New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani uses Calvin Trillin’s signature style of rhyming verse about current events to review the author’s new book, Dogfight, A Presidential Race in Verse. The result?
It does sound a lot like Mr. Trillin: Read More
The history of Michiko Kakutani’s affection for the word “limn” has been well-documented. Read More
Jay-Z’s new memoir, Decoded, was released last week in the midst of an advertising campaign and publicity tour as massive as Shawn Carter himself. David Droga and his Droga5 ad agency have plastered Hova’s visage all over the city as a part of a massive and multifaceted ad campaign, while Jay himself stops to Read More
As recently as March, Steven Rattner, the former private equity kingpin and Obama administration car czar, was having an unpleasant time with Overhaul, his book on the emergency auto rescue. “Writing books is a bear. It’s just really hard work. And he hasn’t done it before,” Mark Green, who’d talked to him about the struggle, Read More
Jodi Picoult, a successful author of commercial fiction about “family, relationships, and love,” is tired of the Times‘ love affair with the white, male, literary lion. Picoult first spoke out on Twitter, following Michiko Kakutani’s glowing review of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, tweeting, “NYT raved about Franzen’s new book. Is Read More
Twenty authors attended Wednesday night’s National Book Awards ceremony as finalists, each of them selected by a committee of readers made up of poets, novelists, historians, and critics of all stripes. The judges on each of the four committees spent three and a half months reading over a hundred books (the non-fiction judges Read More
Two things curious about Dwight Garner’s new gig as daily book critic at The New York Times: One is that he had some not very nice things to say about his new colleagues back in 1996 when he worked at Salon, and two is his 1998 profile of Michiko Kakutani, where he Read More
Dwight Garner, by far the most visible editor at The New York Times Book Review, told the folks over at the National Book Critics Circle on Friday that he’s leaving the job and joining the rotation over at the daily paper’s Arts section. Mr. Garner confirmed in an e-mail this morning that he’ll soon be Read More
Speaking at Harvard yesterday during a discussion with literary critic James Wood, Jonathan Franzen said that "the stupidest person in New York City is currently the lead reviewer of fiction for the New York Times.”
He was referring, of course, to Michiko Kakutani, who presumably got on Mr. Franzen’s bad side with her brutal review Read More
Can "Important Writers" ever go wrong? The Atlantic’s B.R. Myers didn’t like Denis Johnson’s recent novel Tree of Smoke. But, he claims, reviewers are so blinded by the critical success of Johnson’s Jesus’ Son that they can’t take a wary eye to his new works.
Denis Johnson is, in short, the sort of Read More
