A Book Critic Bids His Staff Job Goodbye

Longtime Dallas Morning News book columnist Jerome Weeks spent his last day on the job Friday. He offers some final thoughts in his farewell column, which the paper chose not to print. “Nowhere in films or TV do characters read — other than the ‘bookish girl’ or the action hero, but only when he must desperately decipher the Sacred Inca Brain Codex for clues to foil the arch-fiend’s dastardly plot — a plot the ‘bookish girl’ could have figured out long ago. Still, for reviewers, one of the accidental delights of the job comes precisely from reading many of those books we’d normally use for attic insulation. It’s a central pleasure of art: discovery.”