![]() “Ressentiment” is a word with complex connotations, but as used here means resentment toward those more successful or esteemed who have not directly harmed you. What’s really at work here is what we might call “genre ressentiment” - a form of resentment so pathological philosophers and psychologists reach for a French word to contain it. Obviously the sexism charge is a smokescreen. ![]() ![]() But they don’t have “girl parts,” either. The Kakutani who Norman Mailer once wrote “disdains white male writers?” The very same reviewer who, just recently, has diced up such male literary darlings as Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Yann Martel? Okay, so these blokes don’t live in Brooklyn. Oh, ladies: You would be referring, I preseume, to the Jonathan Franzen? That “literary darling” who called Kakutani “the stupidest person in New York City” in 2008, after a less than glowing notice of his 2007 memoir, The Discomfort Zone?Īnd you would be referring to the Michiko Kakutani, lead book reviewer for The New York Times, whose reviews this summer have included books by Mona Simpson, Stefanie Syman, Anne Beattie, Jane Smiley, Laura Bush, and Sue Miller? ![]()
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