Michiko Kakutani - GalleyCat

Free Books That Inspired Barack Obama

Jason Boog — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:35:34 +0000

President Barack Obama has won the 2012 Presidential election. We’ve collected links to five free eBooks that inspired Obama during his road to the Presidency.

In a 2009 essay, New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wr0te about the books that inspired the President. Here’s an excerpt:

Mr. Obama’s love of fiction and poetry — Shakespeare’s plays, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and Marilynne Robinson‘s “Gilead” are mentioned on his Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincoln’s collected writings and Emerson’s “Self Reliance“ — has not only given him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition quite unlike the Manichean view of the world so often invoked by Mr. Bush.

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Seven Degrees of Michiko Kakutani

Jason Boog — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:15:41 +0000

This GalleyCat editor loves playing the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Game, connecting celebrities to actor Kevin Bacon in six connections or fewer. Would the same game work in the 21st Century literary world?

On the Morning Media Menu today, cultural critic Mark Dery (pictured) talked about his new collection of essays, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts. While pondering Christian comic creator Jack Chick and YouTube trends, Dery also outlined a version of the Bacon game that could be played with New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani.

Check it out: “The fact that the reviewer is instantly known to the reviewed creates a very odd kind of interaction. The tendrils of social media reach out rhizomatically and seem to connect everybody to everybody. We’re all in the Kevin Bacon game at this point–you know, seven degrees of Michiko Kakutani. Consequently, everybody who reviews you is a friend of a friend of a friend on Facebook or you retweeted them on Twitter or you rubbed elbows with them somehow in cyberspace. And that makes for peculiar social dance.”

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How Bret Easton Ellis Discovered Michiko Kakutani

Jason Boog — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:23:23 +0000

In an interview with Details magazine, novelist Bret Easton Ellis talked about the 1980s, getting older, and the first time he was reviewed by the NY Times‘ influential critic, Michiko Kakutani.

Here’s an excerpt, talking about a review of Less Than Zero: “I remember not knowing who Michiko Kakutani was. [Laughs] That’s what I remember most about seeing that review. Honestly, I was too young to get it. Everyone else was sort of freaking out that the book even got reviewed in The New York Times–my agent and my editor and other people were extremely excited for me. And I think I was bummed out about some stuff that was going on at Bennington College at the time–like a relationship problem. So yeah, I guess in retrospect that seems pretty remarkable that that book was reviewed there. But as a 21-year-old, I was lost in other more pressing personal problems.”

Ellis’s new novel, Imperial Bedrooms, catches up with the lives of his characters from his debut novel, Less Than Zero–a book that turns 25-year-old this year.

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Yann Martel Takes a Critical Hit for Beatrice & Virgil

Jason Boog — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:00:00 +0000

As Yann Martel‘s new novel Beatrice and Virgil hit shelves last week, it drew heavy criticism from reviewers around the country. Interestingly enough, after 29 reviews on Amazon last Friday, the book averaged five-and-a-half stars.

At the Washington Post, Ron Charles took an allusive attack: “I’m sorry, but this allegory is no ‘Animal Farm’ or ‘Watership Down.’ It’s a cloying episode of ‘Winnie the Pooh’ In Which Piglet and Rabbit Are Hacked Apart and Eaten.”

At the NY Times, Michiko Kakutani sharpened her knives: Mr. Martel’s new book, ‘Beatrice and Virgil,’ unfortunately, is every bit as misconceived and offensive as his earlier book was fetching. It, too, features animals as central characters. It, too, involves a figure who in some respects resembles the author. It, too, is written in deceptively light, casual prose.”

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Zach Galifianakis Interviews Novelist John Wray in Deceptively Simple Book Trailer

Jason Boog — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:23:59 +0000

That Picador book trailer pairs actor Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover and Bored to Death) with novelist John Wray–a short look at Wray’s process while writing his novel, Lowboy.

Just watch the video. We won’t give away the joke, but here’s an answer from the interviewee: “You know what the first thing that I put on the paper is? ‘The end.’ And then I work backwards…’I'll write ‘end’ and then ‘the.’ Then I’ll write, for instance in my last novel, ‘calibration.’”

According to the site, a longer version of the interview will be posted soon. Wray has appeared on these pages before, showing off his Michiko Kakutani tattoo and talking about Roberto Bolano’s 2666.

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May 2009: Top Publishing Stories of the Year

Jason Boog — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:23:00 +0000

In May’s biggest headline, a blogger spotted similarities between one paragraph of NY Times columnist and author Maureen Dowd‘s weekend column and a post by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. Dowd corrected the mistake, and no disciplinary action was taken.

Novelist John Wray unveiled his tattoo of book reviewer Michiko Kakutani at a reading. GalleyCat went to Puerto Rico with the Hunter S. Thompson Travel Agency.

The literary blogosphere buzzed about a sequel to J.D. Salinger‘s famous novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” but GalleyCat had some doubts. Finally, Alice Munro (pictured, via) won the £60,000 Man Booker International Prize.

Welcome to GalleyCat’s annual year-end roundup of publishing headlines. It’s a chance to celebrate our good news and reflect on our bad news after a long, challenging year for the industry. Visit our Year in Review link to read all about what happened to publishing in 2009. Include your favorite headlines in the comments section…

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Literary Page Six

Jason Boog — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:23:32 +0000

For one topsy-turvy night at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan, authors were treated like rock stars, the Farrar, Straus and Giroux staff lounged behind a velvet rope in the VIP booth, and NY Post Page Six reporter Corynne Steindler showed up to cover a couple skinny writers.

Last evening’s star-studded installment of the Happy Ending Music & Reading Series featured Wells Tower, Arthur Phillips, John Wray, and the band, Vampire Weekend.

This video captures the wildest moments, as founder Amanda Stern forced each reader to take an onstage risk–Tower baked unusual cookies, Phillips fought a bull, and the band covered a Tom Petty song. And, as we reported earlier, Wray unveiled his homemade Michiko Kakutani tattoo.

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John Wray’s Michiko Kakutani Tattoo

Jason Boog — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:23:52 +0000

Few literary critics inspire emotion like NY Times critic, Michiko Kakutani. Some worship her reviews, and others, (like Norman Mailer) wished they could change her mind. Last night, novelist John Wray took the cult of Kakutani to a new level–unveiling this magic marker tattoo.

As part of the Happy Ending Music & Reading Series, founder Amanda Stern requires all performers to take a risk. Joined on stage at Joe’s Pub by Wells Tower, Arthur Phillips, and the band, Vampire Weekend, Wray had some tough competition. Nevertheless, his full-back tattoo read “KAKUTANI 4 EVAH,” eliciting gasps, laughter, and cheers from the audience.

After the jump is an exclusive video of Wray’s performance and tattoo unveiling, complete with a Vampire Weekend chaser. Tune in later today for more music and footage from the event.

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Guess Michiko Downloaded HP7 Off the Internet, Too

Sarah — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:05:32 +0000

Boy, Michiko Kakutani must have read HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS super duper fast (or ordered it off DeepDiscount.com?) in order to get the review filed and on the New York Times’ website by 7 PM last night. Some pullquotes: Rowling has an “astonishingly limber” voice; the book “is, for the most part, a somber book that marks Harryâ€™s final initiation into the complexities and sadnesses of adulthood”; and without revealing much in the way of spoilers, Kakutani ends as follows:

The world of Harry Potter is a place where the mundane and the marvelous, the ordinary and the surreal co-exist. It’s a place where cars can fly and owls can deliver the mail, a place where paintings talk and a mirror reflects people’s innermost desires. It’s also a place utterly recognizable to readers, a place where death and the catastrophes of daily life are inevitable, and people’s lives are defined by love and loss and hope – the same way they are in our own mortal world.

O box, thy name is Pandora.

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BEA Day Two: Ethics in Book Reviewing

Sarah — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:28:08 +0000

Immediately after moderating the blog panel, Bud Parr took out his video camera and taped the panel proceedings, which he’s edited into the above highlight show. And considering the star wattage assembled for the panel, highlights abounded.

Moderator and Philly Inquirer book critic Carlin Romano began by rattling off all 37 questions asked as part of the National Book Critics Circle‘s revised survey on book reviewing ethics, commenting with tongue in cheek that the only question all 356 responders agreed on was that they were NBCC members. Then each panelist spoke for about five minutes or so on the nature of ethics and starting with Christopher Hitchens, the consensus was that if it’s not okay to review a friend’s work, it shouldn’t necessarily be taboo, either. “Who knows a writer’s body of work better,” said former NYTBR editor John Leonard of what he termed a “friend of a mind”, adding that such questions are “small potatoes compared to the corruption of a culture at large.”

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Michiko Likes Fiction Again!

Sarah — Tue, 08 May 2007 09:10:09 +0000

A few months ago I did an impromptu search through the New York Times archives to find empirical evidence that lead book critic Michiko Kakutani has, indeed, developed a distaste for fiction. And for all of 2006, the only two novels she liked were Dana Spiotta‘s EAT THE DOCUMENT and Dave Eggers‘ WHAT IS THE WHAT. But 2007 must be a better year already because Michiko’s in a much better reviewing mood of late: this month alone, she’s alloted rave reviews (you know it’s a rave when “stunning” and “dazzling” are overused) to Richard Flanagan’s THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST and Michael Chabon‘s THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION. Earlier, she had good things to say about Lionel Shriver‘s THE POST-BIRTHDAY WORLD (about “an idiosyncratic yet recognizable heroine about whom it’s impossible not to care”) Lauren Fox‘s STILL LIFE WITH HUSBAND (“a delightful new voice in American fiction”) and Martin Amis‘s THE HOUSE OF MEETINGS (“arguably his most powerful book yet”). Of course, the crank-meter was still way high for reviews of books by Yasmina Reza, Howard Norman and Jane Smiley, but even in those pieces the vitriol seemed somewhat muted.

What’s going on? Could Michiko be changing her tune about fiction? Is her editor giving her better books to read? Because this happy critic mood is a little unnerving, frankly…

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Convergence of Chabon

Sarah — Tue, 01 May 2007 09:34:37 +0000

We needn’t remind regular readers, let alone sporadic readers, that Michael Chabon‘s new novel THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION is out as of today. After all, look in a national newspaper and there’s Michiko Kakutani‘s glowing review in the New York Times or Deirdre Donahue‘s more muted take in USA Today, or the Christian Science Monitor’s Erik Spanberg falling somewhere in between. Expect the non-stop coverage to continue through the weekend and beyond.

It also continues today as the LA Times’ Scott Timberg meets Chabon and showers him with all manner of descriptive phrases (“leonine good looks” and “Prom King of American Letters” being some of the more purple ones) while also getting the author to admit he’s frustrated by some of the early notices which concentrate on the more hardboiled aspects of the novel. Genre fiction’s struggle for respect is one of Chabon’s fiercest causes. “There’s something so tired about it,” he said, his body collapsing in mock exasperation. “I thought we figured that out already.” Not as long as there are still people ready and willing to fight – fairly and unfairly – on both sides of the so-called debate…

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The Perils of the Misblurb

Sarah — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:14:06 +0000

Though we at GalleyCat have taken issue from time to time – okay, often – with Henry Alford‘s contributions at the New York Times Book Review, I must say up front that I quite enjoyed his recent piece on how publishers take a perfectly neutral or negative review and mine it for any and all positive words in order to fashion a blurb out of it. Take what happened to Time Magazine book critic Lev Grossman, who was “quite taken aback” when he saw a full-page newspaper advertisement for Charles Frazier‘s novel THIRTEEN MOONS that included a one-word quotation – “Genius” – attributed to Time. Grossman was confused, Alford reports, because his review “certainly didn’t have that word.” Eventually, he found it in a preview item he had written a few months earlier, which included the sentence “Frazier works on an epic scale, but his genius is in the details.” As Grossman put it, “They plucked out the G-word.”

Alford continues with many more examples (including one from his own reviewing past, when Little, Brown transformed his “tour-de-farce” about David Sedaris‘s NAKED into “tour-de-force) and explanations from the publishing world. “We get tempted and we get desperate,” Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, said. “We publish over 100 books a year. I know we make mistakes. But we try to obey the rules.” To him, that means not changing the wording or the meaning of reviews. Paul Slovak, the publisher of Viking, says part of what keeps the house honest is the desire to maintain “good relationships” with book reviewers. “Michiko Kakutani wouldnâ€™t be happy if we pulled two words of praise out of a negative review,” he said, referring to the chief book critic of The New York Times.

And as for what happened to Grossman, I am sooooo not buying Random House associate publisher Tom Perry‘s denial of any misblurbing. “We were being very short and punchy,” he said. “We have limited space.” Sure, see that pig overhead? Its flight patterns don’t like misappropriated blurbs, either…

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