The Implied Compliment of a Book Review

Sifting through the new releases

A long time ago, in the busy newsroom of a local paper (two opening phrases that, I now realize, mean the same thing), I was chatting with my long-suffering editor about various aspects of his job as the paper’s Books Editor. We were both waiting for the advertising people to walk across the hall and tell us how many column-inches we’d have to fill for our section this time around, an almost-daily waiting period that was a lot harder on his nerves than mine, because he was a slow, deliberate worker and writer and thinker, which always made deadlines ominous. Since deadlines and I have always been happy playmates, I shared none of his anxiety and thus wanted to distract him.