TTBOOK GEMS

Michiko Kakutani (GEMS - from program # 04-01-25-B: PASSIONATE READERS)

Michiko Kakutani

From a variety of interviews on the Public Radio International program "To the Best of our Knowledge on the enormous influence Michiko Kakutani, the revered and feared book critic for the New York Times. She's famous for her withering reviews of some of the biggest names in literature, and she has equally high-powered fans.

Nicholson Baker: "You know, there's such a pleasure in the writing of the book. It's an intoxicating period of time. You think, I'm finishing, it's done, it's almost done, it's done and then there's this period later on when you think - Michiko's review is coming up....she has reviewed seven of my books and I think she may have liked two and a half of them so she always gives me a bad review. So she just doesn't like my kind of writing."

Margaret Atwood: "What can I say? I mean critics are critics. They're individuals. They have their own views. She does have a reputation in the literary world for praising you one time and then nuking you the next just so you don't get complacent."

John Updike says of Michiko Kakutani that she "...handles so many that there's a secret hatred of all books that runs through. So many people get harsh reviews, dismissive reviews from her that I think her kind of collectively hardened."

Susan Sontag: "It was a dumb bad review as opposed to a smart bad review and I was sort of surprised. I expected better of her...I think that her criticisms of my book are stupid and shallow and not to the point."

Michael Janeway: "I think she's extraordinary. You can start reading a piece of hers without looking at the byline and her voice is so strong and her sense of what a book is about and what the author is about is so clear that I can just say to myself well, that's obviously a Kakutani review as distinct from one of the other regular Times daily book reviewers."

Michiko Kakutani (GEMS - from program # 04-01-25-B: PASSIONATE READERS)

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