Jon Robin Baitz, playwright, screenwriter, and creator of the television series Brothers & Sisters, pens a remembrance of Glenn Goldman and the beginning of Book Soup. From LA Weekly:

In the 1980s, the first iteration of Book Soup was closer to San Vicente; a tiny, chic little maze, a bit like a set from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The store had various levels and thick shelves, with paint the patina of café con leche, and was open from 10 a.m. to midnight. Glenn was a genius at book buying, really. It was his special skill to understand that books were sexy. And if he had to get the British edition of Martin Amis’ Money because it had more élan, so he would. Glenn was as curatorial with his shelves as Gagosian was with his Schnabels. His timing was perfect: He opened at the exact time houses like Vintage were reintroducing a kind of vigorous American lit to a new generation of readers. Glenn’s shop was where you went to find the latest from small presses like Sun & Moon and Black Sparrow — gorgeous books made pretty much by hand in California. Before Hunter’s in Westwood or Beverly Hills had Jay McInerney, Bret Ellis, Joan Didion, Steve Erickson and Kate Braverman — you would know to first go to Book Soup and put it on your house account. The little store he made so carefully was as emblematic of L.A. as Shakespeare & Company is to Paris. The house accounts were perfect, old school — like the house accounts you used to be able to get at restaurants like Joe Allen (now Orso). It made book buying more glamorous, and if you were broke — possible.

Keep reading at laweekly.com.

This Sunday: A memorial service for Glenn Goldman is at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City at 1 p.m. More info.

Previously at CAA: Book Soup Founder Dies.