Michiko Kakutani, Fuck You

by Tao Lin


In this essay I am going to prove that Michiko Kakutani's existence is detrimental to the Net-Happiness, or, the Total Net Amount Pleasure, on Earth.  I will reference this Happiness factor here on out with TNAPE.  T-NAPE.  Beginning each graf I will give an easy summary of what is to follow.  This is to make it easy for the reader and to make the reader like me because I am making it easy for you (the reader).  That use of 'you,' right then, is just one of the many techniques I will employ throughout this essay to induce you, [hehe] the reader, into liking ME and disliking Michiko Kakutani.  Honesty is the second technique, as you, astute reader, have probably already noticed, catalogued in your brain, and reacted accordingly with trust trust trust in me me me.  Here we go!

WHO SHE IS:  A book reviewer for the New York Times Book Review.  Maybe the lead reviewer.  I don't know.  [Honesty]  And I'm not going to look it up.  [Carefree nature of ME]

QUESTIONS FOR HER:  How many books have you written?  How many novels?  How many short stories?  I admit I don't know how many you've written, maybe twenty, but maybe ZERO.  And if it is ZERO, then shame, shame, shame, shame! shame! shame! shame! on! you!  [Mary Robison rip-off]

READER CHECKUP:  Hi astute, splendid, big-brained reader.  I hope you are enjoying my honest and carefree attitude thus far.  I hope the potentially hateful and serious nature of this essay has been nullified with my carefree and honest attitude, and therefore, made fun—like a playground!  [Attempt to activate good, childhood memories in the reader]—instead of hateful.  In honor of your astuteness, I will incorporate even more carefreeness and honesty, from here on out, in this—my humble essay to you, the glorious, high-cheek-boned reader.  I will also employ a certain self-deprecating, I-Am-Inferior-To-You,-The-Reader attitude, which, I hope you will enjoy and use at your convenience to boost your own self-esteem [Selfless nature of me].

MICHIKO KAKUTANI IS IGNORANT AND THINKS THAT SOME SADNESSES AND PAINS ARE OBJECTIVELY MORE PAINFUL THAN OTHER SADNESSES AND PAINS, WHICH, TO ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN DEPRESSED BECAUSE OF CHEMICALS OR WHAT-NOT, AND I MEAN REALLY DEPRESSED, NOT JUST A LITTLE SAD, IS JUST SIMPLY NOT TRUE, OR IF IT IS TRUE, THEN IT IS CERTAINLY NOT A FACT THAT CAN BE TESTED, BUT SOMETHING THAT CANNOT BE PROVED, SIMILAR TO THE EXISTENCE OF GOD:  (I am a shit-head.  You, the reader, are so superior to me!  If you are a camel, then I am a camel's tongue!) [I-Am-Inferior-To-You,-The-Reader attitude] [Honesty].  Kakutani writes, "[In David Foster Wallace's 'Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,'] There's ''the depressed person,'' a woman so immersed in the fluctuations of her own self-esteem that she can spend hours complaining about her own emotional pain to a friend who is dying of cancer."  Okay.  Michiko, yo, girl, [new technique I just thought of that might urbanize my essay, that might gain me some favor with you equally astute urban readers] yo, home-girl! listen up! do you realize that you've just printed,—as fact!!—your opinion!!—that cancer pain is a more valid, a more acceptable, and a more painful pain than depression pain?  Opinion as fact:  A big no-no for journalism!  The New! York! Times!  [Book Review] (Sunday).  See what I did there reader?  Presumably, the New York times is more associated with journalism, per say, than the New York Times Book Review, and so, I put the Book Review part in brackets, as if didn't really matter, to try and trick you [hehe, *tickle *tickle] [Honesty].  I am a sad, sad, sad, sad, pathetic, young man—ugly, stupid, deprived, alone, chronic masturbator.  [I-Am-Inferior-To-You,-The-Reader attitude]  Some of that isn't true.  [Honesty . . . but also, a weird kind self-defense/fear that this is all true/fear of alienating the reader too much by way of the reader picturing me as this grotesque non-human THING] [Honesty].

MICHIKO KAKUTANI MAKES OTHER PEOPLE FEEL STUPID, INFERIOR, AND IGNORANT:  Kakutani writes, "[Don Delillo's] 'Cosmopolis,' however, turns out to be a major dud, as lugubrious and heavy-handed as a bad Wim Wenders film, as dated as an old issue of Interview magazine."  Wim Wenders?  An old issue of Interview magazine?  Wow, wow wow wow wow. . .  Maybe young Miss Kakutani's (I actually don't know her age—I have no idea.  And is she married?  I do not know [Honesty] and I will not look it up [Carefreeness]) intention was to WOW the reader.  As in, "GET" the reader to "GO," "Wow!  This Lady is smart!"  But, in a survey I took, [I made up just now [Honesty]] 30,204 out of 50,000 surveyed admitted that Kakutani made them "feel really stupid and . . . ruined [their] whole day[s] and caused [them] to scream out in anger at loved ones and other innocents."

QUICK WRAPUP BEFORE WE MOVE ON:  Miss Kakutani, who used to pick on little black girls cause their skin was black, (Maybe [Honesty]) (1) thinks that depression is not  a real problem and is just something that people who have no real problems MAKE UP in attempts to get attention and (2) Miss Kakutani lowers the self-esteem and happiness of millions of innocent mothers and children and children with amputated arms and sad, sad cancers that force them into chemotherapy and then their mothers also shave their heads in solidarity and compassion, which is sooooooooooooooooooo sad!

PROOF:  Kakutani wrote, "I hate humankind.  All people should suffer more pain.  That is my job.  To make people suffer.  Especially gay people, women, children, blacks, yellows, reds, and hippies."  (She didn't actually write any of this or say any of this, though it is certainly a possibility that she wrote or said this, sometime in her life, in private, or in her head, as a thought)  [Honesty].

WHY THIS ESSAY WILL END HERE:  I'm running out of steam.  [I am not afraid to use clichés] I think I've made my point already.  I'm starting to feel empty and disingenuous, probably because I am being too self-conscious and because I'm making salient the completeness of how everything you ever hear someone say has probably already been run through their head a few times before to calculate how it will benefit them before it comes out their mouth, their stupid, selfish, robot mouth.  This last sentence you just read may be a run on or it may not make any sense but I'm not even going to correct it [Carefreeness].

WHAT ELSE WAS GOING TO GO IN THIS ESSAY:  Kakutani's clawing [Attempt to metaphor Kakutani as a base animal—bear, dog, troll, etc.] apart of Nicholson Baker's "Box Of Matches."

THINGS THE ASTUTE READER SHOULD KNOW:  I've only read a little bit of "Hideous Interviews With Brief Men," (Not gonna correct that) [Carefreeness] and the first Ten pages of "Cosmopolis," and the first Eighty pages of "Box Of Matches."  [Honesty].  (Rip-off of Nicholson Baker's "U & I") [Honesty].

I AM GETTING REALLY BORED WITH THIS CRAP:  FJPAOetaej5iq3j5-23951-234hj102h43ioahrn;kljerq3095uw;3iht;akljfaj'359
?puwo9fujalksrhnq;3j5y98.

MESSAGE TO MICHIKO:  I don't know you and I don't care about you and I don't give a shit what you think and I don't care if by doing this a lot of people will think I'm a shit-head (which I am [I-Am-Inferior-To-You,-The-Reader attitude]) and I don't care about Jonathan Safran Foer [Attempt to introduce a third person that many of you astute readers will probably immediately dislike, and by law of contrast, will cause you to like me even more, even if only subconsciously (I will take subconscious likingness) [Honesty]].  George Bush [Again . . .].

CONCLUSION:  If I have succeeded, then by now, you, the reader, the astute reader, hate Michiko, and are in love! Love! LOVE! with ME!

ATTEMPT TO END STRONG BECAUSE MY CONCLUSION WAS REALLY WEAK AND READING IT OVER, I THINK IT MIGHT DISAPPOINT YOU, THE ASTUTE [Use of the word astute:  Lorrie Moore Interview On Bookworm rip-off] READER:  Um .  ". . . trees the size of explosions . . ." —Frederick Barthelme, "Elroy Nights."  
Copyright © 1999 – 2024 Juked