Who

A figure inspiring equal parts awe and terror in the literary world, Kakutani is the chief book critic at the Times.

Backstory

Michi, as she's known to friends and colleagues, is the daughter of a Yale math professor father and a second-generation Japanese-American mother. A Yale grad herself, she joined the Times in 1979 as a culture reporter after stints as a reporter at the Washington Post and Time magazine, and became the paper's literary critic in 1983. Churning out roughly two reviews a week—including the occasional oddball in the voice of a fictional character such as Holden Caulfield—she's published over 2,200 book reviews over the past two decades. The only time there's been talk of Kakutani switching jobs was in 2004, when she was wooed by the LA Times. Although she seriously considered the move, in the end the New York Times persuaded her to stay.

Of note

Kakutani is the most influential book critic in the country: A rave from her can propel an obscure author into the major leagues. She's most famous, however, for brutal reviews of star authors, having eviscerated books by Dave Eggers, Don DeLillo, Susan Sontag, and John Updike, among many others. Reviewing Updike's Seek My Face, she claimed it was "impossible for the reader to find a single believable character," while Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was dismissed as "cloying…mannered and irritating." Most authors who get "Kakutanied" won't publicly react for fear of critical reprisal, although Sontag called her criticism "stupid and shallow," Norman Mailer memorably (and racistly) blasted her as "a one-woman kamikaze," and Jonathan Franzen has called her "the stupidest person in New York City."

How the critic feels about such spats is anyone's guess: Throughout her career she's maintained an air of mystique and distance; rarely seen at the Times offices, she doesn't give interviews or attend book parties, and no one has ever obtained reliable gossip regarding her love life (although she was once rumored to have dated Woody Allen). In the absence of actual dirt, literary types are frequently reduced to bitching about her latest use of arcane words like "lugubrious" and "limn."

Drama

When Kakutani won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1998, Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley sniped that it made him want to send his own Pulitzer back. In July '07, she made enemies of millions of Harry Potter fans when she published a review of the seventh and final book before it officially went on sale; facing down a barrage of complaints, the Times said the novel had been bought at a Chelsea bookstore, and therefore no wrong had been committed.

Personal

Kakutani is single—as far as anyone knows—and lives on Central Park West.

True story

The oddest way a writer has tried to curry her favor? That award would go to Leslie Epstein, who used his advance to buy small classifieds in the Times, supposedly from the main character in his book, Lieb Goldkorn. Kakutani was not amused, and had the ads killed before "YOO-HOO! MY CUTE KAKUTANI! - Lieb Goldkorn" was to run.

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