Goodbye, Dutton's!

Each of my first readings have been at Dutton’s. White Oleander, before it was an Oprah book. Paint It Black at the Beverly Hills store. I used to go see my shrink right across San Vicente, and then jaywalk across (they should have had a bridge) to the one place where my neuroses wouldn’t be shoved in my face, a place where everything was always as it should be, where you were wanted, respected, catered to. There will never be another Duttons’. I know time moves on, things have their season, and we were lucky to have had it. All I can say is, thanks for the memories.

Janet Fitch is the author of the novels White Oleander and   Paint It Black.

Denise Hamilton

In July 2001, my debut novel came out and I did the first signing of my career at Dutton’s. I was so nervous, but Diane Leslie put me at ease with her lovely literary manner. Several weeks later, I got a surprise note in the mail from Doug Dutton. He had read The Jasmine Trade and was writing to convey his enjoyment! I was stunned that the legendary bookseller would take the time to write me a letter. (And not an e-mailed one, either). We also had a phone conversation about the book, in which he asked me thoughtful, enthusiastic questions.

I hung up the phone feeling a bit stunned, like God himself had tapped me on the shoulder and I’d been initiated into a literary club that was both elite and egalitarian. I felt like I had “arrived.” But I know now that Doug made all authors feel special. He truly liked them. Books were his passion, and I was surprised to later learn about his second passion — music. Most people I know don’t have time to cultivate one, let alone two such artistic loves.

I’ve signed at Duttons for all five of my novels as well as for the Los Angeles Noir anthology I edited. It’s a warm, inviting, bookish place and my signings there have become an integral part of my book tours. I will be very sad not to visit the store in July when my new novel comes out. It will seem as if my book tour is incomplete, like something is missing. Los Angeles is a poorer place for Dutton’s passing and for the dispersal of its talented staff, who are as passionate and engaged about books as their boss.

Denise Hamilton is editor of Los Angeles Noir  and author of the upcoming The Last Embrace.

I grew up with Dutton’s. I remember when it was just one store; slowly it spilled into the whole courtyard, and years later, I had my first reading there. I guess I think of Dutton’s as an irresistible combination of L.A./N.Y. sensibilities — the world of readings/authors/city events that I often associate with New York, but in a very Los Angeles courtyard, with the trees, the outdoors just reaching into the books, the easy browsing from one part to the next, the low-key feel. I’m having some genuine trouble imagining the book world in this city without it. It seems pretty certain that the loss of Dutton’s will mean sad head-shaking and sighing, for years and years, while one is driving down San Vicente.

Aimee Bender is the author of, most recently, Willful Creatures: Stories.

Purchasing a book at Dutton’s has always involved an intellectual exchange more than a commercial transaction. When, for instance, I picked up the Library of America’s edition of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, Doug told me of a friend of his who had read the work years earlier on a transcontinental train trip. This led to a discussion of the ways in which Dos Passos was a student of our nation’s landscape as well as of its social history, and from there we passed, by steps I can’t now reconstruct, to Felix Mendelssohn’s life and letters. And I remember having similarly lively conversations, on other visits to the store, with Diane Leslie about Philip Roth, with Scott Wannberg about contemporary poetry and, most recently, with Nancy Rudolph about Dick Davis’ great new translation of Fakhraddin Gorgani’s Vis and Ramin , the medieval Persian romance that is the probable source of the story of Tristan and Isolde. Thinking of Dutton’s, I’m reminded that in Latin, “profession” involves the taking of vows and bringing things to light and advancing them. Doug and his wonderful staff are deeply and irreplaceably professional. They’ve supplied us not only with books, but also with intellectual companionship and illumination. Bless them all.

Nancy Spiller

My Dutton’s story is the tragedy that I, a soon-to-be-first-time-published L.A. novelist, will never experience Doug Dutton’s kind attentions and tender usherings of my literary effort. As a book buyer, what am I supposed to do? I walk into a Borders or a Barnes and Noble and get knocked back by the stale breath of a dying culture offering countless variations of vomit and piffle in both hardcover and paperback. I’m not going to be able to walk down their aisles and stumble across The Complete Writings of Emily Carr like I did at a friend’s book signing at Dutton’s a few years back. Why, I didn’t even know Emily Carr was a writer, I only knew of her as an eccentric Canadian painter of the early 20th century. And I only know a scant few other people who know of her at all, and they’re Canadians. I found her there, on the shelf at Dutton’s Brentwood, and it helped me continue on toward my own novel’s finish line.