In October 1968, Paul Elder Jr. sold the 70-year-old family business to Brentano’s. The bookstore, however, remained open under the Paul Elder name for another 14 months, closing for good on 29 December 1969. Just one week later, be it by chance or design, Paul Elder began a new chapter as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. The new column was called “Paul Elder’s Book Forum.”
The Book Forum appeared daily alongside other Examiner columnists such as Guy Wright, Sydney J. Harris, Bob Considine, and Dick Nolan. The column debuted on 5 January 1970, and began with this introduction:
It shall be the purpose of this book column to bring you informative, timely and complete coverage of new publications and events of interest in the book world—to evolve a true book forum by drawing on the best minds in this sophisticated area with guest reviews by talented members in academic and literary fields.
Elder then warmly reviewed Charlotte Armstrong’s suspense novel The Protege, saying “when one has been reading with enjoyment everything an author has written for 20 years or so, he can’t be blamed for feeling a personal loss when that author dies.” Armstrong had passed away six months earlier at the age of 64. Over the following weeks and months, the column’s book reviews covered a wide range of topics, including art, politics, public school integration, ancient Rome, celebrities, dictionaries, civic planning, and famous criminal cases.
Equally illuminating, in your editor’s opinion, are the other columns on the page. To give just one example: on 14 January 1970, running opposite Elder’s column reviewing an account of the ordeal of the crew of the captured spy ship USS Pueblo, is a piece by Sydney J. Harris applauding Sigma Delta Chi’s (the national journalism society) long-overdue decision to admit women as members. Harris notes in particular that women “understand men far better than other men do; the best interviews I have read have been conducted by women, with devastating accuracy.” He calls out Gloria Steinem as one of several women who “have proved that politics, city planning, transportation, and the other ‘heavy’ subjects of urban life can be dealth with as dexterously and insightfully (if not more so) by women as by men.”
It appears that the Book Forum ran for just one year. The last known installment appeared on 12 January 1971.
