3 of 7 books I love. Others have described the Madison Avenue Bookshop, where I worked part-time from 1975 to 1992, as a salon out of Stendahl, Maupassant, or Proust. I’d have said Fitzgerald, with copious doses of John O’Hara – a copious Fitzgerald with better dialogue. A bastion of the East Coast establishment, in the mid-80s there was an influx of Californians, heralded by a tan Rodeo Drive attired minor celeb with the dubious distinction of introducing the first mobile phone, a DynaTAC 8000x, to our snug, smug print-centric scene.
The man was the enduring caricature of the ill-mannered, cell-centric, bore we’ve all been coerced into becoming. “Only in LA, kiddies,” I intoned to my Saville Row suited employer, Arthur Lehman Loeb, in my best Cindy Adams, only to have NY Post gossip columnist Harriet Van Horne overhear me.
I’d been to California in the late ‘60s and left on purpose. The best that one could say of it had been said by Joan Didion and when Joan, her husband John, and her brother-in-law Nick decamped Hollywood for the Upper East Side their being exceptions and our exceptionality were confirmed.
Outsiders were often cavalierly dismissed in the 10021 zip as N.O.S.D. – “Not Our Sort, Dear.”
The Didion/Dunnes were close to my client/friend Susanna Moore, who introduced us. The author of My Old Sweeheart was the former Mrs. Dick Sylbert, the legendary film production designer, and preceded the Didion/Dunnes’ relocation these inscriptions chronicle, to 30 East 71st, a block from the shop.  The neighborhood haunts Elaine’s, La Goulue, Mortimer’s, St Ambroeuse and The Right Bank were familiar to them and the bookshop was where they had an account and signed their books. Their publishers shopped with us.
They privileged us with their business and their company. John’s novel True Confessions was a favorite noir, both the novel and the film. John and Joan’s script is worth reading. Starring Roberts DeNiro and Duval, Charles Durning’s performance is what I remember best.
My copy of the ’77 first editon’s inscribed by John in ’82, just after the movie premiered. It’s the story of the Blue Dalia Murder that James Ellroy made his name retelling, much as John’s brother Nick would retell a Truman Capote (another customer) story as The Two Mrs Grenvilles and Trollope’s The Was We Live Now – I remember selling him his copy – as People Like Us.
Joan was a style icon to our clientele. Play It As It Lays and Slouching Towards Bethlehem nailed the looming decade’s Left Coast zeitgeist as much as local Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers or Bonfire of the Vanities did the Right’s.
Joan had fashion world credentials our literary ladies – Francesca, Francine, Daphne, Lauren, Patricia, Annabelle, Fran & etc – could relate to but a cool they could only aspire to. If these Left Coast people were attractively laid back, Susanna, originally from Hawaii, was more so and the inscription from Joan’s Democracy here refers to Susanna’s My Old Sweetheart:
24 May ’84 – “For Kurt, Another view of Honolulu –“
(also see: http://www.the-private-library.com/…/susanna-moore-on-the-…/)
The inscriptions in Joan’s books bracket their move :
10. October ’87 – “For Kurt, With hope we will meet every day when (and if) we find an apartment nearby – x” (in Miami).
6 June ’92 – “For Kurt, Part of our psychic neighborhood – x” (in After Henry)
Such were the charms of carriage trade bookselling in the last decade of print literacy’s being a ballast to society. When Madison Avenue Bookshop closed in 2001 the salon was over by a decade. Mrs Astor’s 400, that was still in evidence when I started at the shop, went up in Mr. Wolfe’s flames in the 80s, the 90s seeing in the technological devastation of such niceties as salons and soulful literary conversations over fine red wines.
Art historian John Richardson, another regular, passing lately reminded me again of what a fine time and finer place New York was when people talked about books as much as they talk about real estate. Of course, everything is better when you’re young and generate.
As per the publication dates of these books, our friendship sustained from ’82 through ’92 to 2003, the last time I saw Joan by happenstance on Madison Ave, just after John died and I was able to again give my condolences. She responded kindly, commiserating:
“Oh, Kurt, I’ve wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your book and how well I appreciate what you went through. I had a book come out that day (Sept 11, 2001 – Political Fictions) and mine didn’t sell either. And to add insult to injury my publisher sent me to a Barnes & Noble in Nebraska where nobody showed up.”