JOLLY DAYS

Martin Amis Reviewed

In one Seinfeld episode George becomes enamored with Jerry's girlfriend, “because she hates me so much”. By that measure, after reading this NYT poison pen book review, you can't help but feel Martin Amis has found a new love.

Boy does Michiko Kakutani hate Martin Amis. The review begins, “In one of these chuckleheaded essays…”; just so you don't miss that the reviewer is about to shred her credibility, she alerts you at the outset. Here is what the reviewer has to say about Amis' remarks:

[ Amis ] suggests that the Islamist war on the West is…rooted in sexual frustration and anger at Islam’s impotence on the world stage (completely ignoring the experts like Michael Scheuer, the former C.I.A. officer and Qaeda specialist, who argue that Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war is a reaction to specific United States foreign policies like support for Israel and an American presence in Muslim lands).

Of course, 9/11 is a result of our support of a democracy; 9/11 was an understandable response to a policy disagreement. It is only logical in her estimate. Kakutani says later,

And his own reasoning in these pages tends to be specious or skewed. He sets up ridiculous paper tigers to knock down easily: For instance, he suggests that Western liberals acted as if “suicide-mass murder” committed by Islamic terrorists was “reasonable, indeed logical and even admirable.”

No wonder Kakutani is so angry — she turns out to be the “ridiculous paper tiger”. In other words, she instantiates Amis' point.

The substance of her criticisms of Amis' book, if it could be called substance and not, as she might say, chuckleheaded self-indulgence, is that she doesn't agree with Amis on hallowed politically correct grounds; so, having discarded her honor as a reviewer (she has problems with the word “honor”), she becomes a serial ad hominem attacker, devolving into staccato incoherence. She can't help herself. Like George Costanza, she manifests her own variant of neurotic self love.

It is too bad Bill Keller, the NYT executive editor, doesn't realize that his tendentious book reviewer has been too long at the job — Kakutani was actually okay years ago. Kakutani discredits the publication Keller cares so much about, and has a toxic impact on the book business — who would buy a book, or shun a book, based on this reviewer's judgments? Kakutani is absurdly influential, solely derived from a conferred institutional aegis. Maureen Corrigan of Fresh Air fame, a deep, non-ideological, and caring reader, would be a whiff of fresh air Bill.