A Farewell to Limns

July 29, 2017 8:27 AM

Michiko Kakutani, Times’s Feared and Revered Book Critic, Is Stepping Down [NYT]

Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times’ revered chief book critic, announced she was stepping down from her post on Thursday 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. [Grauniad]
38 Years on Books: The Essential Michiko Kakutani Reader [NYT]
Michiko Kakutani’s All-Time Best Burns [The Cut]
Also: Vanity Fair, The Atlantic

That "limn" thing:
Limnphomaniac [Harpers]
Limning Kakutani [AlterNet]
Michiko Kakutani Unabashedly Limns Again [Gawker]
One Life to Limn by Michiko Kakutani [NY Mag]
Michiko Kakutani Lives to ‘Limn’ Again
Michiko Kakutani will not give up “limn” [Salon]
Kakutani, Limn Addict [Biblioklept]

posted by chavenet (12 comments total)

TIL a new word I will use.
posted by hippybear at 8:38 AM on July 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

Dean Baquet has been a disaster for the Times.
posted by jamjam at 9:05 AM on July 29, 2017 [3 favorites]

In related news, MeFi's own Choire Sicha is the new Style Section Editor.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:58 AM on July 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

Every once in a while, something happens that makes my Twitter feed light up in a way that indicates that pretty much everyone I follow loves and admires some particular person. Last time that happened, it was when David Carr died. Wow, did a lot of people have deep affection for David Carr. This time, it happened with the announcement that Kakutani's successor was Parul Sehgal. I only know her because she's been on Pop Culture Happy Hour a couple of times, but it's really clear that a lot of people both like and deeply respect her. So anyway, she seems like a good choice.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:46 AM on July 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'll be honest, I stopped reading the NYT book review section because of Kakutani.
posted by sciencegeek at 12:50 PM on July 29, 2017 [5 favorites]

Around 15 years ago, Barnes and Noble started the service where you could order a book in NYC online and have it delivered later that day. It didn't always work - if the book was listed as in stock but actually wasn't, it would automatically shift to standard free delivery and you wouldn't get any notification that it wasn't actually coming that day after all. But I still used it, again and again (and with much Charlie-Brown-running-for-the-football disappointment and self-loathing) because the first time I tried it and it worked, the next person on the delivery list after me (you had to sign on delivery) was Michiko Kakutani. I still wonder what books she was getting that day.
posted by Mchelly at 7:23 PM on July 29, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oooh, she and I have something in common! I also like the word "limn" and once got extra credit when I used it in a grad school paper because my prof liked it too!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:29 PM on July 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you haven't read/don't remember this review, you should read it: In ‘Hitler,’ an Ascent From ‘Dunderhead’ to Demagogue. Does not include limn, however.
posted by Nosey Mrs. Rat at 8:16 PM on July 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

Kakutani helped make Jaron Lanier's current career. Not a good thing.
posted by doctornemo at 8:51 AM on July 30, 2017

I'm 100,000 pages into the book I'm writing and haven't used the word limn once. If I do, I will never use it again. It's one of those words like prelapsarian that you can only use once in a book. As a book critic, though, I can understand being tempted to overuse that word. It's perfect for talking about writing style.
posted by kozad at 10:00 AM on July 30, 2017

I'm 100,000 pages into the book I'm writing

That's about 10 times the length of The Wheel of Time, so this is quite some book you are writing.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:21 PM on August 5, 2017

Vulture: What the Departure of the Times’ Michiko Kakutani Means for Books Coverage
posted by Chrysostom at 10:58 PM on August 15, 2017