Jake Zeitlin: Bookseller at the Crossroads

Jake Zeitlin has touched so many of the vintage glories of Los Angeles.

Antiquary, bibliopole, he has dealt manuscripts with Frieda, the widow of D. H. Lawrence. When Zeitlin wrote poetry it was endorsed by Carl Sandburg. Zeitlin’s first bookstore, at 6th and Hope in 1928, had a facade and an interior by Lloyd Wright, underestimated son of Frank Lloyd Wright.

And when Zeitlin opened his second house of incunabula a decade later, there was wine and an essay of homage to the agreeable vice of reading. It was written for Zeitlin’s special evening. By Aldous Huxley.

Zeitlin, at 84, has known Hugh Walpole, Henry Miller and John Steinbeck. In 1929, he smelled genius and bought many copies of the initial printing of a first novel by a young teacher: “Look Homeward Angel” by Thomas Wolfe.

“I just happened to be at the crossroads, the place where everyone passed,” Zeitlin says. He has 60 years in the business and a third bookstore, Zeitlin & Ver Brugge on La Cienega. “All the friendships that have happened to me have happened through the bookshop.”

In that first year, a fine friendship began at his crossroads. Zeitlin’s shop had a bare wall called The Gallery. It was offered for the display of photographs made by one person among a handful beginning to insist that photography be considered an art form.

“He let me have in all about 30 prints. A great many were of Mexico, of Diego Rivera, of maguey plants. . . . It was before he did still lifes, the peppers and photographs of sand waves.

“Outside of a show in a Japanese cleaning shop, this was the first exhibition he’d had.”

He. Edward Weston.

Posthumously, Edward Weston is an absolute.

In his lifetime, until death in Carmel in 1958, Edward Weston was barely known beyond his clique. His obituary in the Los Angeles Times was two paragraphs. He rarely earned more than $20 for a picture. Or $70 for a portrait sitting.

Throughout 25 years of correspondence with Zeitlin, Weston’s dialogue was of piddling sales, the need of money for down payment on a Ford, irritation at canceled orders: “Well, I’m out of luck,” he once snipped. “Expecting $80, I get a check for $26. It’s not worth my while receiving $6.67 for my prints.”

That was 1932. Business was no better in 1952. Because, Zeitlin says, the public was barely beginning to accept the vision and profundity of photographers such as Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernhard, Eugene Smith, Alfred Stieglitz . . . and Weston.

The awful evidence.

“In 1928 at that first exhibition we were selling a Weston picture titled ‘Nautilus,’ a photograph of a shell,” continued Zeitlin. “I sold it for $2. The year before last I bought it back for $10,000.”

Weston, Zeitlin believes, would have enjoyed today’s recognition. But commercialization, the pressure of appearances before faddists might have offended him.

“He was a very gentle man who charmed people without being obvious. Women just tumbled for him.”

They certainly did. Several wives. Many mistresses.

“It was his letters that charmed the women. He’d keep writing them long after the passion had cooled. . . .

“I remember going down to see him and we would make up great bowls of salad. . . .

“Weston did most of his photography with a big old box camera and a bellows this long. . . .

“I have two portraits that Edward took of me. They are not for sale.”

Weston’s work is on display at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena ((818) 449-3730), and the Huntington Library, San Marino ((818) 405-2273).

Zeitlin has visited.

Hundreds were examining in awe.

Noted Zeitlin: “One is fiercely possessive about old friends. I thought: ‘What are all these strangers doing looking into my friend’s life?’ ”