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Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani (ミチコ・カクタニ, 角谷 美智子; born January 9, 1955) is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Kakutani, a Japanese American, was born on January 9, 1955, in New Haven, Connecticut. She is the only child of Yale mathematician Shizuo Kakutani and Keiko "Kay" Uchida. Her father was born in Japan, and her mother was a second-generation Japanese-American raised in Berkeley, California. Kakutani's aunt, Yoshiko Uchida, was an author of children's books. Kakutani received her bachelor's degree in English literature from Yale University in 1976.
Kakutani initially worked as a reporter for The Washington Post, and then from 1977 to 1979 for Time magazine. In 1979, she joined The New York Times as a reporter.
Kakutani was a literary critic for The New York Times from 1983 until her retirement in 2017. She gained particular notoriety for her sometimes-biting reviews of books from famous authors; Slate remarked that "her name became a verb, and publishers have referred to her negative reviews as 'getting Kakutani'ed'".
Multiple authors who had received such reviews gave harsh public responses. In 2006, Kakutani called Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone "an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass"; Franzen subsequently called Kakutani "the stupidest person in New York City". In 2012, Kakutani wrote a negative review of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile.[non-primary source needed][original research?] In 2018, writing about reviewers that include Kakutani—whether about the Antifragile review, or otherwise—six years after Antifragile, Taleb stated:
someone has to have read the book to notice that a reviewer is full of baloney, so in the absence of skin in the game, reviewers such as Michiko Kakutani can go on forever without anyone knowing they are either fabricating or drunk (or, as I am certain, in the case of Kakutani, both)
Daniel Takeshi, an academic computer scientist, responded to Taleb: "If you can get used to Taleb’s idiosyncratic and pompous writing style, such as mocking... Thomas L. Friedman... and insulting Michiko Kakutani... there's actually some nice insights". According to Kira Cochrane in The Guardian, such counterattacks may have bolstered Kakutani's reputation as commendably "fearless".
She has been known to write reviews in the voice of movie or book characters, including Brian Griffin, Austin Powers, Holden Caulfield, Elle Woods of Legally Blonde, and Truman Capote's character Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
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Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani (ミチコ・カクタニ, 角谷 美智子; born January 9, 1955) is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Kakutani, a Japanese American, was born on January 9, 1955, in New Haven, Connecticut. She is the only child of Yale mathematician Shizuo Kakutani and Keiko "Kay" Uchida. Her father was born in Japan, and her mother was a second-generation Japanese-American raised in Berkeley, California. Kakutani's aunt, Yoshiko Uchida, was an author of children's books. Kakutani received her bachelor's degree in English literature from Yale University in 1976.
Kakutani initially worked as a reporter for The Washington Post, and then from 1977 to 1979 for Time magazine. In 1979, she joined The New York Times as a reporter.
Kakutani was a literary critic for The New York Times from 1983 until her retirement in 2017. She gained particular notoriety for her sometimes-biting reviews of books from famous authors; Slate remarked that "her name became a verb, and publishers have referred to her negative reviews as 'getting Kakutani'ed'".
Multiple authors who had received such reviews gave harsh public responses. In 2006, Kakutani called Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone "an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass"; Franzen subsequently called Kakutani "the stupidest person in New York City". In 2012, Kakutani wrote a negative review of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile.[non-primary source needed][original research?] In 2018, writing about reviewers that include Kakutani—whether about the Antifragile review, or otherwise—six years after Antifragile, Taleb stated:
someone has to have read the book to notice that a reviewer is full of baloney, so in the absence of skin in the game, reviewers such as Michiko Kakutani can go on forever without anyone knowing they are either fabricating or drunk (or, as I am certain, in the case of Kakutani, both)
Daniel Takeshi, an academic computer scientist, responded to Taleb: "If you can get used to Taleb’s idiosyncratic and pompous writing style, such as mocking... Thomas L. Friedman... and insulting Michiko Kakutani... there's actually some nice insights". According to Kira Cochrane in The Guardian, such counterattacks may have bolstered Kakutani's reputation as commendably "fearless".
She has been known to write reviews in the voice of movie or book characters, including Brian Griffin, Austin Powers, Holden Caulfield, Elle Woods of Legally Blonde, and Truman Capote's character Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.