BILLY BASHING
Jerry Harkins


The Times must have run front page book reviews before June 20, 2004 but I can’t, for the life of me, recall one. [1] The publication of Bill Clinton’s memoirs, however, was too much of a temptation. The Times’ relationship with Mr. Clinton is not a simple one. It endorsed him twice but that didn’t stop it from despising him or from siding with his most rabid, red meat critics. It never said anything good about him that wasn’t damning with faint praise. It has praised George Bush unreservedly on several issues, but never Bill Clinton. Toni Morrison famously explained it as a concomitant of its perception that he had been our first black President and she was right. He fed The Times’ nightmarish vision of a southern black hoodlum: big, loud, trashy and sexually voracious. They miss the catharsis of their daily Billy bashing so they decided to enjoy the opportunity to renew old grudges. They brought out their biggest literary gun, one Michiko Kakutani, and issued her a new well of bile. Ms. Kakutani was not amused: “…numbing, self conscious garrulity,” she wrote. Long-winded and tedious. Self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull. A messy pastiche. Self-serving, often turgid. Wow! That is literary criticism. Self-conscious, self-indulgent and self-serving—all in one 1,600 word barrage. There should be a 5-day waiting period before critics are allowed to buy a thesaurus.

Now this may lead you to ask, who in hell is Michiko Kakutani? Well, according to the GoldSea Asian American web site, she is Number 10 on their list of the 60 most inspiring Asian Americans. Here’s what they have to say about her:

"Her surgical vivisections of bloated authors have made the New York Times lead literary critic the bitch-goddess of American letters and won her a Pulitzer in 1998 to boot. Browbeating America's cultured class with its own code is Kakutani's contribution to the spider-webbing crack in the stereotype of English-fracturing Asians. She did it all while keeping her inner -- or outer -- life from being limned by either the fawning or the fuming."

I have a little trouble with “surgical.” The vivisection image is not a pretty one but the writers wanted to imply the precision and finesse with which they think the critic goes about her dirty but necessary business. I associate her more with axes and sledge hammers, but that is only my opinion. And, “bitch-goddess” may be a bit harsh, but they know her better than I do. As to “browbeating America’s cultured class,” well, she is a product of Yale University whose graduates, by their own admission, tend to know everything worth knowing (William F. Buckley, Jr.), nothing much about anything (George W. Bush), or everything everyone else should and should not know (Pat Robertson). And while I’m at it, I may as well admit that Ms. Kakutani is pretty much an equal opportunity critic: she doesn’t like most of the books she reads which must make for a fairly pinched life. But she really despises the Clintons. She found Hillary’s book, Living History, “…a mishmash of pious platitudes” and “robotic asides.” And, of course, it was “self-conscious.” Self-conscious may be the whole idea of autobiography but Ms. Kakutani knows what she doesn’t like. [2] I wonder if she’s ever tried cozy mysteries or Harlequin romances. Probably not.

Given all the ignorant malcontents among its readers, The Times got a lot of nasty letters about its ongoing obsession with the Clintons. Its Public Editor Daniel Okrent [3], however, reviewed the brouhaha and found nothing objectionable about the review or the obsession. Which came as a relief to me because in football it would be called “piling on” and carry a fifteen yard penalty. In journalism, it is called indulging the editors’ neuroses and gets nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Notes

1. I am told it did run a front page review of one of the Harry Potter masterpieces. I must have been out to lunch that morning.

2. Nine days after the Kakutani review, The Times published another one in the Sunday “Book Review” (6/29/04). This was marginally more sympathetic which is surprising as its author was Maureen Dowd, the paper’s most acerbic columnist. Ms. Dowd, you may remember, was the writer who castigated Judy Dean for not standing by her man on the campaign trail. A positive review by Larry McMurty was published on July 4 and a sophomoric satire by Christopher Buckley ran in the Book Review on July 11. Fortunately Mr. Clinton is writing another book so we can look forward to another cycle of what Alexander Pope referred to as, “Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss”

3. Mr. Okrent is neither a member of the public nor an editor of the paper. He is the Complaint Department going by a puffed up name, a little like calling the garbage man a sanitation engineer which in fact is not a bad job description for Mr. O.