It seems like only yesterday that nearly every American newspaper, dozens and dozens of them, even in mid-size cities, ran book reviews by local critics. The alt-weeklies (I wrote for many of them) were everywhere and had feisty and boisterous book sections. Time, Newsweek and other weeklies had serious critics who mattered to the conversation. All this is gone. The stamping out of the Washington’s Post’s excellent book section - one of the last standing - ends an era. It’s a turning point in America's literature, which can’t thrive without serious and ardent criticism - aka public talk, back and forth, between competing voices, in something like real time. The silence out there is good for no one. Gloom suddenly feels like eclipse.