Brick and Mortar: The Closing of Samuel French on Sunset

A few days ago, I heard that Samuel French Film & Television Bookshop, is closing its Sunset Boulevard location at the end of this month. I felt crushed by this news. Samuel French, especially the Sunset blvd. location ( other locations still live on,) has been one of my favorite places since I was a teenager. Bookstores are magic and for a theatre lover, Samuel French is the most magical of all.

My love of theatre and plays began well before I discovered Samuel French. It started in elementary school, when I was about ten and I found the play section at our local Crown Books. My mom and I used to have an amazing ritual, where every Friday night we would go the bookstore and she would buy us each a new book. As soon as I discovered theater, I began to amass quite an impressive collection of plays. Neil Simon, especially his Brighton Beach Trilogy, was the first playwright that I really loved. I read plays and became familiar with playwrights, before even attending my first play. My mom had instilled a love for books and movies (our Sunday morning ritual was a trip to the cinema), but she wasn't a fan of live theater.

As soon as I saw my first play, I was hooked. It was a production of The Phantom of the Opera at the Ahmanson Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. I would guess that many Los Angeles kids of my generation had this same show as their first musical or theatre experience. It ran at the Ahmanson Theatre for four years and to say it was a big deal in Los Angeles is an understatement. I ended up seeing it seven times during its run.

Shortly after, I auditioned for The Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) and was accepted to begin my sophomore year as a theatre major. I love theater and respect the art of acting, but acting was never for me. I love my high school, the friends that I made, and the many incredible experiences that it afforded me, but I wish at the time that my school had offered a writing department. It would have been a better fit for me. I did take the optional playwriting classes, where I worked on abysmal experimental theater pieces that I’d be mortified if they ever come back to haunt me!

It was through LACHSA, that I discovered Samuel French Bookshop. It changed my life. My passion for plays was no longer relegated to the single bookcase that most bookstores offered, but now I had an entire store of theatrical books. AN ENTIRE STORE!!!

Samuel French had two locations in Los Angeles. The smaller location was in Studio City and it’s lovely, but the real prize was the Sunset Boulevard location in Hollywood. Both bookstores were located about a twenty minute drive from my house, but asking my mom for a trip to Samuel French, was akin to asking her to drive me to Florida. She hated it. I think worse, she knew that it wasn’t as simple as a quick shop, that she could leave me to browse all day. She would agree to quarterly visits or if I desperately needed something for school ( this was the early/mid 90’s, before online shopping was a thing) and she would wait in the car with a novel, while I had about an hour to shop.

When I had my first car and could drive myself, it was bliss. I would spend hours discovering new playwrights. Samuel French on Sunset blvd was my happy spot. I continued to be a regular customer for many decades and it was a bookstore that not only brought me so much joy, but opened me up to new writers and new worlds.

Learning about the closure, I’m not only sad for what will no longer exist, but I feel guilty. Through changes in my life and reading habits, I have not been a recent customer. I have not visited Samuel French in over five years. One of the reasons that the store is closing, is because more customers are shopping online, they cannot justify a brick and mortar store. The delight of browsing and the thrill of discovery is a unique aspect of physical bookstores. I am using this as a stark reminder, to keep shopping at physical bookstores, to keep spending my money in the stores, rather than online. As much as I love the convenience of online shopping, it simply does not replace the magic of a physical bookstore. Online stores cater to well-known authors, rather than exploring new or lesser known talent. The experience for a book lover does not compare.

Samuel French will continue to exist in other physical locations and online, but it hurts that the Sunset location is closing. It really hurts.

Book Review- Kelly Grey Carlisle's We Are All Shipwrecks

Thank you to Sourcebooks for providing me with an advance copy of Kelly Grey Carlisle's memoir, We Are All Shipwrecks, in exchange for an honest review. 

PLOT- When Kelly Grey Carlisle was just three weeks old, she was left by her mother in a hotel room dresser drawer. Carlisle's mother was murdered, her body strangled and dumped in an abandoned lot in Los Angeles. Although it was suspected that her murder was the work of the Hillside Strangler, the case was never solved. 

Carlisle was told that her father was unknown and she was taken in by her eccentric grandfather and his much younger wife, Marilyn. Her grandfather could be loving and jovial, but he could also be angry and verbally abusive. When she was young, Carlisle was treated to fancy clothes and meals out, through money earned from her grandfather's pornography store business. Later in her childhood, money would get tight, as her grandfather decided to pour all available funds into his dream of owning a boat. They ended up living on a boat that was primarily docked in a marina with a group of off-beat and fellow down-on-their-luck neighbors. 

Although Carlisle lived with her grandfather and Marilyn. she honors several adults who took an active interest in her childhood and who helped raise her. We Are All Shipwrecks is a memoir of discovering ones roots, while acknowledging the impact of how you were raised.

LIKE- Carlisle's life is fascinating and heartbreaking. I was most struck by the contradictions and confusions in her life. She sees two very different men in her grandfather; the man who is fun-loving and the man who cuts with his words. She loves Marilyn as if Marilyn was her mother, but is heartbroken to discover Marilyn's alcoholism. She is curious about the porn business, but later realizes that some of the porn that her grandfather sells involves violence towards women. In particular, there are parallels between strangulation porn and her mother dying by strangulation. Carlisle mentions a guilty feeling of knowing that the porn business funded so much of her childhood, such as private schools and material possessions. 

I had a very personal connection to Carlisle's story. Towards the end of her memoir, she talks about being in her twenties and taking the initiative to research her family. She discovers a relative who mentions that Carlisle's mom died in a car accident. My father died in a scandalous way and when I was a teenager, I learned that all of my distant relatives on my father's side thought that he had died in a car accident. It's a misunderstanding that has caused a huge riff amongst my family. I had chills and a burst of anger when I read this part in Carlisle's memoir. Although I was raised by my mom, I can also relate to her desperate need to find out information about her family. I went through similar motions as she did, looking up newspaper articles and latching on to whatever information that I could find in our family records. Information is so precious. I was crushed to read that photographs of her mom and grandmother were destroyed when their boat got wrecked in a storm. 

Beyond having an incredible story, Carlisle's descriptive and emotional writing kept me glued to We Are All Shipwrecks. Her life is filled with many unusual characters and situations that are completely unfamiliar to me. I can't imagine living on a boat. I had no idea that there are places in Los Angeles (my hometown) where there are these floating trailer parks. Carlisle is also only a year older than me, so many aspects of her childhood were familiar.

DISLIKE- Not a single thing. Carlisle's story is unusual and compelling.

RECOMMEND- Yes. I enthusiastically recommend, We Are All Shipwrecks. Carlisle's story is one that I will not soon forget and I loved her overriding message about it taking a village to raise a child. This is a beautiful tribute to her messy childhood and to the people that she has loved.