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

I BEGAN to sense that the urge to collect is not born all of a sudden, but gains momentum after, say, one or two purchases. I wondered, if I bought a few first editions of books that had inspired me in my own writing, whether I might feel what collectors felt: I might actually become one of them. A good place to start would be first editions of some of my favorite works of narrative nonfiction: In Cold Blood , The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down , The Professor and The Mad-man , The Orchid Thief . I began perusing online booksellers’ websites to get a sense for how much they would cost. As I read descriptions of inscriptions and other one-of-a-kind traits, I felt the first stirrings of what I imagined was the collector’s hunger.

In reading about this hunger, I had repeatedly come across evidence of the widespread fondness for first editions. Other than original manuscripts, they are the closest most readers can get to an author. This sense of a book as an extension of a person is not remotely new. In 1644, John Milton wrote: “For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.” 2Nearly three hundred years later, in 1900, Walt Whitman echoed that sentiment: “Camerado! this is no book, / Who touches this touches a man.” 3A collector of paintings can get his hands on the one and only; a book collector’s best option, aside from the original manuscript, is the first edition. Collectors can’t get enough of them. But according to a riddle I came across, this predilection can be problematic: Which man is happier, “he that hath a library with well nigh unto all the world’s classics, or he that hath thirteen daughters? The happier man is the one with thirteen daughters, because he knoweth that he hath enough.” 4

I plunged forward anyway and decided to start with a couple of books by Gay Talese, since he would soon be coming through San Francisco and might sign them. I had been warned about the dangers of ordering books from non-ABAA dealers, but I was in a hurry, and the few ABAA dealers I called didn’t have what I was looking for. I ordered first editions of The Overreachers and The Bridge , about $40 each, from two non-ABAA dealers I found online. When they arrived, I eagerly opened the bubble-wrapped packages. The Overreachers was in “very good” shape, my first first edition! The Bridge , while also in “very good” shape, was not a first edition at all—where The Overreachers’ copyright page clearly identified it as a “First Edition,” The Bridge made no mention of its printing. I had no idea what edition it was. I contacted the dealer, who admitted that she was mistaken and agreed to reimburse me the difference in price. Lesson learned.

Gay Talese did sign my copy of The Overreachers , and when I brought it home, I put it on the shelf with my non- first editions. I felt that maybe it needed a place of greater honor, but I never got around to moving it. Having touched the pages of a Flaubert manuscript at the New York book fair, I could appreciate why someone might want an original manuscript. Yet, I had to admit, I could not fully grasp the ardor for printed first editions. So much of collecting is driven by emotions, probably most of it, and although I understood the attraction of first editions intellectually, I didn’t feel it. The strongest attachments I have to books are those with which I have a personal history. When I was a child sick with the flu, my mother gave me her childhood copy of Anne of Green Gables . I was as charmed by its old-fashioned beauty as I was by the story. It had faded taupe linen with an illustration of Anne in profile on the cover. Inside was an inscription: “To Florence from Aunt Freddie, Xmas 1911,” meaning that not only had my mother read it, but also her mother, Florence. I also treasure my father’s vividly illustrated Peter Rabbit (in which Peter looks like a lunatic with devilish eyes) and his family of cat books ( Mother Cat , Fluffy Kitty , Muffy Kitty , and, best of all, Puffy Kitty ). Of all my grandparents’ books, none is more bewitching than Lettres de mon moulin , a 1948 book with lovely watercolor illustrations of French country life. (Does the fact that I adore a book I cannot read a single word of indicate at least some leaning toward bibliomania?) It has a soft cover with an illustration of a windmill and is wrapped in cracked glassine. The way it obscures the illustration makes me think of an old train’s window. None of these books is of any value in the marketplace (I checked), but I will always appreciate them for the stories they hold, both on the page (those in English, that is) and in their histories. I doubt I’d feel any different if they were first editions—unless they were worth enough, say, to pay for my children’s education, in which case I’d have to part with them. But it would be a sad parting.

So my Talese first edition sat on my shelf wedged between my second or third or twelfth editions of other books. As passionate as I am about reading, and as appreciative as I am of the aesthetic, historic charms of old books, the collecting bug hadn’t caught me yet.

WHEN LANE HELDFOND was notified that the credit card number used for the purchase of the first editions of Joseph in Egypt and The Patchwork Girl of Oz was fraudulent, she was shocked, but assumed insurance would cover their loss—enough money, she realized, for her and Erik and their six-year-old daughter to take a vacation in Hawaii. She was mistaken; insurance didn’t cover it. (Unless merchants obtain signatures from bona fide cardholders, they must absorb the cost of the stolen goods.) Furious, she e-mailed Ken Sanders the details. She had read his recent notices, and unlike so many of her colleagues who are loath to expose their vulnerability, she felt it was important to get word out of their missing books. She wrote that a fairly knowledgeable man had called about buying books as gifts. Like the thief Sanders had warned the trade about, he had used a credit card to pay for them and said a relative would pick them up. But this thief was not elderly. He was in his thirties, she guessed, with dark hair.

Sanders had been sending “Northern California Credit Card Thief” notices to the trade, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was “thieves” he should be warning them about. Was this a gang? He felt as though he were chasing phantoms. His detective work might have been easier had all his fellow dealers been willing to talk about their losses.

THE PLEASURE of Gilkey’s extended vacation with his father was heightened by his success at getting so much for free. Gilkey had two ways to wrangle a night in a hotel: using a stolen credit card number or telling hotel management that the toilet in his room had overflowed, thereby getting a refund. He found that most hotels guaranteed one-hundred-percent satisfaction, so if he complained to the general manager, most of the time they wouldn’t charge him. The same went for meals. Only a couple of times did his methods not work: at the St. Francis Hotel, in San Francisco, where they held his luggage until he could come up with cash to cover the room, and at the Mandarin Oriental, also in San Francisco, where he’d stayed because he had wanted to experience a five-star hotel. When they didn’t offer a refund after he said the toilet overflowed, he cleared the room of the shampoos, soaps, and complimentary slippers, which gave him a small sense of vindication.