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

Physical artifacts carry memory and meaning, and this is as true of important historical texts as it is of cherished childhood books. Sitting in any library, surrounded by high shelves of books, I sense the profoundly rich history of scholarship as something real, and it’s both humbling and inspiring. This manifestation of reality is true of other artifacts as well. We can read about the Holocaust or where Emily Dickinson wrote her “letter to the world” or where Jim Morrison is buried. We can view online photos of all these places. Still, each year, thousands of people visit Auschwitz, The Homestead, and Père Lachaise. I suppose our desire to be near books rises from a similar impulse; they root us in something larger than ourselves, something real. For this reason, I am sure that hardbound books will survive, even long after e-books have become popular. When I walk down the street and almost everyone I pass is sequestered in his own iPod or cell phone universe, I can’t help thinking that our connection to books is still, after all these centuries, as important as it is intangible. It is this connection that makes my parents’ and grandparents’ old books so special to me, and the Kräutterbuch so sublime.

12

What More Could I Ask?

S ince Gilkey, who was free once more, was now unwel come at his favorite bookstores, he satisfied his need to be around books by visiting the library, which he did almost daily. He had decided to collect first editions of books by Nobel Prize winners, and the next time we met, he was happy to tell me that he had already found one, by Dario Fo, who won the prize in 1997. Gilkey had brought it along, a small, slim paperback with a plain red cover, which he handed to me. I noticed that on the back of the book there was what appeared to be a library sticker. When I asked him about it, he mumbled something about how he had bought it at a library sale in Modesto. While we continued to talk, he picked at the label, trying, I presumed, to remove it.

When I again asked Gilkey where he was storing his books, he said with a shrug and a knowing look, “Technically, I don’t have any books.” I was pretty sure he would have liked to tell me more, but he recognized this particular risk and with uncharacteristic caution was not willing to take it. Gilkey, who dreamed of being admired for his collection, was caught in a trap of his own making. As much as he wanted to show off his acquisitions, the very act would result in his losing them. Every book Gilkey added to his collection could now be only a private pleasure, not for anyone else’s viewing, with one exception: me. I had become his audience of one. He couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me everything, nor show me all of his books, but he could show me small paperbacks that may or may not have been bought at a library sale and talk to me about their significance. The bigger “purchases,” however, would remain in hiding, at least for the time being. Still, I had the sense that if I talked to Gilkey enough, some book-related gem would come out of it, and I was compelled to find it. I was hoping to dig up surprises as fervently as any book collector, so we set up another time to meet.

The discovery of valuable book treasures is not limited to out-of-the-way barns in New Hampshire. San Francisco dealer John Windle told me about going to an auction in London several years ago for the estate sale of a famous book collector whose books, furniture, and other items were up for bid. While reviewing the inventory, Windle opened a bureau drawer. Inside, unknown to anyone—not the auction house, nor his fellow dealers, nor the bidders—lay a copy of William Blake’s illustrated Book of Job , an exquisite volume of twenty-one engravings. An exacting poet, artist, and printer, Blake has always been a favorite of collectors, and the Book of Job is one of his finest works.

“Tucked inside the Book of Job ,” noted Windle, “I found something even more valuable: a four-page broadside also by Blake, ‘The Song of Liberty.’” Like a Russian matryoshka doll, one treasure lay within another, which hid inside another. The chest was priced about $2,000, and the Book of Job inside it was worth $100,000. The broadside hiding between its pages, “The Song of Liberty,” hadn’t been up for auction in forty years, so when Windle held it in his hands, he didn’t know its value. He said he was conscious at that moment that no one else was aware of the broadside’s existence. “Ninety percent of me wanted to put it in my pocket and go to lunch,” he said. “But my conscience wouldn’t let me.” He informed the auction house of his finds. Three months later, “The Song of Liberty” sold for $25,000.

At our next meeting at Café Fresco, Gilkey told me about how his hunting was going. He had been researching Iris Murdoch, whose book Under the Net was number ninety-five on the Modern Library’s list of “100 Best Novels.” He was particularly interested in her writings on existentialism. He said that he’d read Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and his take on their philosophical leanings was personal.

“The way they can’t differentiate between right and wrong,” he said of existentialists. “Well, I’ve been thinking that could be me.”

Gilkey told me he was hoping to visit Los Angeles for a book fair and Arizona for a horror book festival. I asked him if traveling wasn’t awfully risky, suggesting that he might get caught violating the terms of his parole, but he dismissed capture as unlikely. And being around so many books would surely be a temptation too strong for him to resist, but when I asked him about it, he said, “Sometimes it’s tempting to do it again, to be honest, but it’s too much of a risk.” But taking risks, gambling even on his freedom, had never been a deterrent.

Earlier, Gilkey had agreed to show me the pay phones he used to call in book orders, and now I suggested we visit one.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “this one here is pretty good.”

Next to the café we’d met in so often, in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, stood one of his favorites. We gathered our things and walked over to it.

Gilkey opened the Yellow Pages, turned to the rare book pages, and ran his finger across the advertisements.

“Now, see, I’ve done some of these. . . . Looking back at it, I should have probably stayed away from that one,” he said as his finger drifted down the page. “I’ve been to Kayo, I’ve been to Argonaut . . . Brick Row . . . Thomas Goldwasser. He almost got me in trouble. And here’s Black Oak Books,” he said, with his finger on the ad. “I’ll just call them. It’s toll-free.”

I thought that perhaps I hadn’t heard him correctly, that he was only going to pantomime a call, but a moment later he was actually punching in the numbers. With the receiver at his ear, waiting for someone to answer, he said to me, “I pretty much remember the phrases I used. I memorized them.”

I watched, dumbfounded, grateful, and guilty.

“No one answered,” he said as he hung up the phone. “It’s a little irritating when they don’t. When they would do that, later I would definitely make sure to get a book from them. I’d make it a priority.”

He searched the ads again. “Brick Row?”

I couldn’t help myself. “You’re not really going to call them,” I said.

“Maybe just to ask a question,” he said. “Well, okay, maybe not. How about Jeffrey Thomas Fine and Rare Books?” he asked, referring to an ad. “Or Robert Dagg? Here’s Moe’s Books. They’re actually quite good.”

He settled on Serendipity Books in Berkeley, from which he’d stolen more than once, and dialed the number.