A Guide to Independent Bookstores in Los Angeles

Beyond Borders and Barnes & Noble, Los Angeles is home to a decreasing amount of great independent bookstores. Some are practically cultural institutions, part of LA's short history and community. Others carry certain genres of books or collectibles. Often these indie booksellers host cool readings and book-related events.

Some worry that these smaller book retailers are at risk of extinction--being swallowed up by corporate bookselling giants and online shopping. When Dutton's Books of Brentwood (founded in 1961) closed its doors, a range of news sources like the Los Angeles Times and LA Observed, reported a wave of sadness among natives, and loyal customers like Dustin Hoffman and Diane Keaton.

Whether you're a book nerd or an occasional reader, a fan of fiction books or children's books, or someone who likes to support small businesses, you'll want to check out this small sampling of shops—if at least for their positions on LA's cultural map.

The Bodhi Tree Bookstore

Want to get the latest Eckhart Tolle book so you can infuse your life with positive energy? Or looking for a great power yoga DVD? Since 1970, the Bodhi Tree has been the hub for self-help and spiritually related books, DVDs and goods. Celebrities like Nicholas Cage, Claire Danes, Carrie-Anne Moss, David Boreanaz, and Rick Rubin have found their Zen, and then some here. The store's used books branch is located right behind the main new books shop. Their adjacent annex hosts readings and workshops on popular subjects like The Artist's Way and everything from the Mayan calendar to spiritual healing.

NOTE: The Bodhi Tree Bookstore (in its original incarnation) is set to close after Christmas 2011.

8585 Melrose Ave.

West Hollywood, CA 90069-5199

Book Soup

This bookstore's motto sums it up: "Bookseller to the Great and Famous." Since the '80s, this incredible spot has been selling a range of new books to Angelinos in need of inspiration. One of its greatest assets might be its impressive collection of art books. Book Soup is also great for city guides and entertainment industry biographies. Just next door to the main shop, readings are held. Some past guests have included Mohammed Ali, David Mamet, Annie Leibovitz, Jena Jameson, Shaquille O'Neal, Robert Evans and Viggo Mortensen.

818 Sunset Blvd.

West Hollywood, CA 90069

Dawson's Books

Sadly, LA's oldest bookstore closed its doors in the summer of 2010. Dawson's first opened in Downtown in 1905 and then moved to Larchmont Village in 1968. However, owner and book expert Michael Dawson is maintaining a related business online. His specialty is rare books about LA and California history, as well as photography--some of it by well-known artists like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.

Dragon Books

Written up in Vanity Fair, this small Beverly Glen/Bel Air retailer bills itself as "a rare and antiquarian bookseller." A collectors' paradise, it showcases books and book-related collectibles which may be a little rich for some people's blood. You may be flipping through some of the literary artifacts upstairs, for instance, and run across an item for tens of thousands of dollars. Handle with care! But Dragon Books also has far more reasonable volumes. The store is irresistibly charming in a nostalgic way, recalling an old-fashioned study, library or gentleman's smoking room.

2954 Beverly Glen Circle

Bel Air, CA 90077

Skylight Books

If you're an avid reader who lives on the East Side, chances are you've at least heard of Skylight Books in the Los Feliz area. The hip bookseller says it has a clientele of local artists, musicians, writer and scholars. Its inventory includes everything from literary fiction, music and children's books to graphic literature, film and theater, and LA local culture books. It posts a list of indie bestsellers as well as a list of cutting edge "next" indie literary works. Skylight also throws author events and fiction, non-fiction, poetry, solo and group readings.

1818 N. Vermont Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90027

Specialty Book Browsing for the Avid Collector

Book Collecting & Care

Locating Out of Print Books - Composite Materials

What is book collecting?

A Literary Outlaw in Paris: Interview With Dennis Cooper

  

by Brian Joseph Davis

(Originally for The Huffington Post)

Dennis Cooper's fiction has always been unshakable, with every spare word counting -- and bruising -- but his new novel The Marbled Swarm pushes a lush complexity to the front of the work. The wordy narrator is a dandy Parisian cannibal who preys on Emo boys and conspires against painfully bourgeois families. There's also a time-and-space defying chateau. This makes for a horrifyingly effective -- and surprisingly funny -- gothic tale at first but as the narrator brings us into his world with his wandering, stuffed sentences, the novel begins to linguistically unravel into the swarm hinted at in the title. With Cooper having spent much of his time in France over the last several years, away from his native Los Angeles, The Marbled Swarm seems explicitly continental, with touches of theOulipo Group's literary capering and a tasteful amount of cult-Euro name drops, from Isabelle Adjani to Alain Robb-Grillet.

I spoke with Cooper as he was finishing his North American book tour.

Brian Joseph Davis: Was there anything in particular you were reading or watching that informed The Marbled Swarm? Its language is certainly different from the minimalist style of your earlier books.

Dennis Cooper: Well, I wanted to build a voice that was beholden to French literature, and particularly to its avant-garde wing, which had such a huge impact on my writing from the outset, but was kind of polluted with my own voice, which is very American, I think, and specifically Los Angeles-centric in its flatness and in its attempt to induce some kind of poetic trance within its limitations. But I wanted to be very careful not to end up imitating particular writers' styles, so I went out my way to avoid reading any French fiction or poetry while I was writing the novel in hopes of achieving a kind of prose that would have a French vibe rather than writing that would display obvious French earmarks. Instead, I studied a lot of French films, thinking they would be a source far enough away from fiction that nothing from them would get noticeably grafted on. The films that had the biggest impact were Alain Resnais' Providence, both because its meta-fictional central conceit had a relationship to mine and because it's a very French film that is crosshatched with an English text and actors, and Eric Rohmer's Perceval les Gallois, which is a film largely set outdoors but shot on a highly stylized indoor sets, because I was very interested in how strangely it used very artificial representations to play with viewers' ability to suspend belief.

BJD: The narrator is playing a predatory game in the book but he is also playing linguistic games on the reader. Was that kind of Nabokovian teasing in your original plan for the book or did that voice come in later drafts?

DC: That teasing was there from the very beginning, or, rather, the novel's style was constructed in order to enable that kind of linguistic game playing. What entered after I'd established the voice and was elaborated on in later drafts were the writing's props, as I think of them: the secret passage-laden chateaus, the tricky relationship between flat pictorial illustration/animations of people and places as employed by Japanese anime and manga and Disneyland and so forth versus the more fleshed out representations that fiction allows and basically demands, the actor versus "real" person motif, the play with surveillance, and so on.

BJD: How do you think your nomadism between Europe and the U.S. has altered your work? The Marbled Swarm has a haunted Europe sensibility, akin to a late-Buñuel film but there are also moments only an American would think of, like when the narrator confesses that he first mistook the chateaus of France as "Disney castles."

DC: Having lived the great majority of the time in France for the past six years had a giant impact, as did my not yet having learned to speak or understand the French language with much sophistication. On the one hand, I live here, and I have gotten a grasp on how the French view their own culture and country -- enough so that, say, when I saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, I shared my French friends' amusement and feeling of being charmed by how extremely American and romantic his view of France is -- but, on the other hand, I haven't lost my long term, very American presumptions and reference points. The interesting thing for me is that I'm able to straddle the two perspectives and feel them both in a way that's both comfortable and conflictive, and it was precisely that in-between viewpoint that I wanted to represent in the novel's narrator, whose voice is fatally ruptured and flawed by its American influence.

BJD: Why do we keep writing novels? There's some nagging truth to the narrator's statement "I've never read a decent novel in my life unless skimming fifteen pages of Houellbecq's Platform to make conversation counts." I could comfortably stay in the art world, or poetry, and make "book" projects, with quotation marks. But I try to leave that world every few years to make books without quotation marks; I think mostly to see if I can. For you, there are the theater and music collaborations, which have to feel much different, more immediate, than novel writing. What does story telling in this 50 to 100-thousand word format still hold for you?

DC: No, the novel is still the form I feel most dedicated to and the one in which I feel most wholly at home. The theater and music collaborations are extremely interesting, but, partially due to the lack of full control that comes with collaborating, I continue to think of them as places to experiment with my writing, to escape fiction temporarily or to use as opportunities to gauge my abilities and test their limits. I feel like I'm utilizing and fooling around with fragments of my talent when I work in theater and music. There's something of a relationship to the writing of poetry, but I always feel as though there is a big limitation to how much I can do and give to those kinds of work. There's just something about fiction, and most especially about novel-length fiction, that feels far more conducive to what I want to do as a writer than any other form. Other than wanting or maybe even needing that much room to get at what I have to say, I really don't know why.

jean-joseph rabéarivelo

by Kristen McHenry

Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo lived his short and tumultuous life on the island of Madagascar during the time of French colonial rule. He was born in the capital Antananarivo (Tananarive) in 1901 to a mother who had once been a Malagasy aristocrat but who lost her property and fell into poverty after French colonization.

Rabéarivelo attended mainly French Catholic schools, until being expelled at the age of 13. After a brief stint in public school, he dropped out entirely and worked at various odd jobs, all the while reading voraciously and teaching himself everything he could about poetry. He eventually found low-paying work as a proofreader at the printing house Imprimerie de l’Imerina, a position he retained until his death in 1937.

During Rabéarivelo’s lifetime, the French placed heavy restrictions on writing in Malagasy (the native language of Madagascar), and all texts written in French by the Malagasy people were automatically classified as French literature. Rabéarivelo acted as a sort of dual ambassador for French literature as well as traditional Malagasy literature. He was heavily influenced by both the French Surrealists and the pagan/folkloric traditions of the native Malagasy.

He wrote in French and Malagasy, and was as deeply invested in preserving Malagasy literature and language as he was in expanding on the work of the French Surrealists. Rabéarivelo translated several works of Malagasy into French. He encouraged French-language texts by Malagasy writers to be recognized as Malagasy literature.

In part because of his commitment to both languages and traditions, Rabéarivelo was held in suspicion and banned from traveling by the French government, yet he was never fully embraced by his native Malagasy. He resisted definition and continued to pursue his poetic vision while confined to a life of relative poverty on the island.

He started a literary journal called Capricorne, contributed articles and critical essays to numerous publications, mastered the Spanish language, and translated many poems. Over the course of his lifetime, seven volumes of his poetry were published. His accomplishments were accompanied by agonizing personal difficulties, including drug addiction, depression and physical illness. He married in his early 20s. He and his wife had five children, including a daughter who died at age 3.

In spite of his personal anguish, Rabéarivelo’s poems reflect an ethereal, mythic universe and a deep connection to the natural world. In the poem “You There,” Rabéarivelo speaks of a mysterious symbiotic connection to the earth, birth and growth:

You there
standing naked!
You are mud and remember it –
actually you’re the child of this parturient dark
who feeds on the milkstuff of the moon,
then slowly grows into a trunk
above this low wall the dreams of flowers crawl over
and the smell of summer at a lull.

To feel, believe, that roots push from your feet
and slide and turn like thirsty snakes
down to an underground spring
or clutch the sand,
and marry you to it so soon — you, alive
tree, unknown, unidentified tree
swelling with fruit you’ll have to pick yourself.

His poem “The Three Birds” also reflects an affinity for the spiritual reflected in the natural world:

The Three Birds

The bird of iron, the bird of steel
who slashed the morning clouds
and tried to gouge the stars
out beyond the day
is hiding as if ashamed
in an unreal cave.

The bird of flesh, the bird of feathers
who tunnels through the wind
to reach a moon he saw in a dream
hanging in the branches
falls in tandem with the night
into a maze of brambles.

But the bird that has no body
enchants the warden of the mind
with his stammering aria,
then opens his echoing wings
and rushes away to pacify all space
and only returns immortal.

Rabéarivelo’s unusual use of language is present in this translation of a traditional Malagasy poem, “Lamba.” An excerpt of that poem reads:

Few trees bloom without leaves,
Few flowers bloom without perfume
and few fruits mature
without pulp you have the foliage,
you have the perfume,
you have the pulp of the old tree
that is my race in lamba.

Your name rhymes well with legs
in this long that I chose
to protect my name of the forgetting,
in this language which speaks to the soul
while ours murmurs to the heart.

Your name rhymes well with legs
with the legs which cover
your transparent sharpness:
But you, you rhyme well with several other things in my thought.

Your appearance rhymes with rocks, in Imerina.
When there is feast and that the crowd goes on terraces:
With the strips of peaceful egrets
which come to arise on the forests of rushes
as soon as the sun capsizes.

Petri Liukkon, at Books and Writers, says of Rabéarivelo: “By replacing the reality of a colonized civilization with his own images, he created a new isolated world, full of melancholy and bitter-sweet beauty.”

In spite of his quiet rebellion against French control, Rabéarivelo’s lifelong dream was to live and write in France. An opportunity arose for him to represent the colony through a special French program, but it was denied when a group of basket-weavers were selected instead. Grief-stricken by the death of his daughter and feeling that he lost his last only chance to realize his ambitions, Rabéarivelo committed suicide by poisoning at the age of 37. Some reports claim that he recorded his dying moments in his journal.

Unfortunately it was very challenging to find a wide selection of Rabéarivelo’s work online. But don’t despair! Rabearivelo’s book Translated From The Night is available through the publisher Lascaux Editions, with English translations by Robert Zillar.

Note: Translations of “You There” and “Three Birds” by Kelli Boyles.

Kristen McHenry works on poetry by night and health outreach by day. She created and facilitates the Poet’s Cafe, a weekly poetry workshop for homeless teens. She shares poetry and her thoughts on writing at The Good Typist.

The Human War, by Noah Cicero

Noah Cicero is a writer living in Youngstown, Ohio.

He is the author of over five books, including The Human War (Fugue State Press, 2003) and The Insurgent (Blatt, 2010). He has been published widely online and in print. He works at Red Lobster.

"A terse, polemical and often violent book that follows Mark, a disaffected American everyman, through the trailer parks, bedrooms, dive bars and strip joints of humdrum Youngstown, Ohio during the final two hours leading up to the dawn of America's supposed 'War on Terror.'... America's finest literary pariah? You bet"--Dazed & Confused. "This alarmingly well written book is a new voice that has rankled more than enough people back home in America. This vitriolic stance against Bush, God and War is just the book we should be reading in today's climate"--Scarecrow.

History Failing to Repeat

Since there seems to be very few great novels falling from the sky these days, we've decided to start compiling a list of some of the most overlooked books of the past few centuries.  Let's start here:

The third published novel of D. H. Lawrence, taken by many to be his earliest masterpiece, tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and budding artist. Richard Aldington explains the semi-autobiographical nature of this masterpiece:

When you have experienced Sons and Lovers you have lived through the agonies of the young Lawrence striving to win free from his old life. Generally, it is not only considered as an evocative portrayal of working-class life in a mining community, but also an intense study of family, class and early sexual relationships.^{[citation needed]}

The original 1913 edition was heavily edited by Edward Garnett who removed 80 passages, roughly a tenth of the text. The novel is dedicated to Garnett. Garnett, as the literary advisor to the publishing firm Duckworth, was an important figure in leading Lawrence further into the London literary world during the years 1911 and 1912. It was not until the 1992 Cambridge University Press edition was released that the missing text was restored.
Lawrence began working on the novel in the period of his mother's illness, and often expresses this sense of his mother's wasted life through his female protagonist Gertrude Morel. Letters written around the time of its development clearly demonstrate the admiration he felt for his mother - viewing her as a 'clever, ironical, delicately moulded woman' - and her apparently unfortunate marriage to his coal mining father, a man of 'sanguine temperament' and instability. He believed that his mother had married below her class status. Rather interestingly, Lydia Lawrence wasn't born into the middle-class.^{[clarification needed]} This personal family conflict experienced by Lawrence provided him with the impetus for the first half of his novel - in which both William, the older brother, and Paul Morel become increasingly contemptuous of their father - and the subsequent exploration of Paul Morel's antagonizing relationships with both his lovers, which are both invariably affected by his allegiance to his mother.
The first draft of Lawrence's novel is now lost and was never completed, which seems to be directly due to his mother's illness. He did not return to the novel for three months, at which point it was titled 'Paul Morel'. The penultimate draft of the novel coincided with a remarkable change in Lawrence's life, as his health was thrown into tumult and he resigned his teaching job in order to spend time in Germany. This plan was never followed, however, as he met and married the German minor aristocrat, Frieda Weekley. According to Frieda's account of their first meeting, she and Lawrence talked about Oedipus and the effects of early childhood on later life within twenty minutes of meeting.
The third draft of 'Paul Morel' was sent to the publishing house Heinemann, which was repulsively responded to by William Heinemann himself. His reaction captures the shock and newness of Lawrence's novel, 'the degradation of the mother [as explored in this novel], supposed to be of gentler birth, is almost inconceivable', and encouraged Lawrence to redraft the novel one more time. In addition to altering the title to a more thematic 'Sons and Lovers', Heinemann's response had reinvigorated Lawrence into vehemently defending his novel and its themes as a coherent work of art. In order to justify its form Lawrence explains, in letters to Garnett, that it is a 'great tragedy' and a 'great book', one that mirrors the 'tragedy of thousands of young men in England'.

Conrad In Beverly Hills

Conrad In Beverly Hills

Jake Fuchs

Raw Dog Screaming Press

Available for purchase at bookstores, on online services, and as ebook from Smashwords. 

Also available on Kindle via Amazon for $4.99,

As well as at: http://www.rawdogscreaming.com/conrad.html

Jake Fuchs, author of two satiric novels set in his present home town of Berkeley, has quietly produced a great novel that tackles the coming of age of a young man of sensitivity and character.  Conrad in Beverly Hills, his latest work of fiction, portrays a family’s circumstances that Fuchs knows as well as anyone.  Thirteen-year-old Conrad Keppler, a young man discovering his father’s past as a writer of literary fiction, attempts to save him from what the boy thinks of as the hell of corporate Hollywood.  Drawn from Fuchs’ personal experience as the son of a novelist turned Hollywood screenwriter, this novel is a labyrinth of memory and introspection.  Fuchs’ style, a distinct mingling of poetry, control and wit, speaks for itself.  A book that is at times scathingly funny finds its most comical and well-written elements in its portrayal of the movie business as well as life in today’s academe.   

After finding an unfinished story his father penned about their relationship, the mature Conrad, a fiftyish college professor, battles the uncertain disorder of reversed memories and dense transitions.  As an adult, Fuchs’ protagonist battles his father’s ghost as he tries to move on with his life.  The complication that ensues is a stunning work of literary fiction—one that brings with it shades of Woody Allen, Phillip Roth and even Saul Bellow.  Conrad in Beverly Hills, undeniably Fuchs’ best work to date, has established him, in my eyes at least, as an important American writer.   

Here and There

An article worth reposting:

Only Searchable At Your Library

November 14, 2007

This week, I learned about a newly accessible treasure trove of history and literature online. Once again, my excitement was tempered by the reality that it's only available through paying libraries. While I'm a big fan of libraries and even remote access for patrons, it's troubling that the public-at-large cannot access these holdings -- or quickly discover them through commonly used search engines.
Publishers Gale and ProQuest announced their electronic bridge which connects some of the most treasured English language resources. According to these publishers, who are the Coke and Pepsi of academic resources, researchers will find “digital collections of nearly every printed work from the late 15th through the 18th centuries, [which] are considered to be among the world's most valued research collections.” This includes nearly everything printed in England between 1700-1800, and over 220,000 books and works.
At least the lucky library card holders at 200+ universities will be able to search and read these seminal collections more easily, beginning next year. The rest of us get zilch. Now I can understand the economics, as it costs a lot to collect, curate, digitize and share these tremendous holdings and the libraries pay for all this to be done. Unlike commercial content, there won't be advertisers lining up to sell their Christmas gifts next to texts from the Age of Reason.
Both Gale and ProQuest are trying to make strides towards more open access, by helping librarians deliver extensive catalogs, an array of digitized content, and 24/7 access for patrons. Last month, the ProQuest executives even mentioned that they want to help librarians in “building products from the end user point of view.” Gale has offered gateways for the public to research what's available at their local libraries. All this is to be applauded.
Yet the “long tail” information we really deserve is still largely unsearchable outside library gates. Try as they might, the search engines aren't solving this problem, because there's nothing to crawl or license here. There needs to be a better way to find the world's knowledge…anyone?
The definitive event for Canadian marketers, SES Toronto 2011 (June 13-15) affords delegates a comprehensive learning and networking opportunity. Sessions cover PPC management, social media,

 mobile marketing, usability and more.

Keep an eye on us for updated Indie Reviews, a few of which should be up within a day or two.

***Also keep in mind that we are working on amending a few minor mistakes and deletions made in a few of our recent reviews.  Our summertime staff isn't what it used to be, but we're working hard to get everything put into place the way it should be.