True? Not at St. Martins, said John Murphy, vice president and director of publicity. "Our ad budget has climbed every year." It's just that the bulk of ad money goes to promote potential blockbusters. And often goes in one fell swoop, as a full-page ad in the New York Times Book Review runs around $40,000. In fact, Murphy had just come from a meeting where the discussion was whether to spend $25,000 on a quarter-page ad in USA Today to back a new thriller by Stephen Coonts.

Book industry insiders vehemently deny newspaper executives' claim that the viability of book review sections depends on their ability to attract book industry advertising. Sports sections don't rely on ads from Major League Baseball to justify their publication, and business sections don't rely on ads from the New York Stock Exchange, so why should book reviews be tied to the likes of Random House and Simon and Schuster? "Sports and business are of interest to the general public, just as books are, and therefore part of what a newspaper should cover," said Gold. "Newspapers don't get advertising from Bosnia. But they still publish news about Bosnia."

In truth, book review sections have always been alien departments within the American newsroom's just-the-facts culture. Jimmy Breslin in a dusky bar, drumming information out of a jaded district attorney, a no-bullshit metro reporter doggedly piecing together the mayor's ties to a crooked port developer -- these are the icons of the daily newspaper, not a pasty-faced bookworm poring over the latest catalog from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

"For the most part, shoe leather and the ability to jawbone are the most important things in the newsroom," said Steve Wasserman, book editor of the Los Angeles Times. "Ruminative thought and the ability to paint a larger cultural picture get little respect. They are seen as dispensable sideshows." Michael Skube, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic, put it more bluntly: "Editors read newspapers. They don't read books."

Layton added that at most newspapers these days, "the book editor sits by himself in an isolated room without much clout. He's not even visible to newsroom editors. So in terms of the internal politics at a paper, book sections are that much easier to cut."

"Yes," I said, thinking of Oscar in his stockroom office, "I got that impression."

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"