‘Tis the season not just for layoffs and gloomy end-of-year reports but also of bookstore closings. PW Daily rounded up a good list of indies shutting their doors yesterday but now word comes by way of Michael Walker, author of LAUREL CANYON, that Dutton’s Bookstore in Beverly Hills – an outpost of the famed store in Brentwood – is closing after two years in business. No word yet on what business will replace Dutton’s in the Canon Drive space, but suffice to say that the store, the first nonspecialty bookstore to open in Beverly Hills in nearly 20 years, will be much missed by Los Angeles-based authors. (The news also saddens Ron, who got his start in the book industry twelve years ago as a clerk at the Brentwood location.)
More from the LA Times’ Scott Timberg, who gets owner Doug Dutton to admit some bitterness over the closing. “The city was completely unwilling to renegotiate,” he said. “It was, ‘Pay up or go.’ ” And at Native Intelligence, crime writer Denise Hamilton pays tribute. “In some inchoate way, I hoped the place would become a hub, a community gathering place, a venue for debate and ideas, for literary fanfare, proof to the world that a bookstore could set up in the Belly of the Beast and thrive.” Alas, that was not the case.