Irking Kakutani and getting away with it

As we've noted before, Leslie Epstein's Los Angeles novel San Remo has gotten nice treatment in the New York Times. He had to have been nervous about it though, the New York Observer reports today (second item). When his last novel Ice Fire Water came out, Epstein spent $6,000 on ads in the New York Times playfully coming on to the paper's lead book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani. Her only response was to demand the ad department stop running the ads, which mentioned her by name. All was forgiven, it seems. Kakutani did review San Remo -- and liked it.