The Man Who Loved Books Too Much Read online

  “Uh, I don’t want to get your hopes up,” Sanders told him, holding the small book, about four by six inches, in the palm of his hand, “but if this is real, it’s worth six figures.” He told the young man he would need to authenticate it.

  It was real: a Mormon Book of Commandments from 1833, a precursor to the Doctrine and Covenants, one of the three scriptural works of the Mormon Church. At the time, the Mormons were at odds with their neighbors, and in retaliation for Joseph Smith’s destruction of an anti-Mormon newspaper, an angry mob stormed the printing press while the book was being printed and threw the printed sheets out the window. The story, which most agree is apocryphal, is that two little Mormon girls gathered up the sheets into their long skirts and hid in the cornfields until the mob had dispersed. From those loose pages, the books were then sewn by hand. Because of their volatile origins, most copies were incomplete, although a title page was added a few years later. Technically, because the books were never finished or professionally bound, the book wasn’t ever published. In the past 170 years, only twenty-nine copies have surfaced.1

  Sanders kept the Book of Commandments in a safe-deposit box and later sold it for the young man to a collector for $200,000, from which Sanders earned a commission.2 Mostly, however, these types of finds don’t just show up on dealers’ counters. Books go missing far more frequently. But of the theft of The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, Sanders had heard nothing. The store owners were not members of the ABAA.

  THE NEXT MONTHS were busy. In February, armed with a pile of credit card numbers, Gilkey took his father on a two-week trip to France and Germany, where they visited casinos, wineries, restaurants, and museums. They won a moderate but satisfying sum while gambling, which confirmed Gilkey’s feelings about his ability to take risks and come out unscathed, at least most of the time. They returned just in time for the Los Angeles Festival of the Book, where Gilkey “picked up” about ten more books, including a signed first-edition Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow. It is number eighty-six on the Modern Library’s list of one hundred best English-language novels.

  What people choose to collect is revealing. That Gilkey favors books from the Modern Library’s list is in keeping with his desire to be admired. He isn’t following his own taste as much as that of experts. The books are already sanctioned, surefire greatest hits, guaranteed to impress.

  Through the spring, Gilkey kept up his pace, stealing about a book or two a month. He is as adept at justifying these thefts as he was at pulling them off. He explained it to me like this: When he walks into a rare book store and ogles the riches lined up on the shelf, he sees them almost as the personal collection of the store owner. What a wealthy person this is! Look how many books he owns! It is not fair that he charges so much for a single book, Gilkey thinks. Books selling for $10,000 or $40,000 or half a million—they are all out of his reach. How am I to afford it? he asks with righteous indignation. So he takes what he sees as duly his. That dealers pay a lot for their books and, with the exception of relatively few lucky or especially savvy ones, barely make ends meet does not occur to him. Even after I brought this to his attention, he chose not to acknowledge his guilt. As he sees it, if he owns fewer rare books than the next collector or dealer, the world is not fair, and, as he put it, he means to “even the score.”

  I wondered what fed this skewed perspective of justice. While many collectors build images of themselves through their collections, most of them do not cross the line between coveting and stealing. It was not just a collection Gilkey was building but an image of himself for the world. In this respect, he did not differ from other collectors, but most of them do not cross the line between coveting and stealing. The leap between collector and thief is a huge moral and ethical one. But for Gilkey, who repeatedly crosses the line, having not paid for the books—having acquired them for free, as he would say—adds even more to their allure. He told me that back when he kept his books at his mother’s house, before he started secreting them to a storage facility, he separated those he had paid for from those he had stolen, the former on one set of shelves, the latter on another. Stolen or not, however, his satisfaction was always fleeting: the more books a collector gets, the more he wants. In this respect, Gilkey is like any other collector. As collectors have often remarked, collecting is like hunger, and having one more book doesn’t quench the longing for another.

  As spring headed into summer, Gilkey wanted to get his hands on even more books, but since he was still on parole for stealing foreign currency (to pay for books and living expenses), he felt he should be more circumspect. While he tempered the scope of his acquisitions, he found methods to at least be in proximity to spectacular books. In June, he visited The Huntington Library Museum, in San Marino, California. For lovers of books and art, the place is a paradise; for Gilkey, it must have been mighty fuel for his fantasies.

  Henry Huntington, born on February 27, 1850, in Oneonta, New York, grew up in a well-to-do family in a house filled with books.3 He read and appreciated books throughout his life and, from the age of about twenty-one, acquired them voraciously. Decades later, after founding the Pacific Electric Railway and an intercity transit system in California, he inherited around $30 million and began collecting rare books and manuscripts. In 1919, he founded The Huntington Library, which now has more than seven million rare books, manuscripts, photographs, prints, and maps in the fields of British and American history and literature. The library stacks are open only to scholars, but Gilkey got to see a small selection of items on display for the public.

  On view was “The Prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale” from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, made in England, c. 1400-1405, an illuminated manuscript on vellum adorned with an intricate border that looks like a fabulously bejeweled vine.4 Such literary tricking-out seems akin to framing a masterpiece in gold or wrapping an emerald necklace in marbled paper and satin ribbons—an effort to clothe something wondrous in a fitting garment. Another illuminated text on display, a Gutenberg Bible (c. 1455), is similarly bedecked with fantastical borders, and they’re still as clear and lovely as freshly stitched silk embroidery. Given the number of times throughout history that books, especially racy or religious texts like these—including the Kräutterbuch on my desk, which had illustrations that were at the time of publication considered unfit to be viewed by women5—have been snatched up, set into piles in public squares, and set on fire, the fact that these ancient tomes are still around is doubly miraculous.6 The depth of care and craft in their creation in retrospect seems like an expression of epic optimism. Even though anyone can look up photos of books like these online and view up-close images where every mark on the page is in sharp detail, every year thousands choose to visit the books in person. In addition to being objects of beauty, like all ancient books, they provide a physical link to the past. This is one of their most powerful, enduring effects.

  The Huntington’s more modern texts are just as alluring. On the title page of the original manuscript of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, one can see the author’s right-leaning, fluid, elegant script in dark ink. In the lower right corner, smudged ink reminds us that this was written by a real, living, mistake-making human, one whose finger was once stained black from that very point on the page. Gilkey was enchanted by the whole display, but lingered near one volume in particular. He couldn’t take his eyes off Samuel Pepys’s seventeenth-century diary, noticing how fragile and small it looked sitting in a glass case.

  Huntington, like Gilkey, used his collection to influence how people viewed him. A story in the December 25, 1910, issue of the Los Angeles Examiner noted that he “delights in having an appreciative book lover call on him, and it is then the railway magnate opens up his cases and brings forth some jewel in his splendid collection and exhibits it to the visitor.”

  I had heard at least one dealer refer to collecting as a sport, and I got the impression that Huntington was competing to win. A cartoon in the Los Angeles Times on March 27, 192
0, showed two mustachioed gentlemen in a library and bore the caption: “Henry E. Huntington and Herschel V. Jones, who publishes the Minneapolis Journal and collects rare books, are talking shop out in San Marino.” The cartoon summed up the collectors’ competitive instincts perfectly. Huntington is saying, “I’ve just picked up Eve’s diary,” and Jones replies, “Oh! That reminds me, I got hold of ‘The Log of the Ark,’ by Noah, the other day!”

  WHILE STILL in Los Angeles, on a warm, sunny day, Gilkey drove to the Century Plaza Hotel, one of his favorite spots to conduct business since it had a row of phones with a good deal of privacy. He was also fond of its location: near Melrose Avenue, where there were two bookstores he planned to visit.

  From the hotel, Gilkey called one of them, Dailey’s Rare Books on Melrose, and asked about a few authors, one of whom was Mark Twain. He was in luck: they had a first edition of Life on the Mississippi. He gave them a credit card number and told them someone else would pick up the book, which they said would be fine. Gilkey got there and, to avoid suspicion, took his time. He didn’t want to appear rushed or hide behind dark sunglasses, stuttering and stumbling. Act normal, he thought. When he left, he ripped up the credit card receipt and threw it in a trashcan, a protective measure he repeated after almost every pickup. He would visit Dailey’s two more times in the next year.

  Gilkey drove the short distance back to the hotel, speeding because he hates to have anyone cut in front of him in traffic. At the hotel, he called his favorite bookstore, the Heritage Book Shop, also on Melrose. Gilkey has a strong sense of decorum, which comes through on the phone, and a complete lack of guilt about ripping people off, which does not. When he reached the store on the phone, he asked if they had any books by H. G. Wells. They did. He gave them a credit card number and, as usual, said that someone else would stop by to pick it up, a man named Robert. Shortly thereafter, Gilkey went for the pickup.

  “Great place you have here,” said “Robert.” He talked with Ben or Lou (Gilkey wasn’t sure) for ten minutes or so and took a look at a few books. The book was already packed up and ready to go, so “Robert” signed for it and walked out with The Invisible Man.

  GILKEY TOLD ME that when he holds a rare book, he smells its age, feels its crispness, makes sure there’s nothing wrong with it, and opens it up very gently. He thumbs through a few pages. If the author is still alive, he thinks about whether he wants it signed. He says that a book like The Invisible Man is like a fine wine. It feels good to hold it and, especially, to add it to his collection—but not to read, almost never to read. Like most book collectors, his attachment is not so much to the story as to all that the book represents.

  Winston S. Churchill, a bibliophile who paid for his books, nonetheless understood the same intimate attachment:

  “What shall I do with all my books?” was the question; and the answer, “Read them,” sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them, and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.7

  BACK IN THE BAY AREA, Gilkey began ordering one book after another. The first one to come to Sanders’s attention was a $113 copy of Toddle Island, Lord Bottsford’s diary from 1894, stolen from Serendipity Books in Berkeley. The owner, Peter Howard, was an old pal of Sanders, someone he often met up with at book fairs around the country. It wasn’t an expensive book, but it bothered Sanders just the same.

  “Let them steal hubcaps,” he would say, “just keep their hands off books.”

  He sent an e-mail notifying the trade and hoped that Toddle Island would be the last theft he heard of for a long time.

  Within a couple of months, however, Sanders was getting reports from ABAA members, almost all in Northern California, who appeared to be falling prey to a rash of seemingly random book thefts, the only known connection of which was stolen credit cards. In vitriolic e-mails, Sanders began referring to the perpetrator as the “Northern California Credit Card Thief.”

  In November 2000, with the holiday season in full swing, Saks hired Gilkey again.

  NORTHERN CALIFORNIA is fertile ground for any book lover, and there is no shortage of collectors. Wandering the aisles of a recent antiquarian book fair in San Francisco, I ran into someone I recognized: an owner of my local pet supplies store, Celia Sack. I was frequently in her store, buying food for my dog and cats, but I had no idea she was a book collector. We said hello, but it wasn’t until the next time I visited her store that we began talking books. Sack lights up when the subject arises, and reveals a depth of literary knowledge that reflects her seven years working at a book auction house. I learned that she is an avid collector, as are both her parents, but that none of her friends or family loves books the way she does, so she has no one to share her excitement when she finds a new prize. A few weeks later, she picked up several rare gardening books and cookbooks, and we arranged for me to come over and take a look at them.

  Sack lives in a flat within a handsome, modest-sized Victorian house in the Castro district. Her store is filled with 1950s displays and other vintage pet-related objects, and I expected a small group of quirky titles, but that’s not what I found. Her dining room had been transformed into an impressive library. The walls, wrapped with built-in shelves, were filled floor to ceiling, mostly with leather- and cloth-bound beauties, and on the heavy wooden table at the room’s center lay a couple dozen of her favorites. It was like a private museum, and it made me wonder how many flats in San Francisco harbor secret collections like this. Touring a personal library is a lot like going through someone’s family photo album, but in this case one whose photographer was Edward Weston or Roy DeCarava. Like expertly shot photos, each volume had a story behind it, and although she stopped only to pull favorites from the shelves, the tour lasted about an hour and a half.

  Sack’s areas of interest appeared broad: modern literature and lesbian literature on the left-hand wall, which extended to the next wall and then gave way to Edward Gorey, World War I, natural history, cookbooks, the Pan Pacific Exposition, and how-to books for retailers. Admiring so many lovely and artfully arranged books, I was covetous. I would love to own a library like this—so what was stopping me? Many of the books Sack showed me were not expensive. I buy shoes that cost more. Way more. I suppose that more than anything, I am daunted by the enormity of the endeavor: how much research is necessary to understand what is valuable, along with how much scouting I’d need to do. And once you get into the very valuable books, which I realize not all collectors do, I would have trouble justifying the expense to myself, even though I deem such books worthy and respect others who make the investment. Still, even collectors with little money find ways to buy collectible books. The difference between me and them was that while I desire books, they are compelled to get them. Nothing stops them.

  Not all Sack’s books were very valuable, monetarily, but all had special meaning to her. Intermingled among inscribed first editions were some that are simply appealing to her. She showed me several of her favorite how-to books, The Whole Art of Curing, Pickling and Smoking Meat and Fish both in the British and Foreign Modes, published in 1847, and Roadside Marketing: A Complete Advisor for the Everyday Use of Gardeners, Fruit Growers, Poultrymen, and Farmers, on the Marketing of their Products to the Consumer Direct, a Depression-era guide to roadside stands. They were snapshots of history that few people today have ever seen.

  Before I left, Sack showed me examples of her favorite type of book, the association copy. Several of them were by lesbian authors, with author-to-lover inscriptions. She held a copy of No Let
ters to the Dead, by Gale Wilhelm, 1936. Inscribing the book to her girlfriend, Helen Hope Rudolph, Wilhelm had written: “Dear Helen—Someone once said this edition looked like a box of chocolates. So—with my love—a box of chocolates worth 6 shillings, Gale.”

  Looking up, Sack said, “It’s like being a witness to an intimate moment in the author’s life.”

  Being a woman and under forty set Sack apart from most book collectors, but I had come across others who didn’t fit the mold, either. When I first brought the Kräutterbuch to John Windle Books in San Francisco, I noticed a young Hispanic man walking into the store. Windle addressed him by name; he was a regular. It occurred to me how unusual it is to see a person of color at a rare book fair or store. This has been an old-white-man’s game for a long time, but it appeared, at that moment, that perhaps things were changing.

  Joseph Serrano, thirty-five, grew up in San Francisco with a mother who had read Latin American literature to him when he was a boy. He is a heavyset, amiable man with long-lashed brown eyes behind rectangular wire glasses, who described himself to me thus: “I’m different. I don’t have a higher education. I’m not a scholar or anything. I’m just an oddball about books.” At the time we met, on his nightstand were Sartre’s No Exit and Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (paperbacks, he assured me, never first editions for reading).

  As a child, Serrano’s aunt, who had worked as a book-binder in El Salvador, gave him a set of leather-bound books, and he recognized how special they were. At sixteen, he worked as a delivery boy for a florist in posh Pacific Heights. “Almost every house I went into had a big wall of books,” he said. To own such a wall became a dream. At twenty-three, while working as a tow-truck driver, he bought his first valuable book, Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger, for $100. “Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorites,” he said, “but I couldn’t afford it.” After that first find, he began scouring estate sales, Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. He didn’t like driving the tow truck, but the advantage of the job was that between pickups he could study dealers’ catalogs, memorize the information, and go on searching expeditions. “I’d walk into a thrift store and I’d know what was valuable,” he said. He wanted to make a living out of it, so at first he would spend $2 or $3 for a book and turn it around for $20, $100. He was also assembling his own collection, so he would buy books by obscure authors whose value he recognized, and later trade them for books in the categories he was collecting: Californian, Latin American, and twentieth-century literature. One of his favorite possessions is the first printed description of the Bear Flag Revolt, the 1846 American revolt against the authorities of the Mexican province of California, which later became the state of the same name. “It used to be,” said Serrano, “I was happy finding books worth a hundred dollars and paying only a couple bucks for them, but as I learned about books that have changed people, controversial books like Orwell’s 1984, important books—that’s what I really want to collect. It’s the hunt that keeps it alive. I go to these estate sales where people walk right by the books; they’re only interested in furniture or art. Once I sat on the floor and started pulling titles off the shelf: first-edition Hemingways, Faulkners. It was amazing.” Like adventurers who still trawl the sea for centuries-old shipwrecks’ loot, book hunters’ hope and determination is fed by stories like Serrano’s. He still visits thrift shops, but he also likes going to fairs and rare book shops, where he can test his knowledge against the dealers’. He has taken what he has learned as an amateur book appraiser and is now building his own rare book business online. He explains the draw like this: “You see something you can’t afford, but you buy it anyway,” he said. “My wife calls it an addiction, but finding those books is such a good feeling.”