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The Stones are my all-time favorite, she says.
I wonder if they have any other Keith stuff here.
Kakutani worships Keith Richards.
I think hes the heart and the soul of the Stones, she explains.
Hes just inhaled all blues and musical history and he really wants to pass that knowledge on.
I thought his memoir was totally amazing.
Her opinion of that book is more important than yours, or mine, or anyones.
Thats because in 2010, as chief book critic for the New YorkTimes,she reviewed it.
(You never wanted to be Kakutanied.)
She memorablytook down Norman Mailer, who hit back with flat-out racism.
Now she finds herself in the position of the reviewed rather than the reviewer.
The next day on Instagram, the photoappears: A1 Record Shop, NYC #Vinyl #NYC.
Its up to 256 likes (and counting).
A few years ago, we might not have met.
She is a workaholic who routinely writes through the night.
Im not much of a cook, she says.
I used to keep books in my gas oven, until someone told me it was a fire hazard.
Yet in person, shes talkative and prone to laughter.
Owing to the new book, shes being prodded to emerge, if only a little.
I was the kid in class who was afraid to get called on.
TV appearances are out of the question.
But she has revealed herself to a new degree.
I find it hard to write in the first person, she says.
But I felt motivated because of those poor kids at the border.
On Second Avenue, we step around a teary couple rooted to the sidewalk mid-breakup.
The Instagram feed is the main concession shes made to public digital life.
She started it at the suggestion of her book publisher a few months ago and now says shes addicted.
(I dont take selfies.)
And no, she wont reveal the usernames.
Kakutani has always had a thing for photography.
In college, she spent a semester studying art in Paris at the Academie Julian.
Then it was back to Yale, where her mathematician father, Shizuo, was a professor.
(His Kakutani fixed-point theorem, impossible to explain in lay terms, is significant in set theory.)
I didnt get the math gene, she says.
I think they realized that early on.
But in college I did a lot of darkroom stuff with 35-millimeter, and I used Tri-X film.
I loved the darkroom its a magical process.
asks the friend, adding, Cmon guys, lets go.
I know youre Instagram-famous, but were late.
On Varick, we talk of pre-cell-phone New York.
We used to go there to dance.
Kakutani frequented CBGB, where she would go to hear the Ramones and Talking Heads.
Im so short I could never actually see the bands, she says.
(Shes five feet tall.)
We cross Canal and begin discussing Trump and his absurd double negative remarks.
Hes rendering language meaningless, she says.
Its all this chaos all the time.
I do think hes like the Joker.
Its after midnight, and she is warming to her subject.
The propaganda in Russia that Putin puts out is getting so parallel to Trump, she says.
Then she spots some graffiti scrawled across a building on the other side of the street.
Look, thats so cool, she says.
It reminds me of Basquiat or something.
She darts over to take a picture.
