The wry editor and I were leaving the newsroom, a fluorescent hive of conversing reporters and editors. Down we descended into the basement and into a scene right out of "Norma Rae." We stood in a windowless lunchroom, a grim assembly of colored-plastic tables and vending machines. The few folks eating their sandwiches here were clearly not the Chronicle's executive staff. A sign on a far wall said "Book Review," followed by an arrow.

We headed down a dimly lit hallway, past a janitor's office, a storage space with extension cords on the floor and an abandoned copy-machine room, and finally arrived at a stockroom. Inside, pressboard shelves sagged with books. The floor was piled with padded envelopes stuffed with a lot more.

Near the door, and behind a small desk, sat 30-year-old book editor Oscar Villalon, who less than two years before was slaving away at the Chronicle's copy desk upstairs. Now he sat by himself typing titles from publishers' catalogs into a dingy computer. If the wry editor and I didn't know better, didn't know how smart Oscar is and how hard he works, we could have mistaken him for a stocky receiving clerk, waiting on the morning delivery of steno pads.

Oscar and I were glad to meet, as I often write book reviews for the Chronicle, but we had only spoken on the phone. In person, he was garrulous and enthusiastic, telling me how much he loved the new Peter Carey novel about Ned Kelly, how great Carey was on Australia's violent prison system and its own Wild West days.

But Oscar was also nervous. Earlier, when I called to ask if it was OK to stop by, he said he positively couldn't say anything about the recent shake-up at the newspaper. Now, as if to protect himself from any slip of the tongue, or to prevent me from asking a question, he talked about new books without pause.

Oscar's anxiety stemmed from the Chronicle's action, two months earlier, to do away with its pullout, 12-page book section and demote book reviews to the back of its Sunday entertainment section, a tabloid called Datebook. The book editor at the time, David Kipen, was shifted to "book critic," responsible for reviewing two books per week, and Oscar got the job of overseeing Sunday's seven book pages, which now fall between "Dining Out" and "Get Together," the personals.

The Chronicle's Sunday circulation is a little over half a million, making it the most widely read paper in the Bay Area. And it's not the only metropolitan daily to trim its book coverage this year. The Seattle Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Boston Globe have all put their papers on a diet by cutting back on book reviews. Even the nation's most influential Sunday book supplement, the New York Times Book Review, killed two pages, resulting in the loss of six "In Brief" write-ups and one full-page review.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"