{"id":363,"date":"2008-04-30T08:34:06","date_gmt":"2008-04-30T15:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/04\/michiko-kakutani-is-the-stupidest-person-in-new-york-city\/"},"modified":"2008-05-01T20:24:45","modified_gmt":"2008-05-02T03:24:45","slug":"michiko-kakutani-is-the-stupidest-person-in-new-york-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/30\/michiko-kakutani-is-the-stupidest-person-in-new-york-city\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Michiko Kakutani is the stupidest person in New York City&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\"><a href=\"http:\/\/origin.observer.com\/2008\/jonathan-franzen-michiko-kakutani-stupidest-person-new-york-city\" target=\"_blank\">from the New York Observer<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\"><a href=\"http:\/\/origin.observer.com\/2008\/jonathan-franzen-michiko-kakutani-stupidest-person-new-york-city\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><\/span><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"color: #003687; font-family: Arial; font-size: 26px; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal\">Jonathan Franzen: Michiko Kakutani Is &#8216;The Stupidest Person in New York City&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"meta\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1em; text-transform: uppercase; color: #6d6d6d; line-height: 1.4em; font-size: 10px\"><span class=\"article-author\" style=\"font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px\"><span class=\"article-by\" style=\"font-weight: normal\">BY<\/span>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/origin.observer.com\/BookNews\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687\">LEON NEYFAKH<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"article-date\" style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; display: inline; margin-right: 3px; color: #6d6d6d\">APRIL 29, 2008<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-tags\" style=\"display: inline; color: #003687; font-weight: normal\"><span class=\"tags\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">|\u00a0\u00a0TAGS:<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul class=\"links inline\" style=\"display: inline; padding: 0px; margin: 0px\">\n<li class=\"first taxonomy_term_28369\" style=\"display: inline; list-style-type: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/origin.observer.com\/media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"tag\" title=\"Media\" class=\"taxonomy_term_28369\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687\">MEDIA<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"taxonomy_term_28517\" style=\"display: inline; list-style-type: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/origin.observer.com\/term\/28517\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"taxonomy_term_28517\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687\">JONATHAN FRANZEN<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"last taxonomy_term_28427\" style=\"display: inline; list-style-type: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/origin.observer.com\/term\/28427\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"taxonomy_term_28427\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687\">MICHIKO KAKUTANI<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"leadImage\" style=\"float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 7px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/origin.observer.com\/files\/imagecache\/vertical\/files\/jonathanfranzen.jpg\" alt=\"Jonathan Franzen\" title=\"Jonathan Franzen\" style=\"border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"image-credit\" style=\"font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px; color: #777777; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; text-align: right\"><em>Getty Images<span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 17px\" class=\"Apple-style-span\">\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px\">Speaking at Harvard yesterday during a discussion with literary critic James Wood, Jonathan Franzen said that &#8220;the stupidest person in New York City is currently the lead reviewer of fiction for the New York Times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px\">He was referring, of course, to Michiko Kakutani, who presumably got on Mr. Franzen&#8217;s bad side with her brutal review of his recent memoir,\u00a0<em>The Discomfort Zone.\u00a0<\/em>In that review, Ms. Kakutani wrote: &#8220;there is something oddly preening about [Franzen&#8217;s] self-inventory of sins, as though he actually reveled in being so disagreeable.&#8221; Also: &#8220;Just why anyone would be interested in pages and pages about [Franzen&#8217;s unhappy marriage] or the self-important and self-promoting contents of Mr. Franzen\u2019s mind remains something of a mystery.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px\">During the talk with Mr. Wood\u2014described in the Harvard Crimson as a face-off between Mr. Franzen and one of his fiercest critics\u2014the\u00a0<em>Corrections<\/em>\u00a0author is also quoted as saying&#8221; \u201cThe reviews tend to be repetitive and tend to be so filled with error that they\u2019re kind of unbearable to read, even the nice ones &#8230;. The most upsetting thing nowadays is the feeling that there\u2019s no one out there responding intelligently to the text &#8230;. So few people are actually doing serious criticism. It\u2019s so snarky, it\u2019s so ad hominum [sic], it\u2019s so black and white.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px\">[ <a href=\"http:\/\/origin.observer.com\/2008\/jonathan-franzen-michiko-kakutani-stupidest-person-new-york-city\" target=\"_blank\">click to read original article at the New York Observer<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from the New York Observer Jonathan Franzen: Michiko Kakutani Is &#8216;The Stupidest Person in New York City&#8217; BY\u00a0LEON NEYFAKH\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0APRIL 29, 2008\u00a0 |\u00a0\u00a0TAGS:\u00a0 MEDIA JONATHAN FRANZEN MICHIKO KAKUTANI Getty Images\u00a0 Speaking at Harvard yesterday during a discussion with literary critic James Wood, Jonathan Franzen said that &#8220;the stupidest person in New York City is currently the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}