A critic's gratitude

Christian Courier has published my article titled, A critic's gratitude. As academics, my wife and I were trained to be critical, but criticism has its limits. An excerpt:

As an academic, I freely admit that people in my profession share a rather unattractive quality: we are terribly critical. Worse, we tend to approach life in general from a critical posture. We get out of bed with criticism. We eat critically. And we retire for the night with criticism haunting our dreams.

How often have I settled down with Nancy to watch a period film, only to become distracted from the plot by what to me is an obvious historical error or anachronism. Of course, I have to mention it on the spot. Even in an exhaustively researched historical monograph, I tend to fixate on the misfires, a skill undoubtedly developed during three decades of marking student papers. Given that Nancy and I are both academics, we easily feed each other’s critical inclinations. Obviously we’re quite the fun couple at cocktail parties.

Read the entire article here.