Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
In a Slate review of Michiko Kakutani’s practice of book-reviewing, Ben Yagoda begins with the argument that “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.”
Yagoda goes on: “Great critics’ bad calls are retrospectively forgiven or ignored: Pauline Kael is still read with pleasure even though no one still agrees (if anyone ever did) that Last Tango in Paris and Nashville are the cinematic equivalents of “The Rite of Spring” and Anna Karenina. Kakutani doesn’t offer the stylistic flair, the wit, or the insight one gets from Kael and other first-rate critics; for her, the verdict is the only thing. One has the sense of her deciding roughly at Page 2 whether or not a book is worthy; reading the rest of it to gather evidence for her case; spending some quality time with the Thesaurus; and then taking a large blunt hammer and pounding the message home.”
The argument offered in the beginning loses some of its force in its elaboration, not least because Yagado seems to surprise himself at the end, caught with a rather large blunt instrument in his hand. But the point is well-taken. Among contemporary reviewers, James Wood is certainly someone who is interested in presenting his verdict–but he is also one of those rare critics who is never lacking in style or flair. (Here’s a recent piece of his that I have enjoyed reading and shared with friends.) But you can’t expect Wood, or those other writers who are more idiosyncratic or playful, to be reviewing books in the Times; and I wonder whether it isn’t the kind of disproportionate power that the Times has in determining a book’s fortunes that is one of the most important reasons why the reviews have an impoverished range of tone, more like a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
It’s hard to take book reviewers seriously when they don’t take their task seriously. This lack of seriousness (not to be confused with somberness; indeed it’s sometimes the opposite) is there in the Dale Pecks and the Rick Moodys of this world, in their flippant manner. It’s also there in a way in Michiko Kakutani whose otherwise well-written reviews do seem to be too worried about casting a “vote” for the book at hand, instead of doing the serious work of reading that places the book before the reader in its full context.
As for me, I like many other contemporary critics. Among them are James Wood, Jonathan Yardley, Frank Kermode and Pankaj Mishra.
Comment by St Antonym — April 14, 2006 @ 8:36 pm
In the piece you link to (it’s most excellent, thank you), Wood quotes Coetzee quoting Defoe: “‘I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them,’ says he, ‘except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows.’”
I think this captures something essential. And, to a certain extent, it’s also something rare. It’s what, for example, Salman Rushdie is unable to do. And, in a different way (as these two are not usually thought of as similar writers), it’s also beyond Jhumpa Lahiri’s powers. They are more likely to go for the “velvety brown Bruno Magli men’s Ashton calfskin that his mother’s brother Vatul had bought for him at the Nordstroms during that unseasonably cold September when blah blah blah.” And that’s exactly where they fail, in this incessant and fatuous particularity.
Naipaul would just say, “the old shoes.” Coetzee too.
And that (among many other such choices) is where they succeed, and strike us as “realistic.”
It strikes me just now that, in writing about the phenomenology of perception, Heidegger’s example was Van Gogh’s painting of a pair of old shoes!
Comment by St Antonym — April 15, 2006 @ 12:51 am