I would have visited Dutton’s Brentwood Books while I was in town for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books no matter what; my relationship with the store, and its role in shaping my career, is pretty well documented. And I knew going there this last weekend was essential, because of the store’s impending closure this Wednesday. Still, I was emotionally unprepared for the “final days” atmosphere when I arrived: The north wing of the store, which used to house the serious nonfiction and the classical music CDs, was already shuttered, with much of the remaining inventory shifted to the west wing—where there was plenty of room because they hadn’t been stocking new releases for a while now.
I sifted through the remaining paperback fiction, trying to remember various authors I’d been meaning to look into for a while now, and though owner Doug Dutton was obviously distracted, he was able to give me one last bit of advice about a CD I was contemplating. And then there was the two-volume Herman Melville biography by Hershel Parker—not only did they have it in stock, they had multiple copies, probably the only place outside the John Hopkins university bookstore that would! I snagged the least shopworn copies and added them to my pile…
I was heartened later that evening, at the LAT Book Prizes, when Kenneth Turan started the evening with a tribute to Dutton, which drew the only standing ovation of the evening. (Not even Maxine Hong Kingston, receiving the Robert Kirsch prize for American writing in the west, got quite as enthusiastic a response.)