Goodbye, Dutton's!

So, here I stand, ready to collapse into the concerned arms of Doug Dutton as together we were going to conquer the few remaining novel readers on the Westside. But I have a plan. Between the closing of Dutton’s and my novel’s publication, I will do whatever is necessary to find Doug’s home address so that I can do a reading on his front lawn.
That’s my plan. Anyone who enjoys a good book and a good time and knows Doug Dutton’s home address, get in touch. Together we can make magic, we can avert tragedy — just like Dutton’s Brentwood used to do.

Having had the privilege of being a bookseller at Dutton’s for 10 years, I have dozens of memories, ranging from literary conversations with notable authors to only-in-L.A. celebrity encounters. Most of us were on a first-name basis with our customers; I was especially flattered by those who came to trust me so fully, they would read anything I recommended. Early on, I met a frequent shopper, with whom I discussed books on a regular basis. One of my recommendations to him was Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love, which we were both passionate about; clearly he appreciated the personalized service our staff provided, and I sold him dozens more books. One day, I came out from behind the counter in the west room, and he asked me out to lunch. Much later, when I finally saw the bookshelves in his home, I discovered, to my chagrin, multiple volumes on his shelf unread — in fact, that had never been opened! Most of our courtship took place around that magical courtyard, and when I walked down the aisle, Doug and Penny Dutton provided the live musical accompaniment. Reader, I married my customer.

Who I’ve seen and what I’ve purchased at Dutton’s not in any particular order or inclusive because I can’t remember everything Isabel Allende reading it was pouring rain outside she looked at everybody in the audience directly in the eye and it felt like she could be your lover Pat Barker Regeneration Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried the Bible King James version Janet Fitch reading Kicks in the afternoon sun night readings at 7 o’clock Samantha Dunn a woman fainted at her Not by Accident reading Mary Rakow The Memory Room Amy Wallen we had moon pies and sat on the bench in the fiction section then went out to dinner to celebrate across the street at the larger of the two Italian restaurants and made quite a commotion for book lovers buying Christmas presents every year the book about Olivia the Pig Dennis Lehane paperbacks long lines for Tom Wolfe and Gloria Steinem barely able to see or hear Joyce Carol Oates but Jane Smiley was tall like a cornstalk Mother Country Gilead and The Death of Adam in hardcover Housekeeping in paperback Spanish-English dictionary for a class I took at UCLA Plainsong The Marrow of Tradition Curious George at the Parade Mariette in Ecstacy Darkness Visible Days of Obligation The Last Bongo Sunset Eudora Welty and William Trevor Collected Stories The House on Mango Street Stones of the Sky A Natural History of the Senses I was going to buy The Corrections but Jonathan Franzen in the courtyard complained so much about the traffic noise on San Vicente I didn’t and haven’t read it to this day bringing Grandma Harron and Hillary O’Connor age 2 to buy her very first book on a Saturday afternoon and going to the Hamburger Hamlet afterwards where she got chicken-tender grease and ketchup on her new book it was always my dream when I got my first novel published that I would read at the Dutton’s Anita Santiago reading one of her odd and alluring short stories The Fellowship Roger Friedland’s elderly mother sitting on an outside bench in a row with her lady friends sipping wine and mineral water so proud of her son one night I’m not sure who was reading I think it was a poet and an unkempt heavyset woman who was either somewhat troubled or a poet herself or both sat down on the floor blocking the path but no one minded because the path was always blocked during readings Diane Leslie introducing an author and saying he gave her more pleasure than her husband it might have been Howard Norman standing in line with one slim Little Golden Book for free gift-wrapping years ago when they had a used-book section bought a copy of The Great Gatsby for two dollars which had belonged to a seventh-grader.

Dutton’s was the first friend I made when my wife and I moved to L.A. from New York 10 years ago. Really. My wife had one friend. I had some names; a few people I’d met once or twice, but no friends. Not yet. After one week of the El Niño downpour I was prepared to go home. Home, if not NYC, meant a bookstore. Books were and are my life. I’d heard about Dutton’s and drove from our temporary place in Topanga — got lost — to Brentwood; I knew it was near where O.J. had killed Nicole. Finally, I pulled into the back parking lot and then walked through the courtyard to ... Valhalla! The “friends” who had sustained me through many a lonely, bleak time in New York, heroes all, were just sitting there on their shelves.