Indignation

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

"Salman Rushdie has called her 'a weird woman who seems to feel the need to alternately praise and spank.'[9] In a June 2005 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, author Norman Mailer criticized Kakutani as a 'one-woman kamikaze' who 'disdains white male authors' and deliberately 'bring[s] out your review two weeks in advance of publication. She trashes it just to hurt sales and embarrass the author.' Mailer also said that New York Times editors were 'terrified' of Kakutani, and 'can't fire her' because she's 'a token,' 'an Asiatic, a feminist.'[10] Jonathan Franzen called her 'the stupidest person in New York.' [11] Franzen has also called her an 'international embarrassment.' [12] Moreover, in recent years, Kakutani's particularly harsh reviews of books by famous authors (for example, John Updike's The Widows of Eastwick[13]) are followed by usually milder or openly positive reviews of the same titles by other Times reviewers.[14]

On July 19, 2007, The New York Times published a pre-release story written by Kakutani about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. An account of the ensuing controversy, including the critical comments of some Harry Potter fans, can be found on the Times Public Editor's blog.[15]"

"...Roth was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction on the world stage, the fourth winner of the biennial prize. One of the judges, Carmen Callil, a publisher of the feminist Virago house, withdrew in protest, referring to Roth's work as 'Emperor's clothes.' She said 'he goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe... I don’t rate him as a writer at all ...' Observers quickly noted that Callil had a conflict of interest, having published a book by Claire Bloom which had criticized Roth. In response, one of the two other Booker judges, Rick Gekoski, remarked: 'In 1959 he writes Goodbye, Columbus and it's a masterpiece, magnificent. Fifty-one years later he's 78 years old and he writes Nemesis and it is so wonderful, such a terrific novel ... Tell me one other writer who 50 years apart writes masterpieces ... If you look at the trajectory of the average novel writer, there is a learning period, then a period of high achievement, then the talent runs out and in middle age they start slowly to decline. People say why aren't Martin [Amis] and Julian [Barnes] getting on the Booker prize shortlist, but that's what happens in middle age. Philip Roth, though, gets better and better in middle age. In the 1990s he was almost incapable of not writing a masterpiece – The Human Stain, The Plot Against America, I Married a Communist. He was 65-70 years old, what the hell's he doing writing that well?'"