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James M. Dourgarian, Bookman
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2341 Hickory Drive
Concord, CA 94520
925-349-4400
Established1980 - Member ABAA
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Click on the shopping basket by a item to create an email for us to contact you about ordering that item. You may also call 1 (925) 349-4400 to talk to Jim and place a phone order with Visa, Mastercard, or Discover. You may also arrange to pay by check. Click on the link below to email a general inquiry.
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James M.Dourgarian, Bookman, was established in 1980. We are members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA). Like all ABAA members, we answer to a higher authority and follow a higher standard of ethics that guarantees a successful transaction for all our customers.
We buy and sell old books, vintage books, collectible books, rare books, first edition books, and related ephemera. We maintain several specialties. Among them are American fiction first editions from c.1900 to the present. Within that general field, we have heavy emphasis in John Steinbeck and Steinbeckiana. Thus, we buy and sell Steinbeck primary first editions in dust jackets, signed/limited editions, his appearances in anthologies, his periodical appearances, books and periodicals about Steinbeck, film and theatre memorabilia, bibliographies, and miscellaneous items.
We also specialize in these same categories for these authors -- Jack London, Wallace Stegner, and Stephen King. Other specialties include Western Americana, books on California and the West, Photography books, books on Japan, China, and the Orient, and Armed Services Editions. The latter are vintage paperbacks issued to American GIs from 1943 to 1947. They are comprised of mysteries, Westerns, science fiction and fantasy, mainstream fiction, historical novels, science, poetry, adventure stories, and more.
Within our field of modern first editions, we also sell related film memorabilia Thus, we sell film posters, lobby card sets, pressbooks, stills, scripts, etc. for films made from the works of authors we carry such as John Steinbeck, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen King, Edward Abbey, Anne Rice, and many others.
| [John Steinbeck] Steinbeck, John. Typed Letter Signed. NY, John Steinbeck, May 28, 1948, first edition. A two-page, 91-line letter to long-time friend Alice Cohee, in 1933 she urged him to try one more time to place Tortilla Flat, at that time he had three books published, none of which were successful, he did try again after following her advice, Covici Freide took the book which then launched his Nobel Prize-winning career, he then gifted her a specially bound copy of Tortilla Flat, one of only two copies, he writes about the break up with his second wife metaphorically, "I haven't answered (her two letters) because of a kind of resorting process or maybe better said, a rebuilding process. It is not quick. The floor went out from under the world. And of course the first impulse is to patch and prop it up so you can walk on it again in some safety and it takes a little time to find out that that is wrong. You have to build a new floor sometimes a whole new house. To let go and to accept and to rebuild is very difficult because first you must get completely used the (to?) the knowledge that something is gone completely and will never return. That it isn't a man at all but an idea and a fabric and a texture and a state of life. It is a slow process, at least it is for me," he adds "And now I feel good and in some curious way released and free and I think that is probably the first symptom of acceptance," as for his writing, "I shall go to work very hard on something to take the place of the 'outer shore' which of course now cannot be done," that was a project planned to be done with Ed Ricketts, the famed marine biologist who was his best friend who died earlier that month, he writes "The problem is finally settled in my mind. The first impulse is to keep it and to let it hang on like a dirty ghost but now I know that is wrong and as soon as I can without shock to any one I will close it and let it go into the past and take its place with all other things that happened. That it was a fine thing to have happened does not make it any better to dress it like a grave," he goes on to write about his friend, "Ed was the most selfish man I have ever known, but my being that he could be the kindest and most associative and open. We, and I mean you and me and nearly everyone I know of the little confused failures in the world think they are being selfless when they are simply afraid and loathe to the trouble and purity of being themselves," he ponders where he will live next, "Thought at first I might buy the old home ranch in the corral de tierra but that would be complicated when I want simplicity. Then I thought of that little house in Pacific Grove. You remember it, the one where a million two hundred thousand years ago I made futile puppy passes at you. That is a nice little house with happy windows and a kind of secret garden. And I still have it. My father built it just before I was born," he "signs" the letter with a squiggle, there are a few cross outs and a couple of hand corrections, this letter was not recorded by Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. Folded for mailing, housed in its original mailing envelope. JD 36968 |  $5,500.00 |
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