Don Anderson taught American, Australian, Irish, and English Literature at the University of Sydney from 1965 to 2000. Since 1982 he has written for ABR more than sixty times. His reviews and essays have also appeared in The Age Monthly Review, The Bulletin, Weekend Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Southerly, Meanjin, Quadrant, The National Times, Westerly, Island, and The Independent Monthly. His critical writings are collected in Hot Copy (1986), Real Opinions (1992), and Text & Sex (1995).
What makes a fine critic?
If we believe T.S. Eliot, ‘There is no method but to be very intelligent.’ Of which one might observe, to invoke an old philosophical distinction, that it is surely necessary but hardly sufficient. Gore Vidal, writing of Italo Calvino, insisted on admiration and description, encouraging his reader to read Calvino (‘the critic’s single aim’).
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