Better Than Booze

When I was younger and green of experience, it was always a fantasy of mine, born of too many books and not enough life, to become a regular at a local drinking establishment. Wouldn’t it be nice, I’d imagine, to have a place where the bartender would know your name, where you could count on a friendly greeting and a comfortable space whenever you walked through the door.

I’m older now (no real surprise) and I find that, in its own way, my dream has come true. There is an establishment I visit enough to feel very much at home, where the staff knows my name, provides me with a house account and helps me out when I need a lift. The only thing is, it’s a neighborhood bookstore, not a bar. As Lenny Bruce used to say, I’m better off.

The store is Dutton’s Brentwood, on coral tree-lined San Vicente Boulevard, and I was addicted to the place long before I was known there at all. As someone who spends time in bookstores the way other folks hang out in . . . well, bars--who has tirelessly sought out literary establishments from the Baltics to Barcelona to Beijing, I know the real thing when I see it, and Dutton’s passes every test.

First off, it’s got the books--some 400,000 volumes, 120,000 separate titles on its premises at any given time. Even a smattering of (only the highest class, you understand) remainders have found their place in the grand shelving scheme.

And Dutton’s staff (no names, please, for fear of leaving out the deserving) knows the stock intimately, is conversant with not only what’s there but also with what it’s worth. Unthinkable here is a scenario observed at a local chain store (don’t worry, I was only browsing), where a customer came in, asked for “Moby-Dick” and was blandly counter-questioned: “Fiction or nonfiction?”

Other stores, obviously, have no lack of books. Some even have staff that know what they’re talking about. What none of them can duplicate, however, is Dutton’s almost indefinable air of casual, sprawling literary bonhomie.

For the place does sprawl, literally. Like some form of alien life, it has gradually taken over two or three other shops in its little complex, making it as much of a village as a store. You’re always discovering corners you forgot were there, or sections you never even knew existed. A kind of intimacy comes with this charming quasi-disorder, an at-home feeling that effortlessly draws in those who are passionate about the written word. For the truth is, anyone can feel at home at Dutton’s. You just have to want to.