inevitably pops up in the wake of fake Twitter success. On the one hand, the first two tweets from the account, plus her insistence that she understands why @CriticMichiko is funny are guileless and cautious: they really do feel like the work of a non-tweeter attempting to take back their identity. In subsequent tweets -- like the one speculating that novelist Jonathan Lethem is at the controls of the original account -- it seems like the "actual" Kakutani is trying a tad too hard to be a friend and foil to @CriticMichiko, who to its credit, isn't having any of it.

[Coligny]

Won't try too hard though

Twitter... for attenshiun whores who can't get enought exposure through facebook...

Don't tell anybody that it's a glorified syslog though...