American - Critic | January 9, 1955 -
My mother's family was among the 120,000 people of Japanese descent on the West Coast who were dispatched to internment camps during World War II.
Michiko Kakutani
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With his mendacity and increasingly virulent attacks on immigrants, Muslims, women, the press, the judiciary, the intelligence services, the F.B.I. - any group or institution that he finds threatening or useful as a scapegoat - Mr. Trump is attempting the Orwellian trick of redefining American reality on his own terms.
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President Trump not only lies with astonishing temerity and abandon, but those lies connect into equally false narratives that gin up the worst fears and prejudices of his base.
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The removal of people of Japanese descent from their homes and their incarceration in camps were executed with the same sort of political calculus of fear and bigotry that Mr. Trump is using to redefine American immigration policy.
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One of my favorite things, as a critic, was finding books by new writers who possessed a distinctive voice and vision, an inventive gift for storytelling. I also loved immersing myself in works of nonfiction that taught me something about the world, that made the past come alive or shed light on hidden corners of history or the news.
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I've always been a news junkie, and an avid reader of newspapers and magazines, and this interest only ramped up during the campaign of 2016 and in the aftermath of the election.
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I'm pretty omnivorous - in fact, I don't think of books in terms of genres. J. K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' books are no more Y.A. reading, to me, than John le Carre's 'Smiley' novels are spy stories.
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The one genre I'm not really into: self-help books.
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Trump did not spring out of nowhere, and I was struck by how prescient writers like Alexis de Tocqueville and George Orwell and Hannah Arendt were about how those in power get to define what the truth is.
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For most of us, art is supposed to do something more than simply mirror the confusions of the world.
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Indeed, 'The Second Plane' is such a weak, risible, and often objectionable volume that the reader finishes it convinced that Mr. Amis should stick to writing fiction and literary criticism, as he's thoroughly discredited himself with these essays as any sort of political or social commentator.
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If a novelist had concocted a villain like Trump - a larger-than-life, over-the-top avatar of narcissism, mendacity, ignorance, prejudice, boorishness, demagoguery, and tyrannical impulses, she or he would likely be accused of extreme contrivance and implausibility.
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