Deconstructing Michiko

Heroine or harridan? Opinion has always been divided when it comes to the influential New York Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani. The fact that she's somewhat of a recluse hasn't helped matters -- see, for example, the slightly mean-spirited (though hilarious) parody, "I Am Michiko Kakutani". Now that Ms Kakutani has entered her 25th year as a reviewer, Ben Yagoda (author of the New Yorker history About Town and the more recent The Sound on the Page) gives us his take:

"It should be clear to anyone who has read Kakutani's reviews that she has an estimable intelligence; she backs this up with what must be many real or virtual all-nighters in which she digests every word ever published by the writer under review. She takes books seriously, a valuable and ever-rarer trait. Furthermore, in my observation, she is more or less right in her judgments most of the time."

However:

"...Kakutani is a profoundly uninteresting critic. Her main weakness is her evaluation fixation. This may seem an odd complaint—the job is called critic, after all—but in fact, whether a work is good or bad is just one of the many things to be said about it, and usually far from the most important or compelling."