Book critic examines world without truth
Michiko Kakutani takes on Trump after ending forceful career
book Michiko feared and As publishers the critic in Kakutani New equal for York nearly measure alike. was Times’ Her 40 revered by years, erudite chief authors and enthusiasm launched dazzling for new literary voices careers (David Foster Wallace and George Saunders among them), and her scathing reviews were the stuff of legend. (Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and the City” once expressed her dread at the prospect of having her new book “Kakutanied.”) When the Pulitzer Prize winner stepped down last year from her perch as America’s most powerful literary critic, Kakutani employed her catholic tastes and expansive knowledge of literary, social and philosophical history to assess what she saw as the most disturbing aspect of the Trump era: “that the very idea of objective truth was under assault.” Her fascinating, and chillingly clear-eyed new book, “The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump” (Tim Duggan Books; $22), is an elegantly written history lesson on the gathering forces of relativism — from postmodernism and social-media filter bubbles to Fox News’ elevation of opinion over knowledge — that paved the way for “alternative facts,” “fake news” and the Trump White House’s “doubling down on the repudiation of experts.”
Kakutani was reached by email for the following interview, which was edited for length: Q: When and why did you decide to write this book? How did the 2016 election, and the rise of Trumpism more broadly, motivate you? A: During the 2016 campaign and opening chapters of the Trump presidency, I grew increasingly alarmed by the sheer shamelessness and velocity of Trump’s own lies (the Washington Post recently calculated that he makes an average of 6.5 false or misleading claims a day). There was also the flood of misinformation and propaganda being pumped out on social media by Russian and alt-right trolls, and the growing difficulty many voters experienced in trying to distinguish between real news and the many varieties of fake news, speculation and rumormongering that have proliferated on the web.
I started the book in the fall of 2017, after leaving the New York Times. I wanted to look at some of the larger social and political dynamics that fueled the rise of Trump and that have also accelerated people’s willingness to accept “alternative facts” in general. Those dynamics include the increasingly toxic partisanship that infects our politics; the growth of silos and “filter bubbles” on the web which allow people to cherrypick information that confirms their biases; the embrace of subjectivity and relativism in academia and the culture at large; the populist disdain for experience and expertise; and the blurring of news and entertainment.
I also wanted to examine the consequences that the assault on truth and reason is having on our democracy. Without truth, there is declining trust in our institutions and our electoral system, and no way to hold our politicians accountable. And when mendacity becomes a norm, cynicism that keeps people from participating in the political process takes root — the sort of cynicism and resignation that empower autocrats and permit them to define reality in a dangerous, Orwellian fashion. Q: The news is filled daily with disinformation coming out of the White House about immigration, crime, the climate, etc. And we have a president who launched his political ascent by promoting a massive untruth, birtherism. Yet he was still elected. What gives you hope that people can be convinced that truth and facts do matter? A: There is growing outrage over Trump’s lies and distortion of reality, and hopefully that will result in more people voting in the midterms and in 2020. Among the few positive things to come out of the 2016 election is a public awareness (at least in some quarters) of the hazards of taking democracy for granted — of forgetting that every vote counts. The inspirational Parkland (Fla.) students have reminded us that a handful of committed individuals can have an impact on the national discourse. And the reporting being done on the Trump administration, Russian interference in the 2016 election and a host of other important stories is a testament to the essential role that journalism plays in keeping the public informed and holding politicians to account. Q: You make a compelling argument that postmodernism, once embraced by the academic left, was, ironically, hijacked by the populist right as part of a general repudiation of objectivity and official narratives. Yet you write, “It’s safe to say Trump has never plowed through the works of Derrida.” Can you explain the connection? A: Postmodernist ideas about the roles that point of view and perception play in shaping our apprehension of reality trickled down into the culture at large and dovetailed with the embrace of subjectivity that avatars of the “Me” generation liked to promote. This surfaced in such varied works of art as “Pulp Fiction,” “Gone Girl” and “Westworld” — and also seeped into the collective unconscious. From there, notions of relativism and “alternative facts” could easily be hijacked by climate deniers, creationists and right-wing trolls. Q: You make the point that Russian disinformation took root easily here because we have a culture where the teaching of history and civics has atrophied. As someone who has made books central in your life as a way to engage with ideas past and present, do you believe we can read our way out of this mess? A: Reading is more important than ever right now. Books alone can’t solve our national problems — for that we need an engaged citizenry, and informed public discourse. But reading is a way to learn about history, how other eras and cultures have grappled with challenges similar to our own, to gather insights from genuine experts about all manner of things — be it the workings of artificial intelligence, the complexities of health care, or the mind of Leonardo da Vinci. And the reading of fiction and poetry can teach us something fundamental about the human condition. As Dave Eggers recently wrote in an op-ed piece, “with art comes empathy. It allows us to look through someone else’s eyes and know their strivings and struggles. It expands the moral imagination and makes it impossible to accept the dehumanization of others. When we are without art, we are a diminished people — myopic, unlearned and cruel.”