I do not think I have ever published anything that did not have an error in it. Typos have crept in and escaped proofreading. Miscitations and mistranslations have refused correction. Facts and judgments have, at times, seemed almost willfully in opposition to empirical evidence or received opinion. It is the duty of readers, so it seems, to catch such errors. Referees for publishers and, after them, book reviewers often begin well and well-meaningly. But praise soon shatters into pedantry, and reports and reviews will often end with catalogs of broken lines and phrases: errata uncaught by editor or author, blots on the reputation of the scholar’s knowledge or critical acumen.

I’m not alone. All creatures of the academic life subject themselves to such reviewing, and most practice it themselves. To have been savaged and to savage, whether veiled behind the scrim of the anonymous report or displayed in the full acknowledgment of the printed byline, are the marks of my business: the rite of passage and the passing of one’s rights. It is as if I’ve led an erroneous life, as if what should be toted up on the pages of the book of judgment—or, more prosaically, in annual decanal salary reviews—are not achievements but mistakes. We live, in the academy, by blunder.