The Great Wave

January 1, 2024
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.

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January 8, 2024
A world threatened by social upheavals, economic decline, and right-wing outsider politics may be saved by left-wing outsider politics, according to this scattershot meditation. Former New York Times book critic Kakutani (The Death of Truth) surveys contemporary causes of discontent, including neoliberal economic policies that breed inequality and financial crises, climate-change denialism, social media platforms that amplify disinformation and hate speech, and the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. In her telling, many of these problems are embodied by Donald Trump, the ultimate right-wing outsider, whom she associates with Hitler and Lenin and calls “a gasoline-wielding arsonist, stoking... racist and xenophobic impulses,” abetted by a Republican Party that has become “a zombie host for the fringiest of right-wingers... QAnoners, neo-Nazis, Putin sympathizers and white nationalists.” Opposing these dark forces on the other, lighter side, are decentralized left-wing groups (“the Resistance”) that Kakutani posits have the potential to renew society, including Black Lives Matter; feminist, environmentalist, and labor protest movements; and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that supports abortion rights, gun control, and Medicare for all. Kakutani’s musings touch on everything from the Black Death to Breaking Bad, but they seldom cohere into a rigorous argument and often lapse into simplistic partisanship. The result is a sketchy, unconvincing rehash of progressive verities.

January 1, 2024
A leading literary critic urges big-picture perspective, and maybe even optimism, about current events. Defined by a global pandemic, rampant inequality, political polarization, and environmental collapse, among other horribles, the third decade of the twenty-first century is a uniquely complex and volatile time. This "confluence of crises, both intermediate and long-term," might be imagined as a deluge of change, threatening imminent destruction. But Kakutani, inspired by Katsushika Hokusai's iconic nineteenth-century wood-block print, The Great Wave, and Thomas Kuhn's scholarly work on scientific revolutions, suggests an alternative mindset. What if our current historical moment is not a cataclysm, but rather an interregnum, a liminal period of destruction, indeed, but also an opportunity for renewal? Describing how trends in technology, government, and culture have intertwined to create unprecedented challenges, Kakutani presents an elegant summary, but risks restating the obvious. Sometimes she seems to be writing for a future audience that needs to be reminded of the early 2020s zeitgeist. But she's also reminding today's readers, especially those who lived through the late twentieth century's own parade of disruptions, of how far we've already come.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.