Aaron Silverman becomes quite animated when he talks about the section. As far as the festival at UCLA is concerned, he says he can't complain about "something which gets that many people out to enjoy the sun and look at books," although it in no way compares with the excitement of the BEA.

He has no such ambivalence about Wasserman's book section. "It's miserable. No publisher thinks it's worthwhile to advertise in. Nobody reads it. It has no individuality, no nothing. That guy (Wasserman) is running it into the ground. It's obvious nobody around the paper cares about it," he says.

Part of the reason Silverman feels this way is the fact that his distribution company in Gardena is the locus of independent publishing in Southern California. He says that Wasserman mostly reviews books from big New York publishers, but rarely "look at other things. They only review the obvious."

In comparing it to San Francisco, where a thriving and concentrated book publishing scene has been well reflected in the San Francisco Chronicle's book review for years, he says that the Southern California publishing scene is not as cliquish as in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's all over the landscape. But there is a lot of variety of publishing going on here. But you'd never know it from the Times Book Review. "If they review a book by a local publisher, it's entirely by accident," he says.

He supposes it's good that the Times management keeps pouring millions of dollars down the book review sinkhole, if only because it implies some interest in books and reading, but he also suspects they really have little enthusiasm for it, otherwise they would do something to make it better. "It (the Book Review) was much better when it was edited by Digby Diehl," Silverman notes. Diehl started the book review as a separate section in the Times in 1969.

After a decade at the Times, Digby Diehl went to New York to head up Harry Abrams, a large arts publisher. Later he was the book editor of the old Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and then Playboy. He even did a stint as an entertainment reporter on CBS2.

With some obvious disdain, Diehl noted that the week of the book festival, "there had been as much coverage of that event as there was of the Iraq war. It's incredible overkill to promote their own event."

And he notes that in the past, when the BEA came to Los Angeles, there was no real coverage of it. "Yet," he says, "it's an important national event that rarely comes to Los Angeles."

Diehl says despite his belief that the book review section appears to him to be run to curry the favor of "east coast professors," and that "Wasserman's power base is in the East," he thinks the book section has improved since the Tribune took the paper over. He notes that the book review has recently resurrected a "Westword" column written by his old friend Jonathan Kirsch, son of Robert Kirsch, the Times' late lamented literary critic who especially championed western writing and publishing. "I don't know where the pressure is coming from. For years, you didn't see the name of a West Coast writer. Now they are doing better, but it's still not sufficient," he says.

His impression is that Wasserman is producing a "very dull book section with only a few exciting pieces now and then. It has some very intelligent people writing very academic articles that are sometimes fascinating enough from an academic standpoint. But it's rarely informative enough about what goes on with the books people are reading or the West Coast literary scene."

Diehl says that a newspaper shouldn't necessarily be a booster of the local book scene, "but it has to support achievement. The paper certainly does it for the Lakers ... There are plenty of people out here doing wonderful things. There's a big book buying market and it simply hasn't been recognizing it."

Diehl says that the way he built up advertising when he edited the book section was by recognizing that the West Coast was actually a bigger book market than the East Coast. Not only does it have more readers, it has many of the best writers as well. Now he says he doesn't blame the book review's pitiful advertising support entirely on Wasserman. "It has to do with the conglomeration of the book chains. If you ask the chains why they no longer support local papers, they tell you they get better results advertising in large national media."

He notes that the Sunday Book Review in the New York Times, which Wasserman thought he could equal when he took on his present post, is not considered a local book review but rather a national publication. Like Silverman, Diehl will give credit to the paper for continuing to support its book section "even though it is probably losing a great deal of money. I think they have supported it because they believe in the importance of books and it is prestigious. No paper can have aspirations for national recognition without having a book section. That's why the Tribune purchased the Times. Do you think they really were interested in coming into the Los Angeles market?"

Diehl also says that he is not recommending that every time somebody stands up and reads poetry in Venice it has to be covered by the Los Angeles Times. "But you do have a bully pulpit and it should be used for something other than self promotion."

He said under his editorship the section "kept hammering away" at the focus of local writing. That gave local people a reason to read the book review. "We gave coverage if not support to local folks involved in books and publishing."

Digby Diehl moved to Pasadena 13 years ago because his wife owned a house there "and we're still living in it. I love the community." He says the city has a great academic community, what with Caltech and Pasadena City College and even Occidental College, a short distance away in Eagle Rock. Most particularly he loves Vroman's bookstore, "which has shown tenacity in its ability to change with the times." He believes it is an example of how an independent can compete very effectively against the chains. It begins with the diversity of authors it promotes.

Joel Sheldon, one the bookstore's main owners, agrees that Vroman's has sought diversity throughout its 110 year history - which is why not long ago it even invited in Howard Stern, which drew the kind of customers Vroman's probably didn't usually get. In the 'thirties an appearance by Langston Hughes, the great black communist writer (who later became a disillusioned ex-communist), drew anger as well as applause and Hughes had to be whisked out the back door.

Sheldon admits that he is not personally immersed in a local literary scene. But he's sure running a newspaper is as difficult as running a bookstore, so he's not so quick to weigh in with a diatribe against Wasserman. Sheldon is basically sanguine about things. He thinks despite all the problems with education, for example, people are still reading and writing as well as they ever did. He even suspects there are really great writers around who have not been published yet. Certainly there are many more books published today than there ever were.

He notes that few people ever really say good things about the section in private. Part of the reason is that Wasserman is nothing else if not an effective power politician with a swelled ego and few people - especially those who have been treated well - will admit the emperor is wearing no clothes. Even Ray Bradbury, perhaps the best living writer in Los Angeles today, took back some very harsh judgments of Wasserman's section after the paper took great efforts to befriend him, Diehl notes.

Another Wasserman supporter is Carolyn See, who was a Diehl discovery. She now writes regularly for the Washington Post's book section and only occasionally for the Los Angeles Times, but insists that Wasserman "is doing a wonderful job."

Kipen, who originally worked at the Los Angeles Daily News, said when he first moved to San Francisco to edit the book section there, he was regarded "as that carpetbagger from Los Angeles." And for a while, that was not an unfair description, he said. He grew into the job.

Kipen, now the paper's literary critic instead of its book section editor, thinks Wasserman has also grown into the job. "Recently he has even gone a little native," Kipen says. "If you pick up any copy of the book review from last year and compare it to what Steve was doing when he first came on the job, it's the difference between night and day. That's just a consequence of having moved here from New York. He's grown to be interested in the place."

Kipen appeared with Wasserman at a panel at the BEA considering the future of book reviews in major newspapers.

Diehl points out that only one of the seven major American publishers is American owned and operated anymore. Perhaps the Los Angeles Times Book Review is appropriate to the day and age - only one might wish it could help a new, better and more grounded vision of the written word prevail.