Second in a series
See “Adventures in the Godliest Profession”
[img]776|left|Lawrence Lowery||no_popup[/img][Editor’s Note: If you yearn for the halcyon days of the 1960s and ‘70s when quality, quiet and heavily patronized bookstores dotted the Westside, this second installment of a retrospective is for you. “I have enjoyed every minute of my life selling books,” says the 86-year-old author of this series, who resides in Santa Monica. He was voted “the handsomest boy” in his graduating class at Nottingham High School in Syracuse, still one of the bachelor’s favorite memories nearly 60 years along.]
In the late 1960s, for economic reasons, I went to Hunter’s bookstore, across the street. Hunter’s was a cool and sophisticated place with antique books behind glass and an impressive art book collection.
Pearl Goldwater, one of the best book people at the time, came out of retirement to manage it. The owner, Lou Langfeld, lived in San Francisco and was rarely seen.
After 2 ½ quiet years, I left Hunter’s to co-manage the paperbook department at Hollywood Pickwick with Sidney Siegal. My year there was enjoyable even though at times you had to be a traffic manager and Delphic Oracle to cope with the swarm of customers the store attracted.
I loaned the first edition of Fowles’ “French Lieutenant’s Woman” to a secretary. It was returned to me nine years later at the Westwood Bookstore.
The 1970s began on a mean, selfish note with titles like “Winning Through Intimidation” selling out. The social excesses of the ‘60s were peaking in what appeared to be an orgy of drugs and sex. At Christmastime, manager Lloyd Harkima came back to tell us there was a drunken couple, in flagrante, on the floor behind the bookcases to the right of the entrance, We treated it as just another “happening.”
Lessons in How to Become No. 1
Pickwick was, for many years, the foremost book emporium west of the Mississippi. Orders flowed in from around the world. Mr. Stackhouse went abroad annually to scout out-of-print books for the imposing third-floor department. Pickwick’s founder, Louis Epstein, once remarked, “If a customer comes into Pickwick and asks for a book we don’t have, I am ashamed.”
It must have pained Louis when B. Dalton bought his store as one of the crowning jewels of the chain. Chains are now acting like personal bookstores by doing such things as taking personal orders. But at the time, the trauma of change was almost unbearable for all of us. The ubiquitous computers took over, and SQU numbers became more important than titles and authors. Personal selling was de-emphasized. The visceral relationship between books and booksellers was repressed. The magic was going.
Later when I helped open the Westwood B. Dalton near the portals of a great university, we were sent an entire wall of Westerns because someone in the East decided that people in the West read lots of Westerns.
Once the computers ordered ten 10-packs of a novel, and a truck showed up with ten thousand copies.
I am told such mistakes are rare now, and computers have become an indispensable part of major bookstore retailing. I could not make that abrupt of an adjustment. So I went elsewhere, just a block away.
A Book Paradise
Westwood Village was conceived in the late1920s as an adjunct to the new Los Angeles campus of the state university. People spent quiet evenings window shopping the specialty stores, some of them nestled in cobbled patios. The Mediterranean-style architecture was rigidly adhered to. The clock tower building featured a Norman Rockwell drug store. A market was housed in what seemed a castle fortress.
The first business to open in Westwood was Campbell’s Books, on Le Conte, facing the campus. Young Jim Hakes was a Campbell bookperson with thoughts of having his own place. In 1936, his Westwood Book Store opened on Westwood Boulevard. It remained a Westside cultural mecca through forty-seven years and several moves.
When I came there, the store was a shoebox with a loft on Broxton. The lower floor was expanded later when the Stew Kettle moved out. The minute I met its elfin owner, I knew I wanted to work for him.
I soon learned this was no ordinary bookstore. In that small space, shelves bulged with over sixty thousand titles. People who worked and shopped there were literate and cared about books. They were encouraged and supported in their interest. Thomas Mann and Katherine Anne Porter had traded there.
Here was a haven for bibliophiles, mystery addicts and literary cognoscenti who loved Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury eccentrics.
Jim had an important liaison with UCLA libraries and scholars, giving them discounts on special orders. The store had its own best sellers: “Montaillon,” the true story of a French medieval town, sold over two hundred copies. “Godel, Escher, Bach” was another big one.
On weekend nights, people stood three and four deep at the tables. The store had acquired national and worldwide reputations. Publishers Weekly devoted at least three articles to it, one claiming the gross was over a million dollars annually. The Westwood Book Store was, by consensus, the best and most popular independent bookstore in Los Angeles.
So what happened?
Jim was getting on. If the store was to continue, he needed someone to manage it. He hired Allen Chabin, a bright, innovative young businessman who had managed a Brentano’s in Washington, D.C. and in L.A. Allen thought it necessary to at least minimally modernize things without affecting the store’s unique ambiance and appeal. The changes were mostly mechanical. But some of us felt we heard the crash of cherry trees in the distance.
When the building’s owner decided to level it for a parking lot, the Westwood Book Store was relocated to the same owner’s new high tech building on Gayley Avenue. Two stores were built from scratch, one upstairs, one down, with a small mezzanine in between. The stock at the old store became severely depleted as moving dates were postponed.
We finally moved into what was an apparent architectural boondoggle. When it was no longer feasible to use the mezzanine, customers would walk down a flight of stairs to buy, and then up a flight to exit.
A combination of high rent, higher book and mailing costs, a new Crown discount center nearby and a bad recession all helped to do us in. Attempts to save us, including a literary society, a library and appeals to millionaire customers, all failed.
In May 1983, the Westwood Book Store closed its doors forever.
Recently in Westwood, I was tapped on the shoulder by a tall young man who reminded me I had read Dr. Seuss to him at Martindale’s when he was six years old.
Such are the rewards of a life’s devotion to books and the godliest profession.
Mr. Lowrey may be contacted at dianejoyceagate@hotmail.com
