Literary Critics

"Suppose a mechanical man has a feeling? It will be nothing but boundless sorrow."

"Darkness is like waves. On the surface of the sea where life is desolate, they roll in and break, break and roll in again. Ah waves of lust, waves of will, waves of evil thoughts that roll out and rise again. Waves, waves, waves, waves, waves of dark melancholy with nothing special to be said about it. Indeed, this lonely view always repeats its depressingly monotonous echoes on the dark surface of the sea under a cloudy sky. Let us then pass by the seashore, let us go step on the footprints on the dunes that recede into the distance. Let us meditate on the eternal time of nature, of the ocean, that reflects in the Buddha's lonely clock. Now on the surface of the crepuscular sea, watching the whitish waves of darkness that roll in and break, break and roll in again. Hearts on the beach where everything is so sad, crumbling with melancholy."

"With rare words that adults do not know nature terrified us trembling like reeds we wept and shouted in the lonely wasteland. "Mo-other! Mo-other!""

"I think of a mystery hard to solve universal life's instinct's solitary eternally eternally solitary a sentiment ever so flowery."

"The human lodges collapsed on the ground are asleep like huge spiders. In lonely pitch-dark nature animals tremble with fear and threatened by some Dream Demon are howling sadly pale."

"If those who have already committed suicide and are dead were to become alive once again and speak, they would probably talk of the actuality of this. They are all regretting ghosts in their graves. I think about this a hundred times and am still terrified, and I shudder even in my dreams."

"Ah in this landscape that trails shadows my soul clutches an itchy terror like a ship that has come from a harbor it has come crossing the islands with wraiths in the distance it's neither wind nor rain all of it a dark fear clinging to the sufferings of love and lust and at the dull flute-sound that a snake charmer makes my crumbling shadow wept lonely."

"In a field where bats swarmed I watched a pillar of crumbling flesh it trembled lonely in the evening darkness smelled raw like dead-man's-grass that flutters at a shadow and was as ugly as rotting meat with throngs of maggots crawling on it."

"Where is our happiness? The more we dig the sand in the mud the deeper the fountain of sorrow becomes, doesn't it? The spring wavering in curtains' shadow has gone away into the distance, rocking on a rickshaw."

"I have no more hope no more honor no more future. And irretrievable remorse alone scurried away like a field mouse."

"Ah lukewarm as this spring night you who wander in a vermilion florid kimono you who are as gentle as a younger sister it's neither the cemetery's moon nor phosphorescence nor shadow nor truth and how simply so sad it is. And so my life and body go on rotting and in the shadow of the hazy landscape of "Nihilism" are sensuously yet stickily reclining you see."

"ah these terrifying shades on earth in this forest of sensuous illusion I gaze at the shadow of melancholy that gradually spread and my heart flapping its wings resembles the ugly look of a bird at death ah this sensation of unbearable sensual sex ever so terrifyingly melancholy."

"From cause-and-effect's destiny's fixed law's miserable dry plate of a landscape on which despair has frozen run away the pale shadow."

"I close my eyes and try to chew the root of some grass to suck the juice of some grass to suck the bitter juice of melancholy indeed there's no hope for anything there life's just a series of meaningless melancholies"

"In one room of some madhouse there was a man who sat on a chair all day, doing nothing but stare at the hands of a clock every day. Here was probably the most bored human being in the world, who didn't know what to do with "time," or so I thought. But the reality was the opposite, as the director of the house explained to me. This unhappy person thinks life is constant activity. He doesn't want to waste a single moment of his life, and lest he squander valuable time, he's staring at the clock like that, every day. Say something to him, and he'll angrily bark, "Shut up! Now another second of my valuable time passes. Time is life! Time is life!""

"Longing for whatever shadow I longed for Tokyo even on sleety days, I thought, but leaning there on a wall in backstreets, and cold, what dream is this man, a beggar, dreaming?"

"Ah what's asleep in this large city night is the shadow of a single blue cat the shadow of a cat that speaks of the sad history of mankind the blue shadow of the happiness I never stop longing for."

"And my heart senses tears it's the heart that always plays quietly alone the heart is lonesome the heart, early in its youthful boyhood, cast a shadow on my life the gradually enlarging shadow of solitude the shadow of terrifying melancholy grows."

"Poetry always looks down on vulgar folk, transcends the air of the age, and honors the most noble and clear spirit—that is utterly natural in its essence."

"I have made poetry for a long time but I have less and less confidence in it. Someone like me is no more than a miserable blue cat's nightmare."

"Now I sit in my room alone and gaze at the shadow of my fading soul its sighs are lonesome and as feeble as a fly that stays in the spring evening sun that fades quietly my life roams feebly my life staying at the windowglass heard helpless children's sobbing schoolsongs"

"The Hirose River flows white. Time passes and all illusions must fade away. Wanting to catch my life, one day in the past I cast my line in the river, but ah that happiness was too far away and I didn't see tiny fish even in a flash."

"[Poetry] is the voice of a blue heron calling in the marshes of life, the sound of a wind darkly whispering over the reeds on a moonlit night."

"Poetry always stands at the head of the currents of time, and most acutely feels and touches the feelings of the coming century. That being the case, the true value of a collection of poetry should be determined at least five years, ten years after its publication. Five years, ten years later, vulgar folk in general will catch up for the first time with the position where poetry now stands. That is, normally poetry is best when it is published sooner and understood later. We poets can only despise things like pursuing fashionable thoughts and adopting ourselves to things that are favored for the moment but shallow."

"Behold all sins have been inscribed, yet not all are mine, verily manifest to me are only phantoms of blue flames without shadows, only the ghosts of pathos that fade off over the snow, ah painful confession on such a day what shall I make of them, all are but phantoms of blue flames."

"I've watched thee, Scarab! Yea, an hour in vain ⁠I've watched thee, slowly toiling up the hill, ⁠Pushing thy lump of mud before thee still With patience infinite and stubborn strain. Strive as thou mayest, spare neither time nor pain. To screen thy burden from all chance of ill; Push, push, with all a beetle's force of will, Thy ball, alas! rolls ever down again. Toil without end! And why? That after thee Dim hosts of groping Scarabs too shall climb This self-same height? Accursed progeny Of Sisyphus, what antenatal crime Has doomed us too to roll incessantly ⁠Life's Stone, recoiling from the Alps of time?"

"There was intoxication in the air; The wind, keen blowing from across the seas, O'er leagues of new-ploughed land and heathery leas, Smelt of wild gorse whose gold flamed everywhere. And undertone of song pulsed far and near, The soaring larks filled heaven with ecstasies, And, like a living clock among the trees, The shouting cuckoo struck the time of year. For now the Sun had found the earth once more, And woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss; Who thrilled with light of love in every pore, Opened her flower-blue eyes, and looked in his. Then all things felt life fluttering at their core— The world shook mystical in lambent bliss."

"I’m more in touch with my emotions and the visceral sensory from childhood than any other part of life. I don’t know if it helps with creativity, but I do know that when I talk to other writers they talk about their childhood in great detail."

"The whole point of art, for me, is to give us tools to explore feelings or situations or dilemmas that defeat our other ways of making meaning. When a situation is so vertiginous, so ethically complex, so emotionally fraught, that I feel like I’m staring into an abyss—that’s when I feel moved to make art, when I feel I need the peculiar tools of fiction to figure out what I think. I mean, to inhabit my bewilderment. I think art is the realm in which we can give full rein to the ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt that we often feel we have to suppress in other kinds of expression—in our political speech, say. I think an ability to dwell in ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt is a central virtue of humanness. I think it’s crucial to any thinking that might adequately capture the complexity of reality."

"I am very comfortable writing as a man, and I think that’s because I had really good men in my life. They made me feel comfortable and I thought, ‘OK, they’re not so different from me…’"

"…There’s a way in which I hope the nine chapters are like spheres of intensity that are placed in a relationship that is not the consequence of plot or the linearity of chronology, but is instead a kind of constellation, that there are charged relationships between them that is like a key change, or a mood, or an echo, or a motif. That may sound pretentious, but I think there’s a place for pretentiousness in art."

"…‘I think I was a better writer when I was younger.’…I was more detailed, I took more time. It’s not as if I’m in a rush now, but I trust the reader more. I don’t feel like I have to say that much about the character’s inner feelings. But then as I read The Accidental Tourist I thought, ‘Well, it’s kind of nice to see all of Macon’s inner feelings there.’"

"I know the world does not need another book from me, but I have nothing else to do with myself. I have no hobbies. So then I feel guilty when I say to my agent, ‘I seem to have another book ready if you want to take a look at it…’"

"…for me the great human virtue is promiscuity, the fact that we love mixture, that we are excited by collisions between cultures, languages, traditions. This is why I’m so disgusted by the rejection of this virtue by nationalists of various stripes—and also why I’m resistant to “stay in your lane” condemnations of “cultural appropriation.” Of course, encounters with the other are fraught with peril and—like any ethically meaningful human endeavor—inherently “problematic.” Of course, we need to be mindful and reverent as we attempt to reach across borders of various kinds. But any attempt to build walls—between bodies, between cultural traditions, between languages and aesthetics—is abhorrent to me."

"I really do think of prose as writing sentences. I never think to myself “I’m writing a novel”. Not until I’m very deep into a project do I even think “I’m writing a book”. The kind of sentence I’m attracted to is a kind of navigating device where the sentence itself is moving me through the world and is the tool by which I am able to feel out a territory or a set of concerns."

"Toni Morrison, Kay Boyle, Philip Roth, Peter Matthiessen, Anne Tyler, and Rosellen Brown read an unknown manuscript and responded with those quotes and marks of approval that appear on book jackets. These were completely unsolicited and I still find it remarkable that these writers, overwhelmed with pleas and manuscripts, picked up Love Medicine and responded. There were a great number of people kind along the way. One hears much more about the egomania and posturing of writers than one does about the devotion that writers have for one another's work."

"Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times revered chief book critic, announced she was stepping down from her post... after 38 years, marking the end of a career that inspired both admiration and fear in the hearts of the writers whose books she reviewed. Kakutani was America’s most powerful literary critic, someone who... wielded immense influence over the careers of both budding and established novelists."

"Donald Trump has battled many a journalist, but he has not yet faced as eloquent and coruscating an authority as Michiko Kakutani, the fearless book critic of The New York Times for three and a half decades, who left the paper last year to write The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump."

"[T]he Times chief daily book critic announced that she would be leaving her regular reviewing post after thirty-eight years at the paper, marking the end of a literary era. Her assessments of novels and memoirs, works of history, biography, politics, and poetry have guided generations of American readers, and the prospect of getting a Kakutani review has been the hope and fear of more writers than could possibly be counted... What made her scary to writers made her reliable to readers... Her name long ago entered the lexicon as a verb (“to be Kakutanied”), a signifier of the ultimate cultural prestige."

"Some absurd details are unnerving rather than merely comical... Trump's proclivity for chaos has not been contained by those around him but has instead infected his entire administration. ...given his disdain for institutional knowledge he frequently ignores the advice of his cabinet members and agencies, when he isn't cutting them out of the loop entirely."

"Combined with Trump's subversion of long-time alliances and trade accords and his steady undermining of democratic ideals, the carelessness with which his administration treated foreign policy led to world confidence in U.S. leadership plummeting in 2017 to a new low of 30 percent (below China and just above Russia) according to a Gallup pole."

"Trump and nationalist, anti-immigrant leaders on the right in Europe... would inflame... feelings of fear and anger and , offering s instead of solutions..."

"[T]hese were grievences exacerbated by changing demographics and changing social mores that had some members of the white working class feel increasingly marginalized; by growing income inequalities accelerated by the financial crisis of 2008; and by forces like globalization and technology that were stealing manufacturing jobs and injecting daily life with a new uncertainty and ."

"The Trump White House's preference for loyalty and ideological lock-step over knowledge is on display throughout the administration. Unqualified judges and agency heads were appointed because of , political connections, or a determination to undercut agencies that stood in the way of Trump's massive deregulatory plans benefiting the fossil fuel industry and wealthy donors."

"Looking back, she draws parallels between the regimes of Hitler in Germany and Lenin in Russia and Trump — particularly regarding their mass appeal, scapegoating and manipulation of language. She references books, such as those by... Anne Applebaum and... Hannah Arendt... In explaining how social media can both be manipulated and manipulate us, she quotes... Jaron Lanier and... . ...She includes novelists... George Orwell for , F. Scott Fitzgerald for greed, Thomas Pynchon for paranoia, David Foster Wallace for irony and insincerity, Tom Wolfe and Philip Roth... The passages she pulls from Zweig about life... during Hitler’s rise are striking. So too is what she takes from Victor Klemperer... on the decay of language in the Nazi era. ...Kakutani lays a surprising measure of the blame for fake news on postmodernism. ...Where she might have tracked money and right-wing think politics ([e.g.,] ’s Dark Money), the role of race and racism ([e.g.,] Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me) or the widening gap between rich and poor (using Capital by Thomas Piketty) — postmodernism is instead in her sights throughout. ...[S]he credits "recruiting a real American to hold a sign depicting Clinton and a phony... quotation attributed to her" to postmodern "Surkovian stagecraft," rather than recognizing... antecedents in Nixon’s dirty tricksters."

"Truth is a cornerstone of our democracy. ...[T]ruth is one of the things that separates us from an ...."

"Alongside [the] optimistic vision of America as a nation that could become a shining "city upon a hill," there's also been a dark, irrational counter-theme in U.S. history, which has now reasserted itself with a vengeance—to the point where reason not only is being undermined but seems to have been tossed out of the window, along with facts, informed debate, and deliberative policy making. Science is under attack, and so is expertise of every sort—be it expertise in foreign policy, national security, economics, or education."

"The assault on truth and reason that reached fever pitch during the first year of the Trump presidency had been incubating for years on the fringe right. Clinton haters... and Tea Party paranoids who claimed that environmentalists wanted to control the temperature of your home and the color of your cars... hooked up, during the 2016 campaign, with Breitbart bloggers and alt-right trolls. And with Trump's winning of the Republican nomination and the presidency, the extremist views of his most radical supporters—their racial and religious intolerance, their detestation of the government, and their embrace of conspiracy thinking and misinformation—went mainstream."

"Trump, who launched his political career by shamelessly promoting birtherism and who has spoken approvingly of the conspiracy theorist and Alex Jones, presided over an administration that became, in its first year, the very embodiment of anti-Enlightenment principles, reputing the values of rationalism, tolerance, and empiricism in both its policies and its modus operandi—a reflection of the commander-in-chief's erratic, impulsive decision-making style based not on knowledge but upon instinct, whim, and preconceived (and often delusional) notions of how the world operates."

"The Washington Post calculated that Trump] made 2,140 false or misleading claims during the first year in office—an average of 5.9 a day. His lies... are only the brightest blinking light of many warnings of his assault on democratic institutions and norms. He routinely assails the press, the justice system, and the civil servants who make our government tick."