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The Death of Truth
by Michiko Kakutani
(William Collins, £10)
WHEN Michiko Kakutani retired as chief book critic for the New York Times last year, novelists breathed a united sigh of relief. Since leaving her post, she has turned her eye to the US of Donald Trump’s America and produced this slight and histrionically titled polemic.
Her book is a totemic example of the US liberal intelligentsia’s take on Trump exceptionalism — his uncouth manner, untrammelled bellicosity and general cavalier attitude towards policy are seen as beyond the pale.
The dust jacket promises “an impassioned critique of the West’s retreat from reason” and, for the uninitiated, Kakutani offers a succinct account of postmodern thought from its germination in academia from the 1960s. She highlights the dispensing of Enlightenment narratives of progress and its complicating of conventional notions of objectivity and truth.
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