Column, farewell. I’ve been old for quite a while, now, and producing this column is beginning to tire me out, a little, and that’s showing up in the column. A little. I’ve believed for all this time that writing it was good for me (whatever it was for you); it never got easy, and that was good. I was sometimes pretty miserable during some of the writing: it was going to be a struggle, since nothing worth talking about was being published that week, or because what I really wanted to talk about was beyond my powers, or just, you know: Really? literary criticism by wisecrack?

But I’d press on, because it was what I had before me to do next, just before I fed the cat. And, at least partly because of that often dread-ridden opening few lines, I almost never finished a column without a feeling not just of relief, but something like satisfaction. Sometimes, even like a half-decent writer of some limited kind. And that was worth a lot.

And so, I have gratitude to express, so I won’t wander off, or doze off, or whatever it is I’m doing, here, without expressing some of it, to as many as I can recall of those who made this possible: To begin with—requiring no study in the matter—to my late wife, who created the column. Claire had, all before the idea for a column occurred to her, made my life worth living for some decades, after having pretty certainly saved it. The column was, in fact, all hers until her health and my employment both became, over a few years, unreliable. There was a little period of transition, but by somewhere in 2005, I think, looking at old columns, I was simply doing it, and so it’s mine to say good-bye to.

On the papers, then: to Lisa Reider and Amberly Jane Campbell, and to Paul Smart; to Joe Abraham, Carol Montana, Dan Hust and Frank Rizzo, and Jessica Roda; and pretty surely others whose names never became known to me, or that have dribbled out of my old brain (no kidding; in 2005, I was already collecting Social Security).

To many book publishers, too. They surely knew that they were sending me more books (in various pre-pub forms, mostly) than the column ever sold; they liked the attention, it seemed, and so did the authors, once in a while. My notices, which were in fact more “book chat” than reviews, sounded like the chatting of some sort of publishing professional, at least. And in a print-media world where book coverage is disappearing even faster than independent newspapers—though there are signs that that trend is slowing, as newspapers seem to find new ways to serve readerships—the column seemed to continue to matter, a little. 

And, so . . . I’ll miss it, more than you and the papers and the publishers will miss me.