Vintage commentary …

… Reviewing and being reviewed | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Of all these reviews, one pleased me, and for the following reasons: it understood the intention of my book exactly, it was elegantly phrased, and it was written by a writer whose work I myself admired and whose views I could not predict.

I once received a letter from J. V. Cunningham thanking me for a review I had written of his Collected  Poems and Collected Essays, in which he said it was nice to be praised for the things one would wish to be praised for.