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Dan Munoz waits on tables in a West Hollywood restaurant, yet last year he plunked down $900 to become the proud owner of an 1888 directory of Los Angeles residents.
Dr. Irwin (Jack) Pincus of Beverly Hills, a retired gastroenterologist, owns more than 1,700 rare volumes, including strikingly illustrated and beautifully preserved medical treatises from the 16th Century or earlier. His collection, assembled over a quarter of a century, is considered one of the best of its kind.
And then there is the anonymous buyer who spent $400,000 in a matter of days to put together what his dealer calls "absolutely the finest collection of detective fiction in private hands."
All three are part of a growing subculture of Southern California book collectors. Once thought of as a pastime for the clubby set-for the "kind of people who go fox-hunting," as collector Priscilla Martin Tamkin put it-"bibliomania" has spread to schoolteachers, postal workers and students as well as corporate executives, physicians and movie moguls.
While it may be true that Southern California homes are more likely to have swimming pools than libraries, the pursuit of fine books has long been a tradition that defies stereotypes about the region's lack of high culture. And it appears to be an avocation on the rise. Some experts, such as Kenneth Karmiole, owner of a rare bookstore in Santa Monica, say the Los Angeles area is second only to New York when it comes to book collecting. One Orange County rare bookseller said his business over the last year is up by 30%.
The lower end of the market has been stimulated by local antiquarian book fairs, where attendance has far outstripped similar events in other cities. The California International Antiquarian Book Fair set an attendance record of 9,700 last year in Los Angeles, a 50% increase over 1988 and a 29% increase over 1989, when the event was held in San Francisco. About 4,000 people turned out in April for a different, semiannual book fair in Glendale.
Today, the Southern California chapter of the Antiquarian Booksellers Assn. of America lists more than 50 book purveyors from San Diego to Solvang. As rents have soared, many have taken to operating out of their homes. Without walk-in business, they...