Dawson's Book Shop: Celebrating their 100th Year
- by Bruce E. McKinney
One of the California Travel Series developed by Glen Dawson
These days, when you step into Dawson's on Larchmont Street, you find a visual rhombus that bespeaks southern California in the 1960s and inside a large and relatively open space that houses both books and images. It is impossible not to be drawn to the photographs. They immediately connect in a way no book can because books require patience, determination, judgment and time and both the reader, and the listener if there are any, need all these skills to equally share the book experience. Images, by comparison, reach the spectator viscerally connecting to both the right and left sides of the brain at the same moment, and register a complete feeling [impression] in a few moments. Hollywood is after all only a short mile or so away but to be frank, so is Greenwich Village, at least spiritually. You are in a mind-set, and the geography is intellectual.
Here, on the showroom floor, you see the honored past in the shelves below and on the walls above, one of the barbarians at the gate that threaten the very future of traditional book collecting: photographic images. And why is this? Because, as two generations of Dawsons have already shown, you need to be willing to adjust. The world waits for no one. So Michael Dawson is adjusting. He is doing things differently than his grandfather, father and uncle and in some sense he is doing precisely what the Dawsons have always done: reflect the times. He is trying to find a way to balance the family's relationship to bookselling with his passion for photography, to find a way to interest collectors to help him carry the Dawson name on to the fourth generation. To visit Dawson's Book Shop online click here.
Dawson's will celebrate their 100th anniversary with an open house on Sunday afternoon, April 17th, from 2:30 until 5:00. Bernard Rosenthal will deliver a commentary at 3:00 pm. Those interested to attend should RSVP by phone 323 469-2186 or email Michael directly at michael@dawsonbooks.com.
Those who are interested to collect Dawson publications will be interested in the checklist of Dawson publications prepared by Doug Johns and available at John's Western Gallery.
For those who would like to look at the first catalogue issued by the Dawsons in 1907 it is provided: Catalogue No. 1
To search all the listings in Dawsons Catalogue No.1 in the AED