Black on White

When I respond to letters criticizing something I’ve written, I’ll usually add something along the lines of “Thank you for the feedback, all of which, positive or negative, is appreciated.” And I even mean it. Maybe it takes a fellow writer to understand that it’s so eerily quiet out here that any sign of having actually been heard, of radio signals indicating contact with other human beings has been established, is cause enough for gratitude.

All this is not to say I’m some model of equanimity, to whom being praised or panned makes no difference. In fact, I keep a file of kind things people have said about my writing. Then again, that’s at least partly due to what the writer Megan McArdle was talking about when, in a piece on writer’s procrastination, she allowed that in the course of “writing this one article, I have checked my e-mail approximately 3,000 times, made and discarded multiple grocery lists… and Googled my own name several times to make sure that I have at least once written something that someone would actually want to read.” Ah yes, sweet reassurance… until next time.

But my overall attitude toward reader reaction is that, good or bad, it’s all good. Every once in a while, however, an email arrives that gives me some pause and makes me wonder about what I’m doing. That happened this week, in the form of an electronic epistle critiquing my column of last week about the New York Times.

I do know the letter writer read its first sentence, in which I feebly waxed funny about how, counterintuitively, reading the newspaper has been good for my ruchniyus; he admonished me that “it is time to do a serious cheshbon hanefesh about the state of your ruchniyus in general.”