Los Angeles, though not widely known as a hotbed of intellectual activity, is nonetheless home to a number of excellent bookshops. Perhaps the most congenial of these is Sam Johnson's, tucked away in an unprepossessing part of town between a cobbler's and a costume shop. The atmosphere of Sam's belongs to a different time and place; but really, despite or perhaps largely because of its nostalgic air, this sanctuary could exist nowhere but here and now; its gentle ambience is the perfect tonic for shattered nerves, an infallible panacea for the afflictions of the late twentieth century, from which we may be slowly recovering. The great elegance of Sam's lies in its modesty and utility, and in the delicate, eclectic taste with which its plain wooden shelves are stocked; here are no dusty paperback bodice-rippers, nor yet the mincing superiority of virginal, gilded first editions still and quiet under glass; mostly, there are good, comfortable reading copies of the classics of English literature; heavy cloth bindings, thick and scented with age, type that you can feel sunk into creamy paper, sculpting it like Braille.
Sam's is pretty heavy on the eighteenth century, naturally, but medieval literature is well represented, too, as is the seventeenth century (especially poets). The literary criticism here is of exquisite quality, also with an antiquarian bent; not a semiotician in sight. There is a shelf of Loeb classics, some very good scholarly art books, and a large collection of the great fantasists--HP Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Clark Asheton Smith, Lord Dunsany and Algernon Blackwell--Bob Klein's particular obsession. Sam Johnson's is Bob's domain. He opened the shop in 1977 with his partner and childhood friend, Larry Vespers--and he reigns at his commodious desk every Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday like a dragon atop his mound.
Bob is possessed
of a singularly vivid and poetic personality; one can easily imagine his
students irresistibly transfixed by that resonant, richly modulated baritone
and infectious, booming laugh, like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost
Ark. He is a handsome man with a leonine air, not tall but strong and
well built. Bob's passion for books, literature and, indeed, for anything
to do with civilized life is evident in every corner of this beguiling little
shop. A beautiful baby grand piano, once belonging to his opera-singing
mother, graces the front of the store; recitals are held here regularly.
The life-sized cardboard image of John Wayne stationed by the front door
fails to strike a jarring note. A group of prints is hung behind the desk,
including one of a silent movie actress done up in ersatz Indian garb, labelled
waggishly, "Mrs. Sam Johnson."
"I read mostly English literature; renaissance, seventeenth century, eighteenth century, nineteenth century; not very much twentieth century, except people like Arthur Machen... a few other twentieth century authors. I like medieval literature, the great world literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey and Dante, and that's the kind of stuff that I read, that's the world that I live in."
"Hey, didn't Machen translate some really bizarre thing... Brillat-Savarin, I think?"
"Casanova, he translated Casanova, an introduction to Brillat-Savarin, no he didn't translate that, just the introduction... he did translate Le Moyen de Parvenir, and he did translate the Heptameron of Margaret of Navarre...we have an Arthur Machen section... did I tell you I went to Arthur Machen's house last year, I made a pilgrimage and took pictures, remember the part in Hill of Dreams where Lucien sleeps in the amphitheatre? I have pictures of the amphitheatre. Arthur Machen is my favorite author."
One always wonders how anyone manages to start a business of any kind, let alone one so very romantic and (presumably) impractical as a bookshop.
"So my girlfriend of the time said, Listen, say, you've always wanted to open a bookshop, why don't you do that, and I said, that's a good idea. So I approached Larry and I said, why don't we open a bookshop? And he said, no, I don't want to be a merchant--nope, nope. I didn't have much money, being a part-time schoolteacher, but I'd take thirty dollars, and go to auctions and things like that, and try to get some books, a few books and then Larry changed his mind, and said I will come in, I will, and to make a long story short, we opened with ten thousand books, and each of us was responsible for acquiring five thousand books... was it ten thousand, or twenty thousand?" he bellows amiably in the direction of the back office.
"Ten thousand," a quieter voice responds.
He is also a writer, of course. Of fiction. He is working on a novel and has had a number of short stories published. In addition to literature, he teaches creative writing.
"The last short story I had published was in a girlie magazine, which is called Gallery, and it was published in the July issue of 1993. The story is about a sex fiend who is sent to the insane asylum. It's a humorous piece."
There is a fine selection of cookbooks here, but in sharp contrast to quite a few gourmandizing booksellers of our acquaintance, Bob isn't exactly keen on food.
"I don't have the time or the patience. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I'm here all day, and then I teach classes from seven to ten o'clock, and I come home and I feed the cats and I microwave some potatoes, then I usually take a TV dinner and I throw that over the potatoes. That's my idea of food, and with it I'll take a biscuit or a piece of toast and I'll put peanut butter on that." A thoughtful pause. "And then I'll have some wine."
Anyone might envy the method and intensity Bob brings to his copious reading. He has recently embarked on the complete Pepys.
"It'll take you forever!"
"No, six weeks."
Afterwards he is going to relax with Wycherley.
"I generally do more rereading than reading, although this is interesting; at the close of last year, well I have my English literature and American literature arranged chronologically, but anyhow, I suddenly realized that there are lots of books that I'd been meaning to read, but I've never read! That's because my reading is too haphazard. So I said, I'm going to adopt a reading program for myself. Basically I went in to start at the very beginning, and read every book I have not read. So I started with my medieval stuff, and now I'm almost into the eighteenth century, that's in one year's time, that's a lot of books. I've not yet read all of Johnson, or all of Boswell, and I'm going to read all of Gibbon. And then in addition to this, I'm going to read other things as well. So this way, it's very satisfying."
Bob may be headed for the eighteenth century, having slogged with admirable fortitude all the way through Pepys, but, as he suggests, he is sure to stop well short of the twentieth. Is the only good writer, a dead writer?
"Whom do you think is overrated?"
"Everybody writing today but a handful."
And then he proceeded to name half a dozen of his close friends. Bob is an original--it's unsurprising that one must reach back pretty far to find even the appropriate word to describe him.
"What reference work do you consider most indispensable?"
"I don't think I use reference books."
"You don't use a dictionary? Ever?"
"I think I used it once."
Any eccentricity
he may possess is entirely unaffected and comes, largely, from a long and
genuine attachment to the things of the past. Bob's conversation is remarkably
free of slang, for instance; and, lively and sparkling as he is, he blinks
with the air of a man woken from a long nap if anything topical should be
introduced. That said, the one thing he really got a bit worked up about
was the issue of political correctness. In the course of a great deal of
conversation, Bob refused to say a single word against any writer, living
or dead, but he flared up with virtuous anger when confronted with subject
of bowdlerized fairy tales (the boring newfangled ones with no boiling alive
or throwing in ovens.)
"You asked me what I hate, that's what I hate. Those people and what they are trying to do to the civilized world. Those left-wing fanatics. I hate them."
This was the strongest statement we heard from this kind and thoughtful man, who had no answer to the question, "Well, isn't there some book, some writer, that you just can't stand?" Bob thought the question over carefully, with a puzzled air, and then said with characteristic gentleness, "well, if I don't enjoy a book, I don't read it."
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