Allison Bartlett - The Man Who Loved Books Too Much - The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

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In the tradition of
, a compelling narrative set within the strange and genteel world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him. Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be.
Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars? worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed ?bibliodick? (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure. With a mixture of suspense, insight, and humor, she has woven this entertaining cat-and-mouse chase into a narrative that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them. Immersing the reader in a rich, wide world of literary obsession, Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.
From Publishers Weekly
Bartlett delves into the world of rare books and those who collect—and steal—them with mixed results. On one end of the spectrum is Salt Lake City book dealer Ken Sanders, whose friends refer to him as a book detective, or Bibliodick. On the other end is John Gilkey, who has stolen over $100,000 worth of rare volumes, mostly in California. A lifelong book lover, Gilkey's passion for rare texts always exceeded his income, and he began using stolen credit card numbers to purchase, among others, first editions of Beatrix Potter and Mark Twain from reputable dealers. Sanders, the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association's security chair, began compiling complaints from ripped-off dealers and became obsessed with bringing Gilkey to justice. Bartlett's journalistic position is enviable: both men provided her almost unfettered access to their respective worlds. Gilkey recounted his past triumphs in great detail, while Bartlett's interactions with the unrepentant, selfish but oddly charming Gilkey are revealing (her original article about himself appeared in
). Here, however, she struggles to weave it all into a cohesive narrative. From Bookmarks Magazine
Bibliophiles themselves, reviewers clearly wanted to like
. The degree to which they actually did depended on how they viewed Bartlett's authorial choices. Several critics were drawn in by Bartlett's own involvement in the story, as in the scene where she follows Gilkey through a bookstore he once robbed. But others found this style lazy, boring, or overly "literary," and wished Bartlett would just get out of the way. A few also thought that Bartlett ascribed unbelievable motives to Gilkey. But reviewers' critiques reveal that even those unimpressed with Bartlett's style found the book an entertaining true-crime story.

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Mike said he was pretty sure that that was the only copy, but Sanders insisted. When Mike returned several minutes later, having dug up a very beat-up copy, Sanders handed it to the man.

“See?” he said, visibly pleased with himself. “Only eighty dollars—and the bonus is that it looks like it survived the fire!”

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much The True Story of a Thief a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession - изображение 12

How Sanders determines whether a book is worth $500 or $80 is based on several factors.

“In fields that I know something about and the few that I have some expertise in, experience weighs heavily on my decisions to acquire certain books or collections,” he wrote in a lengthy e-mail to me, “and ultimately that experience and knowledge will determine how I price the item.”

Much of a book’s value depends on literary fashion, and tastes change. Supply and demand also affect value. The first printing of Hemingway’s In Our Time , for example, was very small (1,225 copies), in contrast to the fifty-thousand-copy print run of The Old Man and the Sea . Pricing reflects that. Further factors include whether there’s a dust jacket (if not, the value is negligible), and if those jackets are price-clipped, worn, torn, or soiled. Modern first editions in poor shape can be worth as little as ten percent of a “perfect” copy.

So one copy of History of the Scofield Mine Disaster can be less than a fifth of the price of another—in this case, due to condition. The $80 price was undoubtedly fair, but I noticed that when Mike, who was well aware of what Sanders refers to as “their cash flow challenges,” heard Sanders announce the price of the bedraggled copy, he slumped at his desk behind the counter.

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BORN IN 1951, Ken Sanders was raised in a lapsed Mormon household in deeply devout Salt Lake City. He was encouraged to read and to collect, as his father did. (The elder Sanders, who passed away in 2008, built the preeminent collection of bottles manufactured in Utah, housed in a garage-museum next to his house.) Early on, Sanders began to view the Mormon social landscape with a fair amount of skepticism and the natural landscape with a reverence rivaled only by his love of books. Surrounded by believers at school and in the community, he said he learned “just enough about religion to stay the hell away from it.” It would not be stretching matters, however, to say that from the start, reading was his faith.

“My dad joked that when my mom gave birth to me I was clutching a book,” he said. As a boy, he devoured every book the librarians let him get his hands on, and some they didn’t. Once, on a school field trip to the South Salt Lake Library, he tried to check out copies of Dracula and Frankenstein , but because they were from the adult section, the librarian refused. He found a way to read them anyway. As much as he enjoyed withdrawing books from the library, though, he preferred owning them. At Woodrow Wilson Elementary, he lived for the Scholastic Book Service and Weekly Reader Books. “They would cost twenty-five, thirty-five cents. I’d recycle pop bottles for a nickel apiece and save up. Once a month, teachers would collect orders. Then the box would come, and the teacher would call out names and hand out a book here, a couple of books there. I was always the last kid called because there was always an entire box for me. I had more books ordered than the rest of the class put together. Such great classics as The Shy Stegasaurus of Cricket Creek . Oh, I loved that one.” To this day, he keeps at least one copy of it and other childhood favorites like Danny Dunn and the Antigravity Paint and Mrs. Pickerell Goes to Mars stocked in his store.

In junior high, Sanders was still a stubborn, determined boy who did what he needed to get what he wanted, even if it meant going up against formidable forces. It was a trait that he would make ample use of as security chair of the ABAA. On Saturdays Sanders would head downtown, walking all five miles instead of taking the bus in order to save money. With extra change in his pocket, he would try to muster courage for what he was about to do. Back then, he was desperate to get his hands on more comic books, but to do so he had to brave the surly junk store owner, who seemed to take pleasure in taunting kids.

“I was afraid of that old man,” he said. “If you went in, he’d yell at ya, but I wanted those comic books so bad. I’d go in and hang my belly over the lard barrel and reach down in there and fish out those forties and fifties comic books, then go up to the counter shaking, the man yelling at me all the time. He was probably just pulling my leg, but I was too young to know it.”

Soon after Sanders started collecting old comic books, he discovered Spider-Man. “The guy had problems,” he said, describing the superhero’s allure. “He had powers, but he was messed up. What awkward kid wouldn’t be attracted to that?” In contrast, Superman was invincible and boring. Spider-Man was a questioning, rebellious guy who knew he was doing right, but the world was hostile and suspicious of him. Years later, toward the end of Sanders’s term as security chair for the ABAA, one of his friends, a fellow bookseller, would describe him as “an outlaw who for the past six years has been the law.”

When he was fourteen, Sanders’s grandparents, Pop and Grammy, took him on a trip that would set the course of his life. They took him and his brother Doug to Southern California, where they visited Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, and the one place Sanders had requested specially: Bertrand Smith’s Acres of Books. “I have no idea how I ever heard about them in the first place, but I still remember the address: 240 Long Beach Boulevard, Long Beach, California. It was a really hot, hot day. Pop and I drove through the shipyards in Long Beach in a 1950s Ford Sedan. He parked right in front of the store. I was in there for hours, and the whole time, he just sat there in the car, chain-smoking the unfiltered Camels he would one day die from.”

There’s a difference between those who simply love books and those who collect them, and an experienced dealer can spot a collector in the time it takes to ask where they’ve stashed the first edition of The Hobbit (not likely to be sitting on open shelves). Bertrand Smith’s heart must have skipped a beat when young Sanders strolled in, eyes wide.

“The store went on seemingly to infinity,” said Sanders. “Stacks and stacks, tangled and overgrown, like a deep dark forest, but instead of trees, there were books. You had to climb up a rickety ladder to get to them, and it was hard to see because the only light in the place came from skylights way, way up. There was a locked room to the left where the rare books were. Bertrand Smith was a crusty old man, but somehow, I worked up the courage to ask him about my passions: Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, Maxfield Parrish. He actually let me into the rare book room, where I sat at the table, leafing through Poe’s The Raven . Each quatrain of the poem got a ten-by-fourteen-inch engraving by the nineteenth-century French illustrator Gustave Doré. I was thrilled. I remember it vividly—two feet tall and sixteen inches across, for seventeen dollars and fifty cents. I also bought a Maxfield Parrish, The Arabian Nights , for a few dollars, and an Alice in Wonderland , illustrated by Gwynedd Hudson, for two-fifty. She illustrated only two books in her life, and still, it’s one of my favorites. I had been putting coins in the piggy bank at Pop and Grammy’s, and Grammy had matched my deposits. I spent every blessed nickel I had on books that day. Still do. I’m older, balder, fatter, but not necessarily wiser.”

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