Exit the Critic

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s final print edition, veteran book critic John Marshall reflects on more than ten years on the job. His strangest moment? Watching The Liar’s Club author Mary Karr pack for a trip. “No other author folded tiny bikini undies during an interview,” he writes. Marshall remembers talking to Stephen King talking about baseball, greeting Amy Tan, who arrived with two Yorkshire Terriers in a mesh bag, and laughing along with David Sedaris and Nora Ephron. Jane Fonda, on the other hand, was an “ice queen.” A somber note: “The most depressing thing happening in Seattle bookdom: Coverage of books and authors is cut in half when ‘America’s most literate city’ becomes a one-newspaper town.”