The International Michiko Kakutani Reader's Homepage
Yes, just who is Michiko Kakutani?
NEWS FLASH FROM LONG AGO, 1999: She just won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for 1998.
SEE BELOW for Yomiuri Shimbun news flash from New York.
NOW BACK TO this ORIGINAL bogsite, first written in December 1997, before this Pulitzer business came up. Sorry for the inconvenience of a long scroll down.
CONTINUE: Some astute readers of this 1997 blog will know her as the famously reclusive book reviewer for the New York Times. Yes, in fact, Ms. Kakutani has been a leading book reviewer at the TIMES for about 20 years.
But very few people in the publishing industry know anything about her, although she has enormous clout at the Times, where she can make or break a book. She seems to particularly loathe the novels of Norman Mailer --OOPS! --(see recent www.MobyLives.com item here:)
Mailer, unaware of Eggers' dictum, pisses in the very small and fragile ecosystem that is the literary world . . . July 1, 2005 !!! (TIME PASSES, LIFE GOES ON)
After attacking Michiko Kakutani in a Rolling Stone interview, Norman Mailer has himself come under attack by Dallas Morning News reporter Esther Wu, who is president of the Asian American Journalists Association. The interview is not available online, but as a Daily Telegraph article by Harry Mount recaps, Mailer said of The New York Times' lead book critic, "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 three-fer: Asiatic, feminist and, ah, what's the third? Well. Let's just call her a twofer." He also called her a "token." Now, as Lloyd Grove reports in his Lowdown column for The New York Daily News, Wu has written a letter to Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner saying, "Calling out Norman Mailer as a racist . . . would be easy. . . . We take greater offense at his reference to her as a 'two-fer' and a 'token' because she's 'Asiatic, feminist,' which essentially diminishes the accomplishments of all women and journalists . . . To Mr. Mailer, we'd simply like to say: Shame on you." Mailer tells Grove the letter is "an excellent example of high-octane political correctness." La Kakutani had no comment. {NOTE: she never does, see below}
....and Philip Roth, although this is seen by some fellow critics as a sign of her intelligence and insight. So who is this mystery woman whose reviews appear all over the Internet at many, many sites, but whose personal life remains shrouded in mystery. One source told us recently that she is the daughter of a retired math professor at Yale University who is well-known for his "fixed point theorem," whatever that is.
A source at a New York publishing magazine told us that she heard that Ms. Kakutani went to Yale as an undergraduate where she had a brilliant career. Remember this name, Michiko Kakutani! [This was written in 1997!] She may be the most famous New York Times book critic of the 1980s and 1990s, yet nobody seems to know anything about her.....and....... 2005 now!
Not that it matters, really; her reviews are what count. But it would be interesting to know who "La Kakutani" really is, her background, her education, how she arrived at the Times, her connections.
A well-known book critic at a U.S. newspaper told us once that "Kakutani is incompetent. I don't want to know anything about her!"
Professional rivalry, maybe?
This story grows more interesting ... By the way, Ms. Kakutani is the author of a book herself, a collection of previously-published New York Times articles about writers artists, titled "The Poet at the Piano" and published in 1988. The book is now out of print, OOP, but amazon.com says it can try to find a copy if you want one.
If anyone knows more about Ms. Kakutani, send us an email today. [d_h_888 AT yahoo DOT com] We've searched all the search engines, to no avail.
Or leave a comment below on this blog.
Only reviews, reviews, reviews -- hundreds of them. But no biographical information is available, such as birthdate, birthplace, nationality or address. Hmmm, a mystery within a mystery. We've emailed a query to the front desk at the Toronto Public Library and we're still waiting for an answer...
And while we were waiting for our answer, along comes the Pulitzer Prize Commmittee giving its 1998 ward for criticism to who else but La Kakutani, with a sharp dispatch from our friend Toshio Mizishima at the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper bureau in New York.
On April 17, 1998, Mizushima-san wrote in a story in English headlined "Kakutani wins Pulitzer for 'passionate' reviews"
"...Japanese-American book reviewer Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for criticism at the 82nd awards, which were announced Tuesday. Kakutani, 43, is known for covering a broad range of literature, including both fiction and nonfiction. In the April 10 issue of the Times, she reviewed a biography of former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson. Kakutani praised "American Pastoral" written by Philip Roth, saying it was the author's most intense work to date. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction on Tuesday. Judges referred to Kakutani's reviews as "passionate, intelligent writing on books and contemporary literature." Kakutani joined the Times in 1979 after writing for The Washington Post and Time magazine. She became a cultural writer specializing in book reviews in 1983. Born in the United States, Kakutani is the eldest daughter of mathematician Shizuo Kakutani, 86, an honorary professor in functional analysis theory at Yale University. Kakutani graduated from Yale as an English literature major. Her mother, Keiko, is a second-generation Japanese-American. Kakutani dislikes exposing herself to the public, the paper said, which--at her request--would not release any personal information on the reviewer. "
Michiko became a journalist because she wanted to tackle contemporary social problems," Prof. Kakutani said. "Although she had earlier faced self-doubt, I am very happy to hear about the prize."
SO NOW THE ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS ABOUT LA KAKUTANI!
Said another writer: "Michi won the Pulitzer a year ago and if she ever leaves the job she'll do it, as I did, for a better offer -- not because she's being "moved out"! The Times likes having influential critics -- however foolishly book publishers or theater producers may overreact to them -- and will work very hard to keep them at the paper. It's an important part of the NYT identity and always has been. Hope this answers your question."
So, who is Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times book reviewer with international clout?
For one thing, she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for 1998. Kakutani has been a leading book reviewer at the Times for about 20 years. But very few people in the US publishing industry know anything about her, although she has enormous clout at the paper, where she can make or break a book. She seems to particularly loathe the novels of Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, although this is seen by some fellow critics as a sign of her intelligence and insight. So who is this mystery woman whose reviews appear all over the Internet at many, many sites, but whose personal life remains shrouded in mystery.
One source said recently that she is the daughter of a retired math professor at Yale University who is well-known for his "fixed point theorem."
A source at a New York publishing magazine said she had heard that Ms. Kakutani went to Yale as an undergraduate where she had a brilliant career. She may be the most famous New York Times book critic of the 1990s and early 2000s, yet nobody seems to know anything about her. Not that it matters, really; her reviews are what count. But it would be interesting to know who "La Kakutani" really is, her background, her education, how she arrived at the Times, her connections. A well-known book critic at U.S. newspaper said by e-mail that "Kakutani is incompetent. I don't want to know anything about her!"
Professional rivalry, maybe? Kakutani is the author of a book herself, a collection of previously-published New York Times articles about writers artists, titled "The Poet at the Piano" and published in 1988. The book is now out of print, but amazon.com says it can try to find a copy if you want one. When the Pulitzer Prize Commmittee gave its 1998 award for criticism to Kakutani, Toshio Mizishima at the Yomiuri Shimbun bureau in New York wrote: "Japanese-American book reviewer Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for criticism at the 82nd awards. Kakutani, 43, is known for covering a broad range of literature, including both fiction and nonfiction. Judges referred to Kakutani's reviews as "passionate, intelligent writing on books and contemporary literature." Kakutani joined the Times in 1979 after writing for The Washington Post and Time magazine. She became a cultural writer specializing in book reviews in 1983. Born in the United States, Kakutani is the eldest daughter of mathematician Shizuo Kakutani, 86, an honorary professor in functional analysis theory at Yale University. Kakutani graduated from Yale as an English literature major. Her mother, Keiko, is a second-generation Japanese-American. Kakutani dislikes exposing herself to the public, the Times said, which--at her request--would not release any personal information on the reviewer. "Michiko became a journalist because she wanted to tackle contemporary social problems," Prof. Kakutani said. "Although she had earlier faced self-doubt, I am very happy to hear about the PULITZER prize." Michiko Kakutani is a New York Times book critic whose reviews appeared worldwide via the New York Times News Service. Born in Japan, she has lived most of her life in the USA and has become one of the most influential book critics in the nation. Her reviews may be seen by doing a search engine search under her name at any major search engine. Very good, very insightful.
I WROTE ABOUT MICHIKO KAKUTANIO AND LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT [FROM SALON ONLINE] BY SUSAN LEHMAN ...
Deemed a particularly dimwitted form of self-destruction, writer after writer, at magazine after magazine, has over the years declined the opportunity to write about the New York Times' much-feared lead book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani. "I'm as dumb as a brick. That's why I keep doing things like this. That's why I keep committing professional suicide, again and again," says Paul Alexander, who wrote unflatteringly about Kakutani in last month's Mirabella and lived to tell the tale. In the profile, Alexander gathers up a nice array of savage commentary on the famously reclusive, famously controversial critic -- including remarks from rival critic Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post, who told Alexander he was so unimpressed with Kakutani that when he heard she won a Pulitzer, he wanted to send his back.
Alexander also includes a spicy bit from Gore Vidal, who recalls an interview with Kakutani. "
First question: 'You hate the American people, don't you?' 'No I hate the New York Times. They are not, you'll be amazed to learn, the same.'"
To Alexander's surprise, there was no fallout from the piece. "We know they read it over there, oh yeah, but we heard nothing from a soul. It was sort of spooky. I was expecting an angry letter or something."
But Alexander might want to time publication of his next book to coincide with Kakutani's summer vacation.
"Author gets too personal with Michiko Kakutani"
New York Times book critic puts the kibosh on flirty classifieds
By Craig Offman
Nov. 16, 1999
When novelist Leslie Epstein sent mash notes to New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani through the small classifieds at the bottom of the Gray Lady's front page, he intended them, he says, in a playful spirit. The critic, however, didn't want to play. Epstein's first feeler, which ran Oct. 29 on the front page of the Times, pleaded: "DEAR SWEET MISS MICHIKO K. -- Call your Leib Goldkorn."
On Thursday, the Times' advertising acceptability department received a call from Kakutani. She was upset about Epstein's campaign and demanded that the paper squelch his Nov. 15 ad, which was to read: "YOO-HOO! MY CUTE KAKUTANI! -- Leib Goldkorn is calling."
Two other ads bit the dust as well. Goldkorn is the bumbling 94-year-old protagonist of three of Epstein's books, most recently "Ice Fire Water," which received warm reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Kakutani had given her own stamp of approval to Epstein's 1985 "Goldkorn Tales." "Apparently she was unhappy and complained here," said Bob Smith, the Times' acceptability department manager. "Not to me personally, but complained. As we would do with any other person if their name is in an ad and they object, we got it out of there." What if Mayor Giuliani, who also figured in one of Epstein's ads ("WHO TOOK RUDY GIULIANI'S TOUPEE? -- Leib Goldkorn!"), demanded that the newspaper pull his name from the campaign, as he did over a series of New York magazine bus ads in 1997? "We try not to make judgments on hypothetical situations," Smith said. "Now, if you're talking about public officials, there's probably a different slant on it.
But in this case, here was a person who was clearly disturbed to have her name used this way, so we took it out." Did whoever initially signed off on the ads in October recognize Kakutani's name? "I can't speak for them," Smith said. In any case, if they didn't know who she was then, they do now. "Needless to say, at the time the ads were approved, we didn't have any idea that anyone would be disturbed by them," Smith went on, adding that he hadn't seen the ads himself before they were cleared.
Epstein, who spent nearly all of his $10,000 advance on the campaign (despite the suggestion from his publisher, W.W. Norton, that he invest in something more conventional), has been left bewildered, if not bereft, by Kakutani's response to his publicity stunt. "It's a parody of the 'Jewish women light your candles' ad," he says. "It's a parody of the personals ad." He expects to get at least $3,000 back for the cancelled ads. Before asking the Times for a refund, however, he suggested a series of replacement ads to Smith, one of which would have read: "MY LOVE -- Why do you wish to censor Leib Goldkorn?" The Times turned him down. Kakutani did not return a call for comment.
Ms. Kakutani never respons to public criticism, as is her right. Get over it!
"Author pitches woo to N.Y. Times critic Kakutani" His character thinks Michiko is Finnish.
By Craig Offman Nov. 11, 1999
Look at the tiny classifieds at the bottom of the New York Times' front page and you'll often find reminders to Jewish women to light their Sabbath candles. Lately, "King of the Jews" author Leslie Epstein has been using those little ads to light a bigger fire -- with New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani. In the Oct. 29 front-page classifieds, Leib Goldkorn -- the bumbling, unstable 94-year-old protagonist from Epstein's latest novel, "Ice Fire Water" -- implores the veteran reviewer to ring his bell: "Dear Sweet Michiko K. -- Call Your Leib Goldkorn." The indefatigable Goldkorn plans to send Kakutani another, more heated message on Monday, which will read: " Yoo-hoo! My Cute Kakutani! -- Leib Goldkorn is calling." In Epstein's latest novel, Goldkorn, a Holocaust refugee and novelist, is smitten by Kakutani, who gave him the most favorable review of his career. Goldkorn mistakenly believes that Kakutani, in reality of Japanese descent, is Finnish, and he fantasizes about being beaten by her in a sauna. At one bittersweet point in "Ice Fire Water," Goldkorn invites Kakutani to lunch at the Court of Palms in New York's Plaza Hotel to thank her for her review; when she shows up, the slightly deluded author mistakes her for a cleaning lady. Epstein, however, does not share his character's luck with the critic. He invited her to a reading in New York on Friday, but Kakutani -- famous in publishing circles for her reclusiveness -- didn't show. "There was one Japanese lady there, but I don't think it was her," Epstein said from his home in Boston. (Kakutani did not respond to requests for comment.) Epstein has spent almost $10,000 of his own money on Times front-page classified advertising for "Ice Fire Water." The debut ad read: "Jewish Women/Girls. Gentiles Too! -- Leib Goldkorn is back." The ads have referred not only to Kakutani, but also to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former bathing beauty Esther Williams, who both make cameos in the novel. "The house was originally concerned that he was spending so much money on these ads when it could have been spent on more traditional venues," says Robert Weil, Epstein's editor at W.W. Norton. Epstein, it seems, has hit on an imaginative strategy to lure Kakutani into writing a review of "Ice Fire Water." However, although she praised his 1985 book "Goldkorn Tales," so far, Kakutani isn't biting. "He was very much hoping she would respond. He was very disappointed," Weil said. As much trouble as Epstein may have in getting Kakutani's attention, other reviewers have certainly taken notice. In the Los Angeles Times, Steven G. Kellman calls the novel a "masterly blend of the plangent and the preposterous" and Goldkorn "the Mr. Magoo of Holocaust survivors."
The New York Times Book Review lavished heavy praise on the novel -- and also used a cartoon analogy for Goldkorn. "Leib owes more to Pepe Le Pew than Don Juan," writes D.T. Max. Other book critics at the New York Times might want to check out the novel for different reasons. "Richard Eder has a big speaking part," Epstein said. "He's a hustler phone sex guy. His name is ***** Adder." The late Book Review editor Anatole Broyard, whom Epstein characterizes as "the worst critic who ever lived, I think," appears as Anatole Boudoir.
Another Times critic, Richard Bernstein, turns up as Kakutani's assistant who sends Goldkorn a note instructing him to meet Kakutani for that ill-fated lunch at the Court of Palms
(Fri Apr 28 8:19 AM EDT 2000) I__A M__M I C H I K O__K A K U T A N I
BY COLIN McENROE - - - -
What started as a bascially 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. The recent disclosure that Riley Weston changed her name and adjusted her age from 32 to 19 in order to continue writing and acting in network television persuaded me that America is ready to hear my story. 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? It's not as if I've been able to call in to my regular job at the insurance company and say, "Look, I've been up all night poking holes in the windy, specious, New Age utopian blather of some author you probably never heard of in my capacity as Michiko Kakutani. I'm going to be in a little late." The whole thing started at Yale in the winter of 1972 when my roommates and I made up the name as an all-purpose coinage. We'd answer the phone: "Kevin? No, he's not here. This is his roommate Michiko Kakutani." We'd use it as a catch-all for any nameless broken part of our stereo: "Aha! The problem's with the michiko kakutani." We'd use it, I'm embarrassed to say, as a metaphor for onanism. "What'd you do last night?"
POWERSBOOKS Kakutani of the Times by Bob Powers G21 Literary Critic To receive this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Francaise, cut and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/pbooks26.html "), then click here. Some months ago, a reader of my "Powersbooks" column here on G21 inquired if I knew anything about Michiko Kakutani, the acerbic and often cutting book critic for The New York Times. I didn't, except that she could skewer a book in a manner often unnecessarily cruel. Her attacks pissed me off, especially when the books she ripped happened to be ones I had enjoyed. The recent award of the Pulitzer Prize to Kakutani came as a shock. Having made many wrongheaded decisions over the years, the Putlizer judges did it again. The reclusive Kakutani, 43, an almost-never photographed critic, has been on the Times book staff since 1983. She maintains a moralistic tone that requires writers to adhere to her seemingly narrow standards of a moral life. Pulitzer judges frequently display little comprehension of what's worthy beyond the world of journalism. And they made a second questionable award this year in giving a Pulitzer to novelist Philip Roth for his less-than-impressive "American Pastoral." Folks who judge literary matters for the Pulitzer crowd could need basic instruction about doing this awards business. Or it may be that Roth was being rewarded for his long and distinctive career, rather than singled out for his most recent tome, a novel that drew carping from many distingushed critics. Years ago, the Motion Picture Academy handed Elizabeth Taylor an Oscar for one of her worst films, the execrable "Butterfield 8." Liz had been desperately ill that year, nearly died, and the Oscar voters apparently felt they'd unfairly overlooked previous good performances. So she got an Oscar. I went to The World Almanac to check past winners of the fiction prize. Usually the awards go to books that have sold well, which doesn't prove literary merit. Such lightweight novels as Allen Drury's political thriller "Advise and Consent" and Larry McMurtry's entertaining western "Lonesome Dove" are not novels that will endure in the annals of literature. Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres," an uneasy retelling of "King Lear," won't be remembered a few years from now. Saul Bellow won for "Humboldt's Gift," not his best work. Shirley Ann Grau won in 1965 for "Keepers of the House." Few remember her today. My lack of appreciation for the reviews of Michiko Kakutani and Roth's most recent novel are shared by others prominent in the field danbloom 0(Fri Apr 28 9:06 AM EDT 2000) Interview with USauthor LEslie Epstien: Q: You also use Michiko Kakutani, the New York Timesbook critic, as a character. Yes, I do. Prominently. Has she read Ice Fire Water? She claims not to have. Harper'smagazine published a whole chapter of the novel, and I know she was approached and she said, "Oh, I heard about it." But I think she must have read it. And I hope she enjoyed it. I think she's a great critic and she's treated gently in the book, unlike Anatole Broyard, who's turned into Anatola Boudoir; and Richard Eder, who's turned into ***** Adder; and the previous Goldkorncritic of mine in The New York Times, an envious chap, I think -- David Evanier -- he turns out to be Diva Evian in the book. So I have fun with my critics. Michiko's a different story.
She gave my previous books sensitive reviews, and naturally, every author falls in love with such a critic, and that love is expressed through Goldkorn. Just what is that Cammy? Another "device" for the derisive? Wolf has energy and ambition, but her mind is amazingly slack. It's as if she's frozen in the precocious but superficial brightness of adolescence, with her thoughts tumbling out in what a reviewer of her last book (Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times) rightly called "narcissistic babbling and plain silliness."
Wolf also has something else that belies your psycho-babble. She knows how to get her point across to Americans whose average intellectual capacity is exceeded when confronting the odds on a football bet. What would Japanese mindset reviewer Michiko Kakutani know about what is " babbling and plain silly?" And again you mention The New York Times as if it was a bastion of intellectual credibility. How candid of you -- and how treacherous to use the nation's foremost liberal newspaper to bolster your vituperative attacks on Ms. Wolf.
Michiko, Remember To Light Sabbath Candles: The November 26 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a strange ad campaign that ran briefly in The New York Times. At the bottom of the front page, spoofing the tiny ads that urge Jewish women and girls to light candles on Friday night, were appeals to the Times daily book reviewer Michiko Kakutani to call one Leib Goldkorn. One ad read, "YOO-HOO! MY CUTE KAKUTANI!" So who is this amorous Mr. Goldkorn? Actually, he is a fictional character, the hero of comic novels and stories by Leslie Epstein, most recently "Ice Fire Water: A Leib Goldkorn Cocktail," just published by W.W. Norton. The ads were planned and paid for by Mr. Eps tein himself and cost about $10,000, according to the Chronicle. In "Ice Fire Water," Goldkorn, a 94-year-old European Jewish 幦igr?musician and waiter with a Walter Mittyish inner life, asks Ms. Kakutani to lunch at the Plaza, but he fails to recognize her waiting for him because he thinks Kakutani is a Finnish name instead of a Japanese name and is looking for a blonde. The Times had approved a series of 10 ads -- some of which mention Mayor Giuliani and swimmer Esther Williams, who also figure in Mr. Epstein's book -- but pulled the campaign after only eight had run. Mr. Epstein told the Chronicle that a Times official told him Ms. Kakutani objected to the way her name was being used and requested that it stop. "I had no idea Michiko would be so humorless about all this," Mr. Epstein told the Chronicle. "I really respect her. I want to write her a note. Maybe I'll invite her to lunch."
Key West, Florida Friday, July 17, 1998
Sir, In reviewing Ron Rosenbaum's new book Explaining Hitler, which I have read and regard as a first rate study of myself and Hitler's other examiners, Michiko Kakutani (NYT, reprinted in Seattle Post-Intelligencer Jul.6) refers to me in just two words: "Hitler apologist."
Mr Rosenbaum devotes an entire chapter to my twenty years of research into Hitler and his satraps, and does not use those odious words himself. If Mr Kakutani had read the introduction to my biography Hitler's War (The Viking Press, 1977) he would know how ill-judged his insult was. Twenty years to write it -- and two words, by somebody who never read it, to dismiss it?
Yours faithfully, David Irving
======================================
washington review xxii3 - e. e. miller - what star ...of American book critics, Michiko Kakutani, in which she predicts... ...really significant. Of course, La Michiko wouldn't agree. She is called La Kakutani, La Michiko, Michi, Michiko ... America has a love-hate relationship with MK that no other book critic has ever attracted. It is a real cultural phenomenon, under-reported, whispered. Will the real MK please stand up? Rushdie, of course, has gotten a mild drubbing in the American press for his trash-cultural excursions in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Several critics on this side of the Atlantic seem to consider rock & roll a rather low-rent subject for a distinguished novelist. Was he offended by, say, Michiko Kakutani's conspicuous thumbs-down in the New York Times? "Oh, no," insisted Rushdie. "Michiko is a weird woman who seems to feel the need to alternately praise and spank. So she gave The Moor's Last Sigh a fantastic review, and panned the book before that. In any case, I'm somebody who's been extraordinarily well reviewed, so I really can't *****."
un arranque de desprecio Michiko Kakutani del New York Times en un... ...el que no se le acredita a Ellis. Kakutani se queja de los personajes...
The American reviews have been so sour and testy that Vidal and his sympathisers have blamed the New York Times for pursuing a vendetta that dates back to its snuff job on Vidal's gay-themed novel The City and the Pillar in 1948. Vidal's sly mockery of Michiko Kakutani, the paper's leading book reviewer, may have goaded them into arthritic action. Reviewers today haven't lost the power to launch or impede careers. Michiko Kakutani at the Times may not write worth a damn; I doubt you could find a pair of startling sentences back-to-back in the tens of thousands she has pounded out in her Pulitzer Prize's winning career. But she isn't afraid to deliver judgments, often unpopular ones (e.g. Denis Johnson, Toni Morrison) with the literati.
And she is too anti/social to be considered corrupt. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani began her review with a parody of Hemingway's style and ended with First Light should never have seen the light of day.
Jesus's Son, by Denis Johnson. Paperback. Harper Perennial. Short stories by a poet. A series of linked stories that transport the reader into a lush, extreme state of consciousness. "His mind [seems] at once clouded and made gorgeously lucid by these drugs," said NYTimes Critic, Michiko Kakutani.
Camille Paglia calls her a "yuppie feminist," and "one-note Naomi Wolf."
Michiko Kakutani, New York Times book critic, claims that she's "a sloppy thinker and incompetent writer." The Christian right would like her to burn in hell for her views on teenage sexuality. Women around the world buy her books by the millions.
And then there is the part about that ice queen... the book reviewer for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani. That's a Finnish name isn't it?
QUOTE UNQUOTE: "No, I don't have her email address. I don't think anyone has. The odd thing is, I have always respected her as a critic. Only her pre-emptive strike against Salinger's generous gift of his wonderful Novella Hapworth 1967 really upset me. She is ten times smarter than all the other critics, has standards, is effective at pricking the bubble of inflated reputations, and is unfailingly gen4erous to the first novels of the young. No wonder Leib Goldkorn fell in love with her! But, you know, she apparently has her reasons for her wish for privacy ahnd reclusiveness. Isn't it just possible that even Leib should come round to honorig her wishes? "
THE great news for Nora Okja Keller came via fax from her agent. Yesterday's New York Times featured her first book, "Comfort Woman," in a glowing review by their leading book critic, Michiko Kakutani. The Times critic ended her review with, "Ms. Keller has written a lyrical and haunting novel. She has made an impressive debut." I'd said much the same thing when I read the book a couple of weeks ago, but it somehow doesn't have the same clout as Kakutani.
A LETTER NOTES: "When does your site go up, or is it up? When it does, let me know and I'll pitch it. As a Kakutani aficianado, you should pursue her one-time romance with Paul Simon (seriously).
....savaged by her fellow critics, who denounced her for being too cranky and ungenerous, particularly toward any novel (according to Salon's Dwight Garner) "that& #8212;sexually, morally—puts some sweat on her brow." In another article, Garner noted that Kakutani's Pynchon-like solitudinarianism "has piqued interest in her to the straining point." How sweaty or accessible a book reviewer may be, one would like to believe, should have absolutely nothing to do with her craft. Of course, if she were writing for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we wouldn't be assessing her "craft" in the first place. But Kakutani's allure reflects more than her obvious cultural power. What is it about her that inspires this kind of reaction? One clue may lie in an ersatz confessional essay, entitled "I Am Michiko Kakutani," which was published last year on the Web site of David Eggers' journal McSweeney's. The article's author, supposedly an undistinguished white man, reveals that "the brilliant, acerbic, reclusive, rarely photographed lynx-like New York Times book critic and Pulitzer winner" is his alter ego, part of his ongoing mission to "expose American culture for the simpering, self-referential, pretentious fraud that it is!" There is plenty more of this kind of thing, leading one to believe that the true target of this satire is not the culture of breathless interest which surrounds Kakutani, but the reviewer herself. She takes her role as cultural mandarin, one is supposed to infer, too seriously. In bashing Philip Roth and John Updike for being dirty old men, for example, she proves how remote from ordinary human affairs she is. Small wonder, then, that we laugh when Epstein has Goldkorn shout "Kakutani! Let us have a coition!" To be sure, the Times takes Kakutani too seriously. In the citation that accompanied the submission of her criticism to the Pulitzer jury, she is described as employing a Keatsian "negative capability" by which "she leaves herself—her biases, her preoccupations, her past history—out of her reviews, and presents us with something close to a pure critical intelligence: fearless, disinterested, and responsive." This is just award-speak, though; surely Kakutani doesn't believe that she's a medium for the pure spirit of criticism. Or does she? It seems Kakutani has become, despite what appear to be her best efforts to the contrary, precisely the kind of self-reflexive media celebrity she's spent the past 16 years deflating. Or is her victimization at the hands of novelists, critics, and assorted wise-asses just the final proof of everything she has been saying all along? By Joshua Glenn / \hermenautics In the "Story" section of the April issue of Harper's, novelist Leslie Epstein's English-mangling nonagenarian alter ego Leib Goldkorn becomes obsessed with real-life New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani. Imagining her to be an enormous blond Finn, he writes to thank her for having favorably reviewed his book 12 years earlier; Kakutani agrees to meet with him. When Goldkorn arrives at the restaurant, however, he ignores the " black-haired Oriental" who smiles shyly and waves at him ("I have no time to engage, with this Nipponese cleansing lady, in banter"), and calamity ensues. It's funny stuff, but is there something larger at work here? Goldkorn, after all, is hardly the only member of the American literary scene given to wild speculation about the elusive reviewer's personal life. When Kakutani won the Pulitzer Prize last year, she was savaged by her fellow critics, who denounced her for being too cranky and ungenerous, particularly toward any novel (according to Salon's Dwight Garner) "that& #8212;sexually, morally—puts some sweat on her brow." In another article, Garner noted that Kakutani's Pynchon-like solitudinarianism "has piqued interest in her to the straining point." How sweaty or accessible a book reviewer may be, one would like to believe, should have absolutely nothing to do with her craft. Of course, if she were writing for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we wouldn't be assessing her "craft" in the first place. But Kakutani's allure reflects more than her obvious cultural power. What is it about her that inspires this kind of reaction? One clue may lie in an ersatz confessional essay, entitled "I Am Michiko Kakutani," which was published last year on the Web site of David Eggers' journal McSweeney's. The article's author, supposedly an undistinguished white man, reveals that "the brilliant, acerbic, reclusive, rarely photographed lynx-like New York Times book critic and Pulitzer winner" is his alter ego, part of his ongoing mission to "expose American culture for the simpering, self-referential, pretentious fraud that it is!" There is plenty more of this kind of thing, leading one to believe that the true target of this satire is not the culture of breathless interest which surrounds Kakutani, but the reviewer herself. She takes her role as cultural mandarin, one is supposed to infer, too seriously. In bashing Philip Roth and John Updike for being dirty old men, for example, she proves how remote from ordinary human affairs she is. Small wonder, then, that we laugh when Epstein has Goldkorn shout "Kakutani! Let us have a coition!" To be sure, the Times takes Kakutani too seriously. In the citation that accompanied the submission of her criticism to the Pulitzer jury, she is described as employing a Keatsian "negative capability" by which "she leaves herself—her biases, her preoccupations, her past history—out of her reviews, and presents us with something close to a pure critical intelligence: fearless, disinterested, and responsive." This is just award-speak, though; surely Kakutani doesn't believe that she's a medium for the pure spirit of criticism. Or does she? It seems Kakutani has become, despite what appear to be her best efforts to the contrary, precisely the kind of self-reflexive media celebrity she's spent the past 16 years deflating. Or is her victimization at the hands of novelists, critics, and assorted wise-asses just the final proof of everything she has been saying all along? Somewhat more hopeful is his relation with the New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani. Kakutani admired ''Goldkorn Tales'' when the book came out in 1985, and wrote with affection of its protagonist. L. Goldkorn has not forgotten. He has conceived a crush on her. Because of his shiksa goddess syndrome and the many K's in the critic's name, he assumes she's a Finn, thus an Aryan. He dreams of rough play in the sauna. (''The worst accomplishment of the Nazis is that they have turned us . . . into themselves,'' Goldkorn notes elsewhere.) He arranges a meeting at the ''Court of Palms'' at the Plaza Hotel. On the subway to Columbus Circle, a condom in his pocket, he rehearses Finnish greetings and lavishes pet names on his ''hellion from Helsinki.'' Kakutani's ancestry is in fact Japanese, and when Goldkorn meets her, he mistakes her for a cleaning lady, unable to see his chance for love.
The curse of the Pulitzer? WILL THE NEW YORK TIMES PUT BOOK CRITIC MICHIKO KAKUTANI OUT TO PASTURE ....NOW THAT SHE'S WON THE BIG PRIZE? NOPE!
BY DWIGHT GARNER
When the New York Times won its 75th, 76th and 77th Pulitzer Prizes this week, the paper celebrated in traditional fashion, springing for a full-page ad featuring (color!) photographs of its smiling, happy winners. There was Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse, who won for beat reporting, and a group shot of the paper's international affairs team, honored for its pieces on drug corruption in Mexico. The only winner who was missing from the party was the Times' reclusive book critic, Michiko Kakutani, who took home this year's prize for criticism. It's not surprising, really, that the Times doesn't have an updated head shot of Kakutani; recent photographs of the 43-year-old critic are nearly as hard to come by as those of Ruth Reichl, the paper's food critic, who tends to appear on local television only when her features can be electronically scrambled.
Kakutani doesn't circulate on New York's frenetic book scene, a fact that has piqued interest in her to the straining point; people who've met the diminutive critic are almost as much in demand at dinner parties as those who've shared straws over a milkshake with Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo.
The last image of Kakutani to pop up in print (that I've seen, anyway) was a black-and-white snapshot that appeared in Vanity Fair in 1988; the critic looked casually glamorous in a black ensemble, a cigarette dangling from her thin fingertips. Even the Times seems to have trouble getting Kakutani, who's been a daily critic at the paper since 1983, to sit for an interview.
When it sought a post-Pulitzer reaction comment yesterday, the best they could squeeze out of her was: "It feels unreal."
Kakutani's win didn't surprise many in the book world. The Times holds legendary sway with Pulitzer committees, and many felt she was long overdue for the award, particularly after Times critic Margo Jefferson walked away with it in 1995 after a relatively short stint in the book-crit lineup. (Jefferson quickly graduated to theater criticism; she's now a roving cultural essayist for the paper.) Noting Jefferson's Pulitzer win, Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott said yesterday that he's often wondered if there's a curse connected to the criticism award. "Most people think Margo Jefferson went right downhill after winning her Pulitzer," he said. "We'll probably have no such luck with Michiko."
Curse or no curse, some observers wondered yesterday if the Times might use the occasion of Kakutani's Pulitzer win to gently rotate her from the daily book beat. "There seems to be a tradition
Kakutani doesn't circulate on New York's frenetic book scene, a fact that has piqued interest in her to the straining point; people who've met the diminutive critic are almost as much in demand at dinner parties as those who've shared straws over a milkshake with Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo.
According to John Leonard, the outgoing literary editor of the Nation, Kakutani "has a tin ear, and her reviews are lacking in generosity."
As for Kakutani's Pulitzer, Yardley said that he "doesn't read her with any real interest. I don't find her to be an interesting writer. She's conscientious, and she seems to be -- as James Wolcott once put it -- something of a perpetual graduate student."
"Michi won the Pulitzer a year ago and if she ever leaves the job she'll do it, as XXX did, for a better offer -- not because she's being "moved out"! The Times likes having influential critics -- however foolishly book publishers or theater producers may overreact to them -- and will work very hard to keep them at the paper. It's an important part of the NYT identity and always has been. Hope this answers your question -- "
Yes, just who is Michiko Kakutani?
NEWS FLASH FROM LONG AGO, 1999: She just won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for 1998.
SEE BELOW for Yomiuri Shimbun news flash from New York.
NOW BACK TO this ORIGINAL bogsite, first written in December 1997, before this Pulitzer business came up. Sorry for the inconvenience of a long scroll down.
CONTINUE: Some astute readers of this 1997 blog will know her as the famously reclusive book reviewer for the New York Times. Yes, in fact, Ms. Kakutani has been a leading book reviewer at the TIMES for about 20 years.
But very few people in the publishing industry know anything about her, although she has enormous clout at the Times, where she can make or break a book. She seems to particularly loathe the novels of Norman Mailer --OOPS! --(see recent www.MobyLives.com item here:)
Mailer, unaware of Eggers' dictum, pisses in the very small and fragile ecosystem that is the literary world . . . July 1, 2005 !!! (TIME PASSES, LIFE GOES ON)
After attacking Michiko Kakutani in a Rolling Stone interview, Norman Mailer has himself come under attack by Dallas Morning News reporter Esther Wu, who is president of the Asian American Journalists Association. The interview is not available online, but as a Daily Telegraph article by Harry Mount recaps, Mailer said of The New York Times' lead book critic, "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 three-fer: Asiatic, feminist and, ah, what's the third? Well. Let's just call her a twofer." He also called her a "token." Now, as Lloyd Grove reports in his Lowdown column for The New York Daily News, Wu has written a letter to Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner saying, "Calling out Norman Mailer as a racist . . . would be easy. . . . We take greater offense at his reference to her as a 'two-fer' and a 'token' because she's 'Asiatic, feminist,' which essentially diminishes the accomplishments of all women and journalists . . . To Mr. Mailer, we'd simply like to say: Shame on you." Mailer tells Grove the letter is "an excellent example of high-octane political correctness." La Kakutani had no comment. {NOTE: she never does, see below}
....and Philip Roth, although this is seen by some fellow critics as a sign of her intelligence and insight. So who is this mystery woman whose reviews appear all over the Internet at many, many sites, but whose personal life remains shrouded in mystery. One source told us recently that she is the daughter of a retired math professor at Yale University who is well-known for his "fixed point theorem," whatever that is.
A source at a New York publishing magazine told us that she heard that Ms. Kakutani went to Yale as an undergraduate where she had a brilliant career. Remember this name, Michiko Kakutani! [This was written in 1997!] She may be the most famous New York Times book critic of the 1980s and 1990s, yet nobody seems to know anything about her.....and....... 2005 now!
Not that it matters, really; her reviews are what count. But it would be interesting to know who "La Kakutani" really is, her background, her education, how she arrived at the Times, her connections.
A well-known book critic at a U.S. newspaper told us once that "Kakutani is incompetent. I don't want to know anything about her!"
Professional rivalry, maybe?
This story grows more interesting ... By the way, Ms. Kakutani is the author of a book herself, a collection of previously-published New York Times articles about writers artists, titled "The Poet at the Piano" and published in 1988. The book is now out of print, OOP, but amazon.com says it can try to find a copy if you want one.
If anyone knows more about Ms. Kakutani, send us an email today. [d_h_888 AT yahoo DOT com] We've searched all the search engines, to no avail.
Or leave a comment below on this blog.
Only reviews, reviews, reviews -- hundreds of them. But no biographical information is available, such as birthdate, birthplace, nationality or address. Hmmm, a mystery within a mystery. We've emailed a query to the front desk at the Toronto Public Library and we're still waiting for an answer...
And while we were waiting for our answer, along comes the Pulitzer Prize Commmittee giving its 1998 ward for criticism to who else but La Kakutani, with a sharp dispatch from our friend Toshio Mizishima at the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper bureau in New York.
On April 17, 1998, Mizushima-san wrote in a story in English headlined "Kakutani wins Pulitzer for 'passionate' reviews"
"...Japanese-American book reviewer Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for criticism at the 82nd awards, which were announced Tuesday. Kakutani, 43, is known for covering a broad range of literature, including both fiction and nonfiction. In the April 10 issue of the Times, she reviewed a biography of former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson. Kakutani praised "American Pastoral" written by Philip Roth, saying it was the author's most intense work to date. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction on Tuesday. Judges referred to Kakutani's reviews as "passionate, intelligent writing on books and contemporary literature." Kakutani joined the Times in 1979 after writing for The Washington Post and Time magazine. She became a cultural writer specializing in book reviews in 1983. Born in the United States, Kakutani is the eldest daughter of mathematician Shizuo Kakutani, 86, an honorary professor in functional analysis theory at Yale University. Kakutani graduated from Yale as an English literature major. Her mother, Keiko, is a second-generation Japanese-American. Kakutani dislikes exposing herself to the public, the paper said, which--at her request--would not release any personal information on the reviewer. "
Michiko became a journalist because she wanted to tackle contemporary social problems," Prof. Kakutani said. "Although she had earlier faced self-doubt, I am very happy to hear about the prize."
SO NOW THE ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS ABOUT LA KAKUTANI!
Said another writer: "Michi won the Pulitzer a year ago and if she ever leaves the job she'll do it, as I did, for a better offer -- not because she's being "moved out"! The Times likes having influential critics -- however foolishly book publishers or theater producers may overreact to them -- and will work very hard to keep them at the paper. It's an important part of the NYT identity and always has been. Hope this answers your question."
So, who is Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times book reviewer with international clout?
For one thing, she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for 1998. Kakutani has been a leading book reviewer at the Times for about 20 years. But very few people in the US publishing industry know anything about her, although she has enormous clout at the paper, where she can make or break a book. She seems to particularly loathe the novels of Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, although this is seen by some fellow critics as a sign of her intelligence and insight. So who is this mystery woman whose reviews appear all over the Internet at many, many sites, but whose personal life remains shrouded in mystery.
One source said recently that she is the daughter of a retired math professor at Yale University who is well-known for his "fixed point theorem."
A source at a New York publishing magazine said she had heard that Ms. Kakutani went to Yale as an undergraduate where she had a brilliant career. She may be the most famous New York Times book critic of the 1990s and early 2000s, yet nobody seems to know anything about her. Not that it matters, really; her reviews are what count. But it would be interesting to know who "La Kakutani" really is, her background, her education, how she arrived at the Times, her connections. A well-known book critic at U.S. newspaper said by e-mail that "Kakutani is incompetent. I don't want to know anything about her!"
Professional rivalry, maybe? Kakutani is the author of a book herself, a collection of previously-published New York Times articles about writers artists, titled "The Poet at the Piano" and published in 1988. The book is now out of print, but amazon.com says it can try to find a copy if you want one. When the Pulitzer Prize Commmittee gave its 1998 award for criticism to Kakutani, Toshio Mizishima at the Yomiuri Shimbun bureau in New York wrote: "Japanese-American book reviewer Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for criticism at the 82nd awards. Kakutani, 43, is known for covering a broad range of literature, including both fiction and nonfiction. Judges referred to Kakutani's reviews as "passionate, intelligent writing on books and contemporary literature." Kakutani joined the Times in 1979 after writing for The Washington Post and Time magazine. She became a cultural writer specializing in book reviews in 1983. Born in the United States, Kakutani is the eldest daughter of mathematician Shizuo Kakutani, 86, an honorary professor in functional analysis theory at Yale University. Kakutani graduated from Yale as an English literature major. Her mother, Keiko, is a second-generation Japanese-American. Kakutani dislikes exposing herself to the public, the Times said, which--at her request--would not release any personal information on the reviewer. "Michiko became a journalist because she wanted to tackle contemporary social problems," Prof. Kakutani said. "Although she had earlier faced self-doubt, I am very happy to hear about the PULITZER prize." Michiko Kakutani is a New York Times book critic whose reviews appeared worldwide via the New York Times News Service. Born in Japan, she has lived most of her life in the USA and has become one of the most influential book critics in the nation. Her reviews may be seen by doing a search engine search under her name at any major search engine. Very good, very insightful.
I WROTE ABOUT MICHIKO KAKUTANIO AND LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT [FROM SALON ONLINE] BY SUSAN LEHMAN ...
Deemed a particularly dimwitted form of self-destruction, writer after writer, at magazine after magazine, has over the years declined the opportunity to write about the New York Times' much-feared lead book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani. "I'm as dumb as a brick. That's why I keep doing things like this. That's why I keep committing professional suicide, again and again," says Paul Alexander, who wrote unflatteringly about Kakutani in last month's Mirabella and lived to tell the tale. In the profile, Alexander gathers up a nice array of savage commentary on the famously reclusive, famously controversial critic -- including remarks from rival critic Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post, who told Alexander he was so unimpressed with Kakutani that when he heard she won a Pulitzer, he wanted to send his back.
Alexander also includes a spicy bit from Gore Vidal, who recalls an interview with Kakutani. "
First question: 'You hate the American people, don't you?' 'No I hate the New York Times. They are not, you'll be amazed to learn, the same.'"
To Alexander's surprise, there was no fallout from the piece. "We know they read it over there, oh yeah, but we heard nothing from a soul. It was sort of spooky. I was expecting an angry letter or something."
But Alexander might want to time publication of his next book to coincide with Kakutani's summer vacation.
"Author gets too personal with Michiko Kakutani"
New York Times book critic puts the kibosh on flirty classifieds
By Craig Offman
Nov. 16, 1999
When novelist Leslie Epstein sent mash notes to New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani through the small classifieds at the bottom of the Gray Lady's front page, he intended them, he says, in a playful spirit. The critic, however, didn't want to play. Epstein's first feeler, which ran Oct. 29 on the front page of the Times, pleaded: "DEAR SWEET MISS MICHIKO K. -- Call your Leib Goldkorn."
On Thursday, the Times' advertising acceptability department received a call from Kakutani. She was upset about Epstein's campaign and demanded that the paper squelch his Nov. 15 ad, which was to read: "YOO-HOO! MY CUTE KAKUTANI! -- Leib Goldkorn is calling."
Two other ads bit the dust as well. Goldkorn is the bumbling 94-year-old protagonist of three of Epstein's books, most recently "Ice Fire Water," which received warm reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Kakutani had given her own stamp of approval to Epstein's 1985 "Goldkorn Tales." "Apparently she was unhappy and complained here," said Bob Smith, the Times' acceptability department manager. "Not to me personally, but complained. As we would do with any other person if their name is in an ad and they object, we got it out of there." What if Mayor Giuliani, who also figured in one of Epstein's ads ("WHO TOOK RUDY GIULIANI'S TOUPEE? -- Leib Goldkorn!"), demanded that the newspaper pull his name from the campaign, as he did over a series of New York magazine bus ads in 1997? "We try not to make judgments on hypothetical situations," Smith said. "Now, if you're talking about public officials, there's probably a different slant on it.
But in this case, here was a person who was clearly disturbed to have her name used this way, so we took it out." Did whoever initially signed off on the ads in October recognize Kakutani's name? "I can't speak for them," Smith said. In any case, if they didn't know who she was then, they do now. "Needless to say, at the time the ads were approved, we didn't have any idea that anyone would be disturbed by them," Smith went on, adding that he hadn't seen the ads himself before they were cleared.
Epstein, who spent nearly all of his $10,000 advance on the campaign (despite the suggestion from his publisher, W.W. Norton, that he invest in something more conventional), has been left bewildered, if not bereft, by Kakutani's response to his publicity stunt. "It's a parody of the 'Jewish women light your candles' ad," he says. "It's a parody of the personals ad." He expects to get at least $3,000 back for the cancelled ads. Before asking the Times for a refund, however, he suggested a series of replacement ads to Smith, one of which would have read: "MY LOVE -- Why do you wish to censor Leib Goldkorn?" The Times turned him down. Kakutani did not return a call for comment.
Ms. Kakutani never respons to public criticism, as is her right. Get over it!
"Author pitches woo to N.Y. Times critic Kakutani" His character thinks Michiko is Finnish.
By Craig Offman Nov. 11, 1999
Look at the tiny classifieds at the bottom of the New York Times' front page and you'll often find reminders to Jewish women to light their Sabbath candles. Lately, "King of the Jews" author Leslie Epstein has been using those little ads to light a bigger fire -- with New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani. In the Oct. 29 front-page classifieds, Leib Goldkorn -- the bumbling, unstable 94-year-old protagonist from Epstein's latest novel, "Ice Fire Water" -- implores the veteran reviewer to ring his bell: "Dear Sweet Michiko K. -- Call Your Leib Goldkorn." The indefatigable Goldkorn plans to send Kakutani another, more heated message on Monday, which will read: " Yoo-hoo! My Cute Kakutani! -- Leib Goldkorn is calling." In Epstein's latest novel, Goldkorn, a Holocaust refugee and novelist, is smitten by Kakutani, who gave him the most favorable review of his career. Goldkorn mistakenly believes that Kakutani, in reality of Japanese descent, is Finnish, and he fantasizes about being beaten by her in a sauna. At one bittersweet point in "Ice Fire Water," Goldkorn invites Kakutani to lunch at the Court of Palms in New York's Plaza Hotel to thank her for her review; when she shows up, the slightly deluded author mistakes her for a cleaning lady. Epstein, however, does not share his character's luck with the critic. He invited her to a reading in New York on Friday, but Kakutani -- famous in publishing circles for her reclusiveness -- didn't show. "There was one Japanese lady there, but I don't think it was her," Epstein said from his home in Boston. (Kakutani did not respond to requests for comment.) Epstein has spent almost $10,000 of his own money on Times front-page classified advertising for "Ice Fire Water." The debut ad read: "Jewish Women/Girls. Gentiles Too! -- Leib Goldkorn is back." The ads have referred not only to Kakutani, but also to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former bathing beauty Esther Williams, who both make cameos in the novel. "The house was originally concerned that he was spending so much money on these ads when it could have been spent on more traditional venues," says Robert Weil, Epstein's editor at W.W. Norton. Epstein, it seems, has hit on an imaginative strategy to lure Kakutani into writing a review of "Ice Fire Water." However, although she praised his 1985 book "Goldkorn Tales," so far, Kakutani isn't biting. "He was very much hoping she would respond. He was very disappointed," Weil said. As much trouble as Epstein may have in getting Kakutani's attention, other reviewers have certainly taken notice. In the Los Angeles Times, Steven G. Kellman calls the novel a "masterly blend of the plangent and the preposterous" and Goldkorn "the Mr. Magoo of Holocaust survivors."
The New York Times Book Review lavished heavy praise on the novel -- and also used a cartoon analogy for Goldkorn. "Leib owes more to Pepe Le Pew than Don Juan," writes D.T. Max. Other book critics at the New York Times might want to check out the novel for different reasons. "Richard Eder has a big speaking part," Epstein said. "He's a hustler phone sex guy. His name is ***** Adder." The late Book Review editor Anatole Broyard, whom Epstein characterizes as "the worst critic who ever lived, I think," appears as Anatole Boudoir.
Another Times critic, Richard Bernstein, turns up as Kakutani's assistant who sends Goldkorn a note instructing him to meet Kakutani for that ill-fated lunch at the Court of Palms
(Fri Apr 28 8:19 AM EDT 2000) I__A M__M I C H I K O__K A K U T A N I
BY COLIN McENROE - - - -
What started as a bascially 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. The recent disclosure that Riley Weston changed her name and adjusted her age from 32 to 19 in order to continue writing and acting in network television persuaded me that America is ready to hear my story. 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? It's not as if I've been able to call in to my regular job at the insurance company and say, "Look, I've been up all night poking holes in the windy, specious, New Age utopian blather of some author you probably never heard of in my capacity as Michiko Kakutani. I'm going to be in a little late." The whole thing started at Yale in the winter of 1972 when my roommates and I made up the name as an all-purpose coinage. We'd answer the phone: "Kevin? No, he's not here. This is his roommate Michiko Kakutani." We'd use it as a catch-all for any nameless broken part of our stereo: "Aha! The problem's with the michiko kakutani." We'd use it, I'm embarrassed to say, as a metaphor for onanism. "What'd you do last night?"
POWERSBOOKS Kakutani of the Times by Bob Powers G21 Literary Critic To receive this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Francaise, cut and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/pbooks26.html "), then click here. Some months ago, a reader of my "Powersbooks" column here on G21 inquired if I knew anything about Michiko Kakutani, the acerbic and often cutting book critic for The New York Times. I didn't, except that she could skewer a book in a manner often unnecessarily cruel. Her attacks pissed me off, especially when the books she ripped happened to be ones I had enjoyed. The recent award of the Pulitzer Prize to Kakutani came as a shock. Having made many wrongheaded decisions over the years, the Putlizer judges did it again. The reclusive Kakutani, 43, an almost-never photographed critic, has been on the Times book staff since 1983. She maintains a moralistic tone that requires writers to adhere to her seemingly narrow standards of a moral life. Pulitzer judges frequently display little comprehension of what's worthy beyond the world of journalism. And they made a second questionable award this year in giving a Pulitzer to novelist Philip Roth for his less-than-impressive "American Pastoral." Folks who judge literary matters for the Pulitzer crowd could need basic instruction about doing this awards business. Or it may be that Roth was being rewarded for his long and distinctive career, rather than singled out for his most recent tome, a novel that drew carping from many distingushed critics. Years ago, the Motion Picture Academy handed Elizabeth Taylor an Oscar for one of her worst films, the execrable "Butterfield 8." Liz had been desperately ill that year, nearly died, and the Oscar voters apparently felt they'd unfairly overlooked previous good performances. So she got an Oscar. I went to The World Almanac to check past winners of the fiction prize. Usually the awards go to books that have sold well, which doesn't prove literary merit. Such lightweight novels as Allen Drury's political thriller "Advise and Consent" and Larry McMurtry's entertaining western "Lonesome Dove" are not novels that will endure in the annals of literature. Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres," an uneasy retelling of "King Lear," won't be remembered a few years from now. Saul Bellow won for "Humboldt's Gift," not his best work. Shirley Ann Grau won in 1965 for "Keepers of the House." Few remember her today. My lack of appreciation for the reviews of Michiko Kakutani and Roth's most recent novel are shared by others prominent in the field danbloom 0(Fri Apr 28 9:06 AM EDT 2000) Interview with USauthor LEslie Epstien: Q: You also use Michiko Kakutani, the New York Timesbook critic, as a character. Yes, I do. Prominently. Has she read Ice Fire Water? She claims not to have. Harper'smagazine published a whole chapter of the novel, and I know she was approached and she said, "Oh, I heard about it." But I think she must have read it. And I hope she enjoyed it. I think she's a great critic and she's treated gently in the book, unlike Anatole Broyard, who's turned into Anatola Boudoir; and Richard Eder, who's turned into ***** Adder; and the previous Goldkorncritic of mine in The New York Times, an envious chap, I think -- David Evanier -- he turns out to be Diva Evian in the book. So I have fun with my critics. Michiko's a different story.
She gave my previous books sensitive reviews, and naturally, every author falls in love with such a critic, and that love is expressed through Goldkorn. Just what is that Cammy? Another "device" for the derisive? Wolf has energy and ambition, but her mind is amazingly slack. It's as if she's frozen in the precocious but superficial brightness of adolescence, with her thoughts tumbling out in what a reviewer of her last book (Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times) rightly called "narcissistic babbling and plain silliness."
Wolf also has something else that belies your psycho-babble. She knows how to get her point across to Americans whose average intellectual capacity is exceeded when confronting the odds on a football bet. What would Japanese mindset reviewer Michiko Kakutani know about what is " babbling and plain silly?" And again you mention The New York Times as if it was a bastion of intellectual credibility. How candid of you -- and how treacherous to use the nation's foremost liberal newspaper to bolster your vituperative attacks on Ms. Wolf.
Michiko, Remember To Light Sabbath Candles: The November 26 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a strange ad campaign that ran briefly in The New York Times. At the bottom of the front page, spoofing the tiny ads that urge Jewish women and girls to light candles on Friday night, were appeals to the Times daily book reviewer Michiko Kakutani to call one Leib Goldkorn. One ad read, "YOO-HOO! MY CUTE KAKUTANI!" So who is this amorous Mr. Goldkorn? Actually, he is a fictional character, the hero of comic novels and stories by Leslie Epstein, most recently "Ice Fire Water: A Leib Goldkorn Cocktail," just published by W.W. Norton. The ads were planned and paid for by Mr. Eps tein himself and cost about $10,000, according to the Chronicle. In "Ice Fire Water," Goldkorn, a 94-year-old European Jewish 幦igr?musician and waiter with a Walter Mittyish inner life, asks Ms. Kakutani to lunch at the Plaza, but he fails to recognize her waiting for him because he thinks Kakutani is a Finnish name instead of a Japanese name and is looking for a blonde. The Times had approved a series of 10 ads -- some of which mention Mayor Giuliani and swimmer Esther Williams, who also figure in Mr. Epstein's book -- but pulled the campaign after only eight had run. Mr. Epstein told the Chronicle that a Times official told him Ms. Kakutani objected to the way her name was being used and requested that it stop. "I had no idea Michiko would be so humorless about all this," Mr. Epstein told the Chronicle. "I really respect her. I want to write her a note. Maybe I'll invite her to lunch."
Key West, Florida Friday, July 17, 1998
Sir, In reviewing Ron Rosenbaum's new book Explaining Hitler, which I have read and regard as a first rate study of myself and Hitler's other examiners, Michiko Kakutani (NYT, reprinted in Seattle Post-Intelligencer Jul.6) refers to me in just two words: "Hitler apologist."
Mr Rosenbaum devotes an entire chapter to my twenty years of research into Hitler and his satraps, and does not use those odious words himself. If Mr Kakutani had read the introduction to my biography Hitler's War (The Viking Press, 1977) he would know how ill-judged his insult was. Twenty years to write it -- and two words, by somebody who never read it, to dismiss it?
Yours faithfully, David Irving
======================================
washington review xxii3 - e. e. miller - what star ...of American book critics, Michiko Kakutani, in which she predicts... ...really significant. Of course, La Michiko wouldn't agree. She is called La Kakutani, La Michiko, Michi, Michiko ... America has a love-hate relationship with MK that no other book critic has ever attracted. It is a real cultural phenomenon, under-reported, whispered. Will the real MK please stand up? Rushdie, of course, has gotten a mild drubbing in the American press for his trash-cultural excursions in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Several critics on this side of the Atlantic seem to consider rock & roll a rather low-rent subject for a distinguished novelist. Was he offended by, say, Michiko Kakutani's conspicuous thumbs-down in the New York Times? "Oh, no," insisted Rushdie. "Michiko is a weird woman who seems to feel the need to alternately praise and spank. So she gave The Moor's Last Sigh a fantastic review, and panned the book before that. In any case, I'm somebody who's been extraordinarily well reviewed, so I really can't *****."
un arranque de desprecio Michiko Kakutani del New York Times en un... ...el que no se le acredita a Ellis. Kakutani se queja de los personajes...
The American reviews have been so sour and testy that Vidal and his sympathisers have blamed the New York Times for pursuing a vendetta that dates back to its snuff job on Vidal's gay-themed novel The City and the Pillar in 1948. Vidal's sly mockery of Michiko Kakutani, the paper's leading book reviewer, may have goaded them into arthritic action. Reviewers today haven't lost the power to launch or impede careers. Michiko Kakutani at the Times may not write worth a damn; I doubt you could find a pair of startling sentences back-to-back in the tens of thousands she has pounded out in her Pulitzer Prize's winning career. But she isn't afraid to deliver judgments, often unpopular ones (e.g. Denis Johnson, Toni Morrison) with the literati.
And she is too anti/social to be considered corrupt. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani began her review with a parody of Hemingway's style and ended with First Light should never have seen the light of day.
Jesus's Son, by Denis Johnson. Paperback. Harper Perennial. Short stories by a poet. A series of linked stories that transport the reader into a lush, extreme state of consciousness. "His mind [seems] at once clouded and made gorgeously lucid by these drugs," said NYTimes Critic, Michiko Kakutani.
Camille Paglia calls her a "yuppie feminist," and "one-note Naomi Wolf."
Michiko Kakutani, New York Times book critic, claims that she's "a sloppy thinker and incompetent writer." The Christian right would like her to burn in hell for her views on teenage sexuality. Women around the world buy her books by the millions.
And then there is the part about that ice queen... the book reviewer for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani. That's a Finnish name isn't it?
QUOTE UNQUOTE: "No, I don't have her email address. I don't think anyone has. The odd thing is, I have always respected her as a critic. Only her pre-emptive strike against Salinger's generous gift of his wonderful Novella Hapworth 1967 really upset me. She is ten times smarter than all the other critics, has standards, is effective at pricking the bubble of inflated reputations, and is unfailingly gen4erous to the first novels of the young. No wonder Leib Goldkorn fell in love with her! But, you know, she apparently has her reasons for her wish for privacy ahnd reclusiveness. Isn't it just possible that even Leib should come round to honorig her wishes? "
THE great news for Nora Okja Keller came via fax from her agent. Yesterday's New York Times featured her first book, "Comfort Woman," in a glowing review by their leading book critic, Michiko Kakutani. The Times critic ended her review with, "Ms. Keller has written a lyrical and haunting novel. She has made an impressive debut." I'd said much the same thing when I read the book a couple of weeks ago, but it somehow doesn't have the same clout as Kakutani.
A LETTER NOTES: "When does your site go up, or is it up? When it does, let me know and I'll pitch it. As a Kakutani aficianado, you should pursue her one-time romance with Paul Simon (seriously).
....savaged by her fellow critics, who denounced her for being too cranky and ungenerous, particularly toward any novel (according to Salon's Dwight Garner) "that& #8212;sexually, morally—puts some sweat on her brow." In another article, Garner noted that Kakutani's Pynchon-like solitudinarianism "has piqued interest in her to the straining point." How sweaty or accessible a book reviewer may be, one would like to believe, should have absolutely nothing to do with her craft. Of course, if she were writing for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we wouldn't be assessing her "craft" in the first place. But Kakutani's allure reflects more than her obvious cultural power. What is it about her that inspires this kind of reaction? One clue may lie in an ersatz confessional essay, entitled "I Am Michiko Kakutani," which was published last year on the Web site of David Eggers' journal McSweeney's. The article's author, supposedly an undistinguished white man, reveals that "the brilliant, acerbic, reclusive, rarely photographed lynx-like New York Times book critic and Pulitzer winner" is his alter ego, part of his ongoing mission to "expose American culture for the simpering, self-referential, pretentious fraud that it is!" There is plenty more of this kind of thing, leading one to believe that the true target of this satire is not the culture of breathless interest which surrounds Kakutani, but the reviewer herself. She takes her role as cultural mandarin, one is supposed to infer, too seriously. In bashing Philip Roth and John Updike for being dirty old men, for example, she proves how remote from ordinary human affairs she is. Small wonder, then, that we laugh when Epstein has Goldkorn shout "Kakutani! Let us have a coition!" To be sure, the Times takes Kakutani too seriously. In the citation that accompanied the submission of her criticism to the Pulitzer jury, she is described as employing a Keatsian "negative capability" by which "she leaves herself—her biases, her preoccupations, her past history—out of her reviews, and presents us with something close to a pure critical intelligence: fearless, disinterested, and responsive." This is just award-speak, though; surely Kakutani doesn't believe that she's a medium for the pure spirit of criticism. Or does she? It seems Kakutani has become, despite what appear to be her best efforts to the contrary, precisely the kind of self-reflexive media celebrity she's spent the past 16 years deflating. Or is her victimization at the hands of novelists, critics, and assorted wise-asses just the final proof of everything she has been saying all along? By Joshua Glenn / \hermenautics In the "Story" section of the April issue of Harper's, novelist Leslie Epstein's English-mangling nonagenarian alter ego Leib Goldkorn becomes obsessed with real-life New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani. Imagining her to be an enormous blond Finn, he writes to thank her for having favorably reviewed his book 12 years earlier; Kakutani agrees to meet with him. When Goldkorn arrives at the restaurant, however, he ignores the " black-haired Oriental" who smiles shyly and waves at him ("I have no time to engage, with this Nipponese cleansing lady, in banter"), and calamity ensues. It's funny stuff, but is there something larger at work here? Goldkorn, after all, is hardly the only member of the American literary scene given to wild speculation about the elusive reviewer's personal life. When Kakutani won the Pulitzer Prize last year, she was savaged by her fellow critics, who denounced her for being too cranky and ungenerous, particularly toward any novel (according to Salon's Dwight Garner) "that& #8212;sexually, morally—puts some sweat on her brow." In another article, Garner noted that Kakutani's Pynchon-like solitudinarianism "has piqued interest in her to the straining point." How sweaty or accessible a book reviewer may be, one would like to believe, should have absolutely nothing to do with her craft. Of course, if she were writing for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we wouldn't be assessing her "craft" in the first place. But Kakutani's allure reflects more than her obvious cultural power. What is it about her that inspires this kind of reaction? One clue may lie in an ersatz confessional essay, entitled "I Am Michiko Kakutani," which was published last year on the Web site of David Eggers' journal McSweeney's. The article's author, supposedly an undistinguished white man, reveals that "the brilliant, acerbic, reclusive, rarely photographed lynx-like New York Times book critic and Pulitzer winner" is his alter ego, part of his ongoing mission to "expose American culture for the simpering, self-referential, pretentious fraud that it is!" There is plenty more of this kind of thing, leading one to believe that the true target of this satire is not the culture of breathless interest which surrounds Kakutani, but the reviewer herself. She takes her role as cultural mandarin, one is supposed to infer, too seriously. In bashing Philip Roth and John Updike for being dirty old men, for example, she proves how remote from ordinary human affairs she is. Small wonder, then, that we laugh when Epstein has Goldkorn shout "Kakutani! Let us have a coition!" To be sure, the Times takes Kakutani too seriously. In the citation that accompanied the submission of her criticism to the Pulitzer jury, she is described as employing a Keatsian "negative capability" by which "she leaves herself—her biases, her preoccupations, her past history—out of her reviews, and presents us with something close to a pure critical intelligence: fearless, disinterested, and responsive." This is just award-speak, though; surely Kakutani doesn't believe that she's a medium for the pure spirit of criticism. Or does she? It seems Kakutani has become, despite what appear to be her best efforts to the contrary, precisely the kind of self-reflexive media celebrity she's spent the past 16 years deflating. Or is her victimization at the hands of novelists, critics, and assorted wise-asses just the final proof of everything she has been saying all along? Somewhat more hopeful is his relation with the New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani. Kakutani admired ''Goldkorn Tales'' when the book came out in 1985, and wrote with affection of its protagonist. L. Goldkorn has not forgotten. He has conceived a crush on her. Because of his shiksa goddess syndrome and the many K's in the critic's name, he assumes she's a Finn, thus an Aryan. He dreams of rough play in the sauna. (''The worst accomplishment of the Nazis is that they have turned us . . . into themselves,'' Goldkorn notes elsewhere.) He arranges a meeting at the ''Court of Palms'' at the Plaza Hotel. On the subway to Columbus Circle, a condom in his pocket, he rehearses Finnish greetings and lavishes pet names on his ''hellion from Helsinki.'' Kakutani's ancestry is in fact Japanese, and when Goldkorn meets her, he mistakes her for a cleaning lady, unable to see his chance for love.
The curse of the Pulitzer? WILL THE NEW YORK TIMES PUT BOOK CRITIC MICHIKO KAKUTANI OUT TO PASTURE ....NOW THAT SHE'S WON THE BIG PRIZE? NOPE!
BY DWIGHT GARNER
When the New York Times won its 75th, 76th and 77th Pulitzer Prizes this week, the paper celebrated in traditional fashion, springing for a full-page ad featuring (color!) photographs of its smiling, happy winners. There was Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse, who won for beat reporting, and a group shot of the paper's international affairs team, honored for its pieces on drug corruption in Mexico. The only winner who was missing from the party was the Times' reclusive book critic, Michiko Kakutani, who took home this year's prize for criticism. It's not surprising, really, that the Times doesn't have an updated head shot of Kakutani; recent photographs of the 43-year-old critic are nearly as hard to come by as those of Ruth Reichl, the paper's food critic, who tends to appear on local television only when her features can be electronically scrambled.
Kakutani doesn't circulate on New York's frenetic book scene, a fact that has piqued interest in her to the straining point; people who've met the diminutive critic are almost as much in demand at dinner parties as those who've shared straws over a milkshake with Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo.
The last image of Kakutani to pop up in print (that I've seen, anyway) was a black-and-white snapshot that appeared in Vanity Fair in 1988; the critic looked casually glamorous in a black ensemble, a cigarette dangling from her thin fingertips. Even the Times seems to have trouble getting Kakutani, who's been a daily critic at the paper since 1983, to sit for an interview.
When it sought a post-Pulitzer reaction comment yesterday, the best they could squeeze out of her was: "It feels unreal."
Kakutani's win didn't surprise many in the book world. The Times holds legendary sway with Pulitzer committees, and many felt she was long overdue for the award, particularly after Times critic Margo Jefferson walked away with it in 1995 after a relatively short stint in the book-crit lineup. (Jefferson quickly graduated to theater criticism; she's now a roving cultural essayist for the paper.) Noting Jefferson's Pulitzer win, Vanity Fair columnist James Wolcott said yesterday that he's often wondered if there's a curse connected to the criticism award. "Most people think Margo Jefferson went right downhill after winning her Pulitzer," he said. "We'll probably have no such luck with Michiko."
Curse or no curse, some observers wondered yesterday if the Times might use the occasion of Kakutani's Pulitzer win to gently rotate her from the daily book beat. "There seems to be a tradition
Kakutani doesn't circulate on New York's frenetic book scene, a fact that has piqued interest in her to the straining point; people who've met the diminutive critic are almost as much in demand at dinner parties as those who've shared straws over a milkshake with Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo.
According to John Leonard, the outgoing literary editor of the Nation, Kakutani "has a tin ear, and her reviews are lacking in generosity."
As for Kakutani's Pulitzer, Yardley said that he "doesn't read her with any real interest. I don't find her to be an interesting writer. She's conscientious, and she seems to be -- as James Wolcott once put it -- something of a perpetual graduate student."
"Michi won the Pulitzer a year ago and if she ever leaves the job she'll do it, as XXX did, for a better offer -- not because she's being "moved out"! The Times likes having influential critics -- however foolishly book publishers or theater producers may overreact to them -- and will work very hard to keep them at the paper. It's an important part of the NYT identity and always has been. Hope this answers your question -- "
posted by DANIELBLOOM at 9:03 PM
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