Web rumors of Steve Wasserman's imminent departure from the Los Angeles Times Book Review are, it turns out, more hopeful than factual.

LA residents have been grumbling for some time about Wasserman's Book Review; and, as expected, rumors of Wasserman's departure prompted a number of online hallelujah's. Writer Tod Goldberg blogged that "Wasserman's exit from the LA Times [might] auger a shift towards a more vibrant sense of reviewing." Similarly, TEV's Mark Sarvas called the possible departure "a golden opportunity for the LA Times to seize and to refashion this section into something that reflects the vibrant and burgeoning literary culture in this city."

"Once a week," Mark continues,

the LA Times hits our doorstep with a truly sickening thud (we only take it on Sundays), and once a week we extract this limp, anemic, gasping thing that claims to be a Book Review.  But it isn't really, hasn't been one for as long as we've been reading.

Meanwhile, Tod Golderb's brother, Lee, recalls meeting Wasserman over lunch, trying to "convince him that [the book review] should run more reviews of mysteries and thrillers."

But he told me that he felt the mission of the Book Review was to educate people about what they should be reading... which wasn't mysteries and thrillers.

His smug superiority might have been easier to take if he didn't spend most of our lunch drooling over the fact that Brian Grazer was at the next table.

Unfortunately, most of the rumors were based on an incomplete reading of PW's report, "Leave West, Young Man?" (sub req'd). Here's the second paragraph:

Wasserman came to the LAT eight years ago after a career at Times Books and NY publishing, bringing a flash of intellectualism to the paper. But he has also reportedly had a number of run-ins with supervisors who saw the section he ran as being overly highbrow. With the recent announcement that Wasserman would report to longtime Times-er Tim Rutten, sources describe conditions which could precipitate a departure. "If this did happen, I think a lot of people wouldn't be surprised. Some might even ask why it didn't happen sooner," said one literary insider.

But, here's the next sentence: "Reached at his L.A. office, however, Wasserman said that there's 'no basis whatever to this rumor. I am in the saddle as the editor of the L.A. Times Book Review.'"

But it sounds like even PW finds its fact-checking dispiriting, as it goes on to insist that Wasserman has actually "[left] the door open."

Asked whether he would predict that he would be at the helm of the L.A. Times Book Review in three months, he said, "I live in Southern California. The sun shines every day. The palm trees stand all. But a Magnitude Eight can strike at any moment. It would be reckless in the extreme to make any predictions."

Previously on GC: Wax on Wasserman, Nov. 22, 2004