Kakutani ranges broadly across issues but ultimately has little new to say.
A prize-winning literary critic delves into the reasons for social dislocation.
Kakutani, author of The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, was a book reviewer for the New York Times from 1983 to 2017, and she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1998. She has attracted ire as well as applause throughout her career, and her latest book will probably continue that trend. Her unoriginal thesis is that we are living in a period of radical change, technological disruption, and spreading chaos. She lines up the usual suspects for assessment: the Covid-19 pandemic, the dangers of social media, the loss of faith in institutions, the collapse of geopolitical and cultural boundaries. The problem is that all of this has been examined in countless articles and books over the past decade, and Kakutani fails to add unique insight. It’s clear that the author has read widely, but the text’s saturation with references often becomes a distraction. The author is snarky in a way that may appeal to denizens of New York City literary circles, and, given the nearly 170 references to him, the book could have been titled Reasons To Hate Donald Trump—some version of which has been written many times already. Kakutani’s previous book was almost entirely about her disdain for the former president, and she re-tills too much of the same ground here. She extends her antipathy to conservative Supreme Court judges and, in most cases, to anyone not as far to the left as she is. This admittedly well-researched book, which contains justified anger at the current political landscape, will appeal mostly to those who share the author’s ideological views. Others will find the instructive messages buried under too much rancor and spite.
Kakutani ranges broadly across issues but ultimately has little new to say.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780525574996
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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