EPISODE · Feb 19, 2026 · 26 MIN
Ron Charles
from Writers at Work · host Bliss Publications
I'm pleased to be joined today on Writers at Work by Ron Charles, the book critic best known for his reviews published in the Washington Post, his former employer. If you know Ron's work, it goes without saying that his unceremonious exit from the Post represents another blow to the relevance of books and literature in American mainstream media. On his Substack, Ron discussed his situation with characteristic self-deprecation. "I didn't start off as a journalist," he wrote. "Some might say I didn't end up one either. 30 years ago, I gave up a perfectly respectable job teaching English to write book reviews for the Christian Science Monitor." His aunt's huffy reaction? "'Surely, they're not gonna pay you to do that?' They did." Ron said he had some of the best years of his life at the Monitor, even if he toiled in relative obscurity. After a series of interviews, he was hired as a critic by the Washington Post. In time, he became editor of its Book World section. After two decades and having received a National Book Critics Circle Award and served as a Pulitzer Prize judge, Ron was let go by the Post and Book World was shut down. As the New Yorker's Becca Rothfeld summarized, "No one who has anything to do with books remains employed at the Post." Among US mainstream media, only the New York Times has a section dedicated to book reviews, though my former employer, the Wall Street Journal, regularly publishes book reviews. We can find publications and blogs dedicated to books, but as Becca points out, "They are produced for an audience that already knows or cares about literature. The books section of a newspaper plays an altogether different role. It does not cater to aficionados. It seeks new recruits." It's been reported that at Ernst Lubitsch's funeral in 1947, Billy Wilder said, "No more Lubitsch" and William Wyler replied, "Worse than that, no more Lubitsch films." We can find online book reviews Ron Charles wrote for the Post and his reviews for CBS Sunday Morning on YouTube, but are we at the point of no more new Ron Charles book reviews?
What this episode covers
I'm pleased to be joined today on Writers at Work by Ron Charles, the book critic best known for his reviews published in the Washington Post, his former employer. If you know Ron's work, it goes without saying that his unceremonious exit from the Post represents another blow to the relevance of books and literature in American mainstream media. On his Substack, Ron discussed his situation with characteristic self-deprecation. "I didn't start off as a journalist," he wrote. "Some might say I didn't end up one either. 30 years ago, I gave up a perfectly respectable job teaching English to write book reviews for the Christian Science Monitor." His aunt's huffy reaction? "'Surely, they're not gonna pay you to do that?' They did." Ron said he had some of the best years of his life at the Monitor, even if he toiled in relative obscurity. After a series of interviews, he was hired as a critic by the Washington Post. In time, he became editor of its Book World section. After two decades and having received a National Book Critics Circle Award and served as a Pulitzer Prize judge, Ron was let go by the Post and Book World was shut down. As the New Yorker's Becca Rothfeld summarized, "No one who has anything to do with books remains employed at the Post." Among US mainstream media, only the New York Times has a section dedicated to book reviews, though my former employer, the Wall Street Journal, regularly publishes book reviews. We can find publications and blogs dedicated to books, but as Becca points out, "They are produced for an audience that already knows or cares about literature. The books section of a newspaper plays an altogether different role. It does not cater to aficionados. It seeks new recruits." It's been reported that at Ernst Lubitsch's funeral in 1947, Billy Wilder said, "No more Lubitsch" and William Wyler replied, "Worse than that, no more Lubitsch films." We can find online book reviews Ron Charles wrote for the Post and his reviews for CBS Sunday Morning on YouTube, but are we at the point of no more new Ron Charles book reviews?
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