The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider

By Michiko Kakutani

Page I bailed on: 4

Verdict: Yes, page 4. But it’s not quite as bad as that sounds because there’s a seven-page Introduction with Roman numerals. So really I bailed on page 11. Which is still quick.

I hadn’t been expecting much. Michiko Kakutani was formerly a book reviewer for the New York Times and I didn’t think she was very good. Her writing didn’t have any spark and I don’t recall any original critical insights she’d drawn from what she read. Then she wrote a book called The Death of Truth, a topic that was fashionable in the Age of Trump. This is part of what I said about it:

Judged on its own it’s just another piece of wood on the pile, offering up an anthology of observations made by other authors, all saying similar things in different words, with little attempt at any deeper analysis or explanation.

Kakutani, who seems to have at least skimmed a lot of books, suffers from the curse of student writing, which is to quote a source or authority for everything she says, no matter how obvious or banal an observation it may be. Her conclusion, that truth is important for the proper functioning of democracy, is important, but a platitude. What we’re left with feels more like a research paper or review of the literature than a rallying cry.

The Introduction here left me feeling it was going to just be more of the same. There are the usual platitudes about the importance of the historical moment, a subject that has been examined in more depth by many other authors. In fact, I already have books on my shelf, good books too, with titles like A Decade of Disruption and The Rise of the Outsiders. Even if Kakutani made good on the promise in her Introduction to discuss these matters more fully I couldn’t see where she’d be saying anything new. This made me think of another book I relegated to the DNF files, Niall Ferguson’s Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. I called that one

nothing but a slapdash and glib collection of bits and pieces thrown at the reader only to let us know how widely Ferguson has read. Or browsed. Or had some research assistant browse. I wasn’t buying any of it. It just comes off as non-stop name-dropping and a cheap display of superficial learning in search of a coherent argument.

I skimmed through the rest of The Great Wave and got the sense it was cut from the same cloth. There’s no original thesis being argued, just a trudge through the usual headlines, with the usual bromides waiting at the end. I mean, this is how the Intro ends: “The stakes could not be higher: whether we surrender to the gathering chaos or find a way forward to protect democratic values and institutions and create a more equitable and sustainable future.” Yes, that is the question. The same question we’ve been asking for the last couple of decades. We’re aware of the problem. But Kakutani doesn’t have any answers or original thoughts to share.

The DNF files