He also gave me some amazing items and was incredibly generous with his time. Remember the barbershop a couple storefronts up? Bobby was funny as hell. A different place and time.
Same thing with me. Red gave me a fountain pen that Buk gave him; he gave me one of those "pearlescent" matchbooks from their wedding; and he gave me several of those Black Sparrow New Year's things that were printed for friends of the press. Stuff like that. Sometimes he gave me stuff even when I didn't buy anything. And yes, I DO remember that barbershop. One of the barbers there, a fellow named "Eddie," was also hilarious. I don't remember Bobby. Eddie walked with a limp. My buddies and I would sometimes share a few hilarious stories with Eddie while sipping on Zombies at Don the Beachcomber up the street on the other side of the Boulevard. Ah, those were the dayz.....
You may have been tight with him and I have a close friend who was VERY tight with him, but because he had a few people that he was great with does not make one a people person.
You do make a good point here. I suppose it's all about timing and, perhaps, personality? Does anyone in LA remember that enigmatic character who ran "Aldine Books" on the east side of Hollywood Boulevard? He was one really eccentric fellow; it took me MONTHS to get to the point where he trusted me enough to invite me into his little cubby-hole of a perch upstairs, where the real treasures were. Same thing with my late friend Ken Hyre, the former owner of West LA Books. I developed friendships with them, and many other cantankerous sorts (Charlie Saltzman at Canterbury Books suddenly comes to mind), because I knew the importance of doing so, in order to have access to the best stuff. And it turned out that most of them proved to be kind fellows with an armadillo-like exterior. That was my experience and perception, at any rate.
So he acquired (and sold) Pam Miller's stolen letters and books from an unquestionable character?
If he "knew his books" then he had to know who the letters belonged to, and that he wasn't buying them from the owner.
I am not familiar with that history or scenario. Was there ipso facto proof that Red purchased from a questionable source; that the purchase turned out to be stolen; and that he then sold those letters?
my worst experience ever at a bookstore in LA was at Book Soup attempting to get a job.
I remember Book Soup. I was really never that impressed with the place. I would occasionally stop in to see what they were doing, but since wasn't antiquarian/used stuff, I never spent much time there. Bottom line, Adam, is that you realize that Red wasn't a narcissistic twit, trustafarian, bullshitter, poseur, or any of those other unsavory things. What you saw was exactly what you got. And I don't blame you for harboring some residual resentment over that experience at Book Soup. Tell you what...people REMEMBER Red Stodolsky - he has been immortalized in the work of Bukowski. Those twits at Book Soup have no such distinction, at least none that I'm aware of.