Book Fair Turns Page on Another L.A. Image

Los Angeles is like this. You despair, throw up your hands and pledge to leave. Whatever it was that makes your life worthwhile is gone, or maybe never was here to begin with.

And then Los Angeles throws you a surprise.

Take books.

Los Angeles has worked diligently on its stereotype--people are too busy for books, in part because they spend too much time in their cars. Books are yesterday and Los Angeles is tomorrow. Southern California is the culture of TV, music, film and easy distractions, not reading. There are some good bookstores here, yes, but no great ones.

And then Los Angeles hosts an event like this weekend’s 23rd California International Antiquarian Book Fair--which organizers say is probably going to be the biggest in the world before it’s over, larger than Boston’s, grander than New York’s, more spectacular than London’s. It is a sprawling showcase of rare, interesting and, yes, meaningful books from out of the past. There are books from deep in history in languages you cannot read, and books from practically yesterday that you’ve already read and are full of sublime memories.

With the books come bookish people carrying unexpected and welcome news: The stereotype about Los Angeles and books is kaput. The book fair is not just an oddity, they say.

“Books are in,” says Hugh C. Tolford, a retired land developer and civic activist who is director of the book fair. The rich and the curious have always been drawn to assemble libraries. But now, Tolford continues, “The 35-year-old yuppie has discovered books.”

This observation is supported by a U.S. Department of Commerce report showing that a colossal growth in book sales here has moved Los Angeles-Long Beach almost dead even or ahead of New York as the largest book market in the United States.

As Tolford chatted Friday afternoon at the Airport Hyatt, more than 200 people lined up in a blustery wind to be the first into the hotel’s exhibit hall, where 174 booksellers have booths. The show runs through today.

For the record, the first person in line for the Los Angeles event was a book dealer from New York.

Mitchel Cutler waited an hour and five minutes for the chance to be first down the aisles in a search for rare art books. “The difference of two or three minutes can mean everything in there,” he said, looking hungrily at the awaiting booths.

When the doors were thrown open, buyers scattered according to their tastes.

The busiest booths have not been those offering rare $155,000 manuscripts or documents from antiquity, but rather those with 19th- and 20th-Century first editions.

Ernest Hemingway is perhaps the most sought-after author, dealers said. First-edition prices of some of his most popular works range from $200 to $800, but the early and rare and signed volumes fetch far more--up to $15,000.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner are also prized. Some of the buyers were young during these writers’ glory years and say they want to claim a bit of their own pasts. Other buyers simply desire to hold in their hands something meaningful and lasting from another time.

The book show includes the works of writers who shaped generations, like Jack Kerouac (“On the Road,” 1957, $350) and J.D. Salinger (“Catcher in the Rye,” 1951, $1,500), and writers who outlasted generations, like Arthur Conan Doyle (“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” 1892, $2,500) and Charles Dickens (“A Christmas Carol,” 1843-44, $10,000).

There are writers of this generation represented, like Edward Abbey (“The Brave Cowboy,” 1957, his first book, $2,000, and “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” 1977, signed, $125), and writers with narrow but passionate followings, like realist Charles Bukowski (“The Genius of the Crowd,” one of only 103 copies printed, $1,250).

Most sellers tell you books are different than other popular collectibles, such as baseball cards or stamps. Books register more deeply on the emotions. Books are possessions with a story inside. “People buy what they love, and those are the people we love to deal with,” says Craig Graham of Vagabond books in Westwood.

But, if the book fair is evidence of the erosion of a stereotype, it is a tribute to another lasting one.

Booksellers have come here from all across the nation and several foreign countries because when something gets trendy and hot in California, there is money to be made. Organizers hope up to 8,000 people will attend the book fair during its three-day run.

Ed Myers of Country Lane Books in Collinsville, Conn., collects Zane Grey novels and memorabilia because he loves it. But he has come here to sell it “because of your affluence--the sheer success of numbers and money.”

Los Angeles, as everyone knows, is like that.