I’ve Been Laid Off. I’m Not Done.

After 20 years at The Washington Post, I’m suddenly on my own — and still writing about books.

The Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin. (Ron Charles)

I’ve been laid off.

Wednesday morning, I learned that my services as a book critic at The Washington Post were no longer needed.

My job, along with more than 300 others, was eliminated in the paper’s latest effort to reinvent itself.

How a major national newspaper will carry on without someone on staff to summarize the plots of midlist literary novels is beyond me. But I’ll leave that challenge to the august managers who must now carry The Post forward.

My first reaction to the news was shock and sadness. Then, slowly, I realized this could be a chance to pursue my dream of competing in synchronized swimming.

Now is not the time or the place to assign blame. There are many complicated reasons we got here. Honestly, the worst aspect of this impoverishing, family-wrecking, confidence-crushing ordeal is that it will inspire David Brooks to write an essay about the hubris of American media.

I didn’t start off as a journalist — some might say I didn’t end up as one, either. Thirty years ago, I gave up a perfectly respectable (and immensely enjoyable) job teaching English to write book reviews for the Christian Science Monitor. My Great Aunt Cele, a lifelong teacher herself, was horrified by this reckless career move: “Surely,” she huffed, “they’re not going to pay you to do that.”

She was right, but early.

I had seven of the best years of my life at the Monitor, even if we saints toiled there in relative obscurity. (There was a time when everybody’s elderly social studies teacher subscribed to the Monitor, but, alas, elderly social studies teachers are harder to come by these days.)

When the Monitor’s publisher started rumbling about shutting the operation down, I applied to papers across the country, but the industry was already in rapid decline, and newspaper book sections are the canaries in the journalism coal mine. A large paper in Texas told me they’d just laid off their book section editor that day.

“So there’s an opening?” I asked.

They did not respond.

Neither did The Washington Post. But six months later, I wrote again to Book World editor Marie Arana, and this time she agreed to meet with me in New York. After a few more interviews, including one in the Washington office that was interrupted by a bomb threat, she offered me a job.

Years later, when I became editor of Book World, I got my hands on the department’s files and learned that I’d been hired because I was “nice.”

So for two decades, in three different buildings, working for four different editors, I was nice. It was easy, really: My colleagues here have been the most brilliant, witty, inspiring people anyone could ask for.

In recent years, there were plenty of warning signs at The Post that trouble was brewing — departing colleagues, shrinking sections, four horsemen in the heavens — but I vainly imagined I might hang on a few more years before going back to performing magic tricks at children’s birthday parties (1-800-RON-TRIK). My entrepreneurial sister-in-law, who has a vastly inflated impression of my appeal, has suggested I become a kind of book gigolo on literary cruises. I’m already feeling seasick.

I’m not complaining. Much.

For book critics, getting laid off is practically a rite of passage — usually the last rite of the final passage.

Ironically, I received my layoff notice from Human Resources while I was eating one of the two remaining Harry & David pears that The Post sent to celebrate my 20th anniversary at the paper.

Now I’m a little worried about myself. In the past, I’ve been bad with unstructured time. The real reason I left teaching is because I couldn’t stand the summer vacations. Even long weekends make me anxious.

In any case, I’m not rich enough or tired enough to retire quite yet. So long as I can flip pages — and publishers send me galleys — I intend to keep nattering on about books, authors and our imperiled literary culture. If you’d like to read along, please subscribe here — my new home.