The Man Who Loved Books Too Much (26 page)

ONE OF THE most astonishing books I ever encountered was at a book fair. I can’t remember the title or any other detail, except one. The dealer picked up the gilt-edged book and, holding it in front of me, slowly bent the block of pages as though he was about to fan through it in search of something. As he bent the pages, the gilt edge disappeared, revealing, along the long side, an intricate painting of a nautical scene, men navigating a stormy sea. “It’s a fore-edge painting,” he said. I gawked, then asked him to do it again. I learned that for centuries, artisans have been adorning books with fore-edge paintings for clients. They are delicately executed images, usually thematically related to the text: elaborate battle scenes, presidential portraits, Art Deco beauties, even erotic renderings, which, given the paintings’ clandestine quality, is no surprise. As if one hidden treasure were not enough, books are sometimes painted with two fore-edge images, so that when you bend the block of pages one way, one picture emerges, but when you bend it the other way, another appears. They are not usually applied to highly valuable books (doing so would be regarded as a form of vandalism) but to books that are of special interest or sentimental value to their owners. Emerging unexpectedly, these paintings seem like magical apparitions, as though bending a book’s pages can make the inert black type within metamorphose into sumptuous color images. When the pages, no longer swayed, are back in place, no one would guess what lies just a hair’s distance beyond the gilt.

After two years of meeting with Gilkey I’d seen the gilt pages of his book, so to speak, and I had been witness to their being fanned one way, then another. If I had to reduce him to a sentence, I’d say that Gilkey is a man who believes that the ownership of a vast rare book collection would be the ultimate expression of his identity, that any means of getting it would be fair and right, and that once people could see his collection, they would appreciate the man who had built it.

But he was more than that. I listened to the tapes of our conversations repeatedly, and each time, Gilkey’s selfishness, which in person is thickly veiled by his affable demeanor, was as clear as boldface type on a page. Like a book with a fore-edge painting, Gilkey had hidden much of himself behind gilt. Polite, curious, ambitious—or greedy, selfish, criminal? Of course, he is all these things, but what intrigued me was how different he seemed to me in person versus on tape. Physical form had refracted meaning, or at least favored one interpretation over another. This is not only why I perceived Gilkey differently, but also precisely why a library, a visual representation of culture and learning, is so desirable to him: he is aware of how persuasive the physical can be.

Meeting with Gilkey those last couple of times, I had another epiphany. I realized that the man I thought was stealing books so that others would consider him a cultured gentleman, the man who was building a phony image, a counterfeit identity, was in fact working diligently to
become
that gentleman. He was studying philosophy, researching authors, reading literature, even writing his own essays and plays. Through these efforts, he was attempting to create his ideal self. Another way of begetting this self, I came to understand, was by telling his story through me.

 

 

 

 

One morning, while working next to my shelf of books about book collecting, I considered all the time I had spent with rare book lovers at their fairs, their shops, their homes. I had savored being around so much beauty and, even more, appreciated the stories behind the books. In my reading, one aspect of the history of books I had come across repeatedly was their destruction. From the Qin Shi Huang in China, who in 213 B.C. ordered the burning of all books not pertaining to agriculture, medicine, or prophecy,
⁴
to the Nazis’ literary cleansing by fire (
Säuberung
) of twenty-five thousand volumes, totalitarian leaders have acted against books’ dangerous power to enlighten. Even today, some U.S. leaders attempt the same through banning books. So the fact that any ancient text, like the German
Kräutterbuch
my friend lent me, has survived is all the more heartening. The fearsome urge to destroy or suppress books is an acknowledgment of their power, and not only that of august scientific, political, and philosophical texts but that of small, quiet books of poetry and fiction as well, which nonetheless hold great capacity to change us. As I spent time among rare books and their collectors, as strongly as I felt this power and their manifold other attractions, I did not succumb to full-blown bibliomania, as I thought I might. I did, however, come to understand more fully the satisfaction of the pursuit. Hunting down treasures for a collection brings its own rewards, but, ultimately even more satisfying, building it is a way of creating a narrative. When books are joined with others that have traits in common they form a larger story that can reveal something wholly new about the history of democracy, or Renaissance Renaissance cooking, or Hells Angels who pen novels. When I first talked to rare book lovers, I was enamored of their stories of discovery and theft, but what I didn’t realize was that the most important stories they had to tell were those formed through their collections. They were not only “salvaging civilization,” but also, by linking books, engaging in acts of interpretation.

Although I haven’t become a bibliomaniac, I now see myself as an ardent collector, no longer of carnelians and Pixy Stix straws, but of stories. Searching for them, researching them, and writing them gives my life shape and purpose the way that hunting, gathering, and cataloging books does for the collector. We’re all building narratives. As I thought about Gilkey’s and Sanders’s stories, and those of the other collectors and thieves I encountered, they merged in my mind into a collection of their own, the larger story of which is a testament to the passion for books—their content and histories, their leathery, papery, smooth, musty, warped, foxed, torn, engraved, and inscribed bodies. This passion I share with them all.

THE LAST TIME I met with Gilkey, I wondered aloud whether he had considered the possible consequences of his life, his story, being made public. He muttered something about a statute of limitations and stared at my notebook as if it held his future. For a moment, he looked frozen. Then he tossed out something about how the book might possibly hurt his future employment opportunities.

“But no, I’m not worried about it,” he said, regaining his composure. “I mean, I gotta check certain legalities. Make sure I don’t get charged for things.”

Then, as quickly as you can slam a book shut, Gilkey, in characteristic fashion, turned his attention from dangerous risk to glorious possibility.

“I was thinking of the ending of your book,” he told me. “I could write a series of detective novels. The first one would be about a serial killer who’s fascinated by the poem ‘The Devil’s Walk,’ written in 1820 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is a very striking poem. It mentions bookstores and sort of an obsession. . . . Anyway, in my novel the FBI has to call in
the
foremost expert in the world of books and poems and classical literature, because there are no book dealers that can solve the murderer’s crimes. This expert is someone who, as Ken Sanders says, went over to the dark side and found all these ways to steal, to accumulate the greatest collection of rare books in the world. And then he had to go to prison, but now he’s out, so they called him in as a consultant. Unfortunately, he’s a former convict. You know, slightly crazy, but he stole rare books. I would base it a little on me. . . . I’d be set up like this dark figure. And maybe I’d try to have more access to certain books that the government keeps hidden. You know,
the
book. You know what I mean. . . . There’s always that one book you can never get your hands on. Maybe he’s working with the FBI just to have access to that one book. . . . Maybe it’s at the Library of Congress, maybe a special hidden book, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the diary of JFK’s killing. Something like that. And maybe there’s a surprise ending. Now he has access to the book, so maybe . . .” Gilkey paused a moment before delivering his ending. “Maybe still, I’m a thief.

“What do you think about that idea? Your honest opinion.”

 

 

 

 

I
wrote most of this book from my home office, which overlooks a small garden of herbs my son planted several years ago, when he was nine. The only plants of his still growing are rue, a bitter herb that brings to mind the phrase “rue the day,” and purple sage, which he once dried, then gathered into pagan bundles, and with a friend burned one night to clear the air of bad spirits. Both herbs occupy pages in the
Kräutterbuch
, the centuries-old German botanical text that led me to this story. My son got the idea to plant medicinal herbs from a book on herbology he requested one Christmas because it was one of the subjects on Harry Potter’s reading list at Hogwarts. Like my son, almost everyone I met in the course of writing this book had been deeply inspired by stories, by books.

For three years, the
Kräutterbuch
, an inspiring book to be sure—but not mine to keep—sat on my desk. I often wondered, did not returning it make me a thief? Or was I a thief only as long as I kept it? Where is the line drawn? And having taken down Gilkey’s story, had I become a thief of another sort? I have come to the conclusion that I was a thief of neither the book nor Gilkey’s story: I was a borrower of a book with an indeterminate provenance, and Gilkey gave his story to me willingly. Many times did I “rue the day” I happened upon this story, and maybe I should have waved sage smoke around my office to clear the air of the bad mojo that comes with writing about crime. Yet I was always grateful that I had had the good fortune to come across such an enthralling story, one that raised questions about obsession and deception, how passions provoke us, and the ways we justify our pursuit of them. Like the rare first edition, a collector’s longtime desire, this story had me under its spell from beginning to end.

NOT LONG BEFORE this book went to press, Sanders, nominally retired “bibliodick,” had nevertheless alerted colleagues of Gilkey’s most recent theft: stealing a book from a Canadian dealer. Gilkey was not arrested. The story never ends.

 

 

 

 

Without the support of Ken Sanders and John Gilkey, this book would not have been possible. Both these men answered my endless questions, a feat of exceptional patience and generosity, for which I owe them profound thanks.

Among the many others quoted in these pages, I particularly appreciate the help and expertise of rare book dealer John Crichton and Detective Kenneth Munson. My thanks go as well to all the collectors I interviewed, especially Celia Sack, Joseph Serrano, and David Hosein. And to Malcolm Davis, who shared with me the ancient tome that drew me into the world of rare books and then to this story.

Having the opportunity to work with Sarah McGrath was a stroke of luck. For the intelligence and insight she brought to the editing of this book, I am deeply grateful. My appreciation extends as well to Marilyn Ducksworth, Michael Bar-son, Sarah Stein, and the rest of the people at Riverhead. I would also like to acknowledge Nan Weiner, outstanding editor of
San Francisco Magazine
, who published my original article about John Gilkey and Ken Sanders.