Book review: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

Allison Hoover Bartlett, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009.

This engagingly written book centers upon two men: John Gilkey, a well-mannered and breezily unrepentant thief who between 1999-2003 stole rare books, ephemera, and other materials (total value approximately $100,000) from dealers throughout the United States, and Ken Sanders, an iconoclastic child of the 1960s who, in his capacity as security chair of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), played an instrumental role in exposing Gilkey.

It also chronicles Bartlett’s own fascination with the world of rare book collecting, which began when complicated circumstances left in her possession a 17th-century Kräutterbuch (a German book of botanical medicine) that had in all likelihood been stolen. Although Bartlett’s forays into antiquarian book fairs and conversations with dealers and collectors don’t turn her into a collector, she comes to appreciate the value of books as aesthetic and sentimental objects and as tangible signs of the owner’s erudition and refinement.

Bartlett, who repeatedly interviewed Gilkey, quickly discovered that he was keenly attuned to the ability of rare books to impress others: unlike most collectors, who acquire books chiefly to satisfy their own desires, Gilkey wanted to assemble a collection that would serve as evidence of his knowledge and discernment. Although his collecting priorities shifted continually, he focused particularly upon books on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best English-language novels -- a group of books sure to impress even the most casual observer. He rarely read the books he bought.

She also learned that Gilkey’s desire to assemble an impressive collection was coupled with a deep resentment of dealers, whom he saw as selfishly and unfairly standing between him and his dreams. This feeling was intensified by his initial clashes with dealers and the law: he initially wrote bad checks to obtain coveted books, and the resulting arrests and brief periods of imprisonment left him yearning for revenge against those he saw as having done him wrong. Even after he began using stolen credit card numbers to purchase books via telephone, he occasionally reverted to writing bad checks, and each stint in jail gave him time to think of new ways to obtain books.

At roughly the same time as Gilkey began making use of stolen credit card numbers, Ken Sanders unexpectedly found himself serving as the ABAA’s security chair. Before Sanders took over, members submitted paper theft reports, and the ABAA distributed copies of the reports whenever its next mailing went out -- which might be a full year afterward. Sanders, who for years had battled shoplifters at his Salt Lake City store, created an ABAA security listserv and then goaded the organization into creating a stolen book database and e-mail alert system. He was thus in a prime position to spot the wave of fraudulent telephone purchases targeting ABAA members rare book dealers, first in northern California and then across the nation, and to help set up the 2003 sting that exposed Gilkey as a major book thief.

Security-minded archivists and librarians who read The Man Who Loved Books Too Much will find a wealth of interesting information within its covers:

• There are sharp divisions within the dealer community. Reputable dealers, many (but by no means all) of whom belong to the ABAA, which has stringent membership requirements, have little use for dealers who don't know the trade or who traffic in stolen goods.

• Dealers have traditionally been deeply reluctant to report theft: no matter how inventive the thief, dealers often see theft as a sign of failure to exercise appropriate caution and fear the loss of their reputations. Moreover, the police have traditionally refused to take such thefts seriously and the courts have often been reluctant to punish book thieves, who are generally intelligent and well-mannered. As is the case within the archival and library communities, this dealers' attitudes seems to be changing, albeit at a slow pace.

• Many reputable dealers despise eBay: they see it as a boon to sellers of stolen property, honest but ill-informed dealers who unwittingly misrepresent their goods, and unscrupulous sellers looking to rip off naïve buyers.

• Although rare book dealers were Gilkey’s prime targets, visits to institutions such as the Huntingdon Library seem to have stoked his desire for books. Moreover, as more and more book dealers learned of his scams, he began stealing dust jackets and, in all likelihood, books from libraries.

• As Bartlett learned as she attempted to restore the Kräutterbuch to its rightful institutional owner, embarrassment sometimes leads libraries to destroy evidence that a book has vanished from its their shelves. Moreover, in all likelihood, “every rare book is a stolen book”: countless numbers of old and rare books have been stolen, either a few days ago or a few centuries ago.

The ending of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, which highlights Bartlett’s efforts to chronicle Gilkey’s life without altering its course and her discovery that she is indeed a passionate collector -- not of books but of stories -- may fail to satisfy many readers. The book is nonetheless entertaining and full of of interesting digressions about the world of book collecting and book thievery. Anyone interested in books, book collecting, or book theft ought to find it worthwhile.

Rare book dealers and cultural heritage professionals should note that at the time of this writing, John Gilkey is a free man. And he’s still interested in rare books.

Book review: Blacklist

Sara Paretsky, Blacklist (New York: New American Library, 2003; Signet 2004).

For years, I’ve loved V.I. Wawshawski, the brainy, tough female P.I. created by Sara Paretsky. V.I. is a smart-aleck, avowed feminist, and unabashed supporter of the Second Amendment, and she has a deep knowledge of and passion for the city of Chicago. In Paretsky’s later novels, V.I. is getting older, but she’s not always getting wiser: although she’s increasingly mindful of her work’s physical toll, she can still be stunningly impulsive and reckless.

Blacklist was published in 2003, but I somehow didn’t get around to reading it until late last year. What a pleasant surprise to discover that archives and records occupy a central position within the narrative! All of a sudden, I understood exactly why Paretsky, who has a Ph.D. in American history, was the keynote speaker at the Midwest Archives Conference when it met in Chicago a few years ago.

The mystery begins when Darraugh Graham, a flinty corporate chieftain for whom V.I. has long conducted background checks and investigated employee malfeasance, needs help with a family matter. His elderly mother, Geraldine Taverner Graham, has moved into a posh senior apartment that has a perfect view of the now-vacant family mansion. She’s convinced that people are moving about the property at night, but the police in the tony exurb of New Solvay don’t believe her. Darraugh wants V.I. to check out the place and ease his mother’s mind.

After visiting the Chicago Historical Society and quickly researching the Graham family’s history, V.I. pays a nighttime visit to the mansion and finds that she is not alone: a scared but defiant teenaged girl runs away from V.I. after the two exchange a few words. V.I. gives chase, but trips and falls into a brackish koi pond (Paretsky has a habit of making V.I. jump or fall into disgusting bodies of water) and discovers that the overgrown weeds in the pond are hiding a corpse.

V.I. discovers that the dead man is Marc Whitby, a journalist who had been researching Kylie Ballantine, a pioneering African-American dancer and educator. In the 1950s, Ballantine had been a close friend of Calvin Bayard, a publisher and civil rights activist V.I. has revered since her college days. V.I. also tracks down the girl -- Bayard’s granddaughter Catherine, who may or may not be hiding Benjamin Sadawi, a young Egyptian who worked in her elite private school’s cafeteria and is suspected of being a terrorist.

V.I.’s investigation of Whitby’s death propels her to focus ever more closely upon the connections between Ballantine and the Bayard, Graham, and Taverner families. She finds clues in papers held by Whitby and various members of the Graham, Taverner, and Bayard families, the Vivian Harsh Collection at the Chicago Public Library, and the University of Chicago’s Special Collections Research Center. Sifting through a large collection at the latter repository, she discovers a manuscript that allows her to untangle the knot of illicit romance, leftist politics, and anti-communism that bound the families together in the 1950s and continues to do so -- despite individual family members’ concerted efforts to break free -- fifty years later.

V.I.’s research leads her to Whitby’s killer, who is guilty of other crimes. She also finds Sadawi, who is unwittingly caught up in the Bayard, Graham, and Taverner families' shared history. However, she ultimately learns, much to her dismay, that the killer may evade justice and that the authorities are so convinced that Sadawi is a terrorist that they have no interest in the facts of his case. That a handful of Bayards, Grahams, and Taverners finally start to make peace with their past is scant consolation.

Paretsky is a sharp critic of the sense of entitlement that all too often accompanies wealth and privilege -- and the narcissism that is typically part and parcel of adolescence. She also sees distinct parallels between the McCarthyism of the 1950s and the anti-terrorist fervor of the 2000s, and Blacklist consistently underscores how self-righteousness and panic can trump common sense and wreck the lives of flawed but fundamentally decent people. Some readers might sharply differ with Paretsky’s politics, and even those who fundamentally agree with her might be happier if she had put a little less effort into polemicizing and a little more effort into fleshing out some of the minor characters. Those who love sprawling mysteries solved by smart, cynical detectives ought to enjoy Blacklist nonetheless.

Mystery-loving archivists ought to find Blacklist particularly rewarding. Paretsky clearly understands the value of archives and the everyday treasures they hold, and the archivists who appear at the margins of the narrative are uniformly knowledgeable and helpful; one suspects that they are modeled on the real-life archivists she thanks in the book’s acknowledgments. Archivists will cringe at the manner in which V.I. handles historical records, but they otherwise ought to be quite pleased by the way in which Paretsky highlights archives, records, and the continuing relevance of the past. What’s not to love about a mystery in which all of the biggest clues concerning murders and betrayals -- old and new -- are found within the archival record?

Book review: Can You Ever Forgive Me?

In a word: no. In this witty, well-crafted, and appalling memoir, Lee Israel traces her journey from author of carefully researched biographies of Tallulah Bankhead and Dorothy Killgallen to manuscript thief and forger. Any archivist concerned about security (i.e., every archivist) should read this book.

Israel’s life and career hit the skids after the publication of her third book, a hastily produced and quickly remaindered biography of Estee Lauder. Editors and agents who once sang her praises stopped taking her calls, and her prickly personality, heavy drinking, and increasingly erratic behavior rendered her virtually unemployable. She went on and off welfare, supplementing her income by selling off bits and pieces of her book collection and freelancing whenever she could. She was “not in the flower of mental health.”

Israel’s first theft was an impulsive act. She was doing research for a magazine article at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, and staff let her examine archival materials in the unsecured general reading room because they thought the papers lacked cash value. However, the collection contained three ordinary letters from comedienne Fanny Brice. Down to her last few dollars and desperate to obtain veterinary care for a stray cat she had taken in, Israel realized that the letters might have cash value. She nervously placed them inside a small notebook that she had with her, then took the notebook to the restroom and placed the letters in her shoe.

After she cleared security, a wave of “exultation and relief” washed over her:

I felt no guilt about the letters. They were from the realm of the dead. Doris [the cat] and I were alive and well and living on the West Side.

The dealer who bought the Brice letters for $40.00 apiece off-handedly mentioned that letters with “good content” would have fetched a higher price. Israel found and stole more routine Brice letters, purchased an ancient, battered manual typewriter, and added colorful postscripts to all of them. They commanded tidy sums.

All the while, Israel continued doing legitimate research at the repository. Her discovery of a collection of typescript letters written by Louise Brooks, who relished exposing the hypocrisies and false pieties of Hollywood, led to the next stage of Israel’s criminal career: forgery. She closely studied the letters, surreptitiously traced Brooks’ signature, and stole blank sheets of aged paper she found in other archival collections, then used her own typewriter to produce forged letters that deftly emulated Brooks’ literate, lacerating prose style. Dealers eagerly snapped them up.

Additional purchases of old typewriters and thefts of old blank paper and letterhead stationery ensued, and autograph dealers were thrilled by the many Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, and Noel Coward letters that Israel produced and proffered. Counterfeit letters from Humphrey Bogart, George S. Kaufman, Clara Blandick (Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz), Tennessee Williams, Bette Davis, and Lillian Hellman also made their way to market.

Archivists should note that all of the luminaries whose letters Israel forged had several things in common: all of them were the subjects of published works that could be mined for biographic details, had distinctive and readily recognizable signatures and styles of writing, and frequently used typewriters to conduct their correspondence. Moreover, Israel seems to have personally identified with many of the women whose letters she forged; as she herself points out, Brooks, Parker, Ferber, and Hellman were all noteworthy writers and bitter, miserable drunks.

Brooks was the only person whose forged letters were based on extensive archival research. When producing her other fakes, Israel relied chiefly on biographies and other published sources – a strategy that ultimately tripped her up. She based the tone and content or her Noel Coward letters upon Coward’s diaries, which were published posthumously. However, Coward, who was relatively open about his homosexuality in his diaries, was cautious and guarded in his correspondence. A West Coast dealer began asking questions, and a New York City dealer informed Israel that a grand jury had been convened and offered not to testify in exchange for $5,000.

Desperate to pay off her blackmailer and too afraid to fob off any more counterfeit letters, Israel began forging letters that she found in archives, swapping the copies for the originals, and stealing and selling the originals. Afraid of showing her face to the dealers, she arranged to have a friend -- an ethically challenged and terminally ill charmer -- handle the sales.

Armed with a forged book contract -- for a work focusing on writers and alcoholism -- Israel embarked upon “a crook’s tour of major research libraries.” She paid visits to Columbia, the New York Public Library's Berg Collection and Library for the Performing Arts, Yale, Penn State, Syracuse, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Georgia. Her modus operandi bears careful study:

I would call up a box of letters, choose two or three [typescripts] to my liking and copy them for word for word, comma for comma, noting spacing, indentation, type, and paper size; then, carefully -- and this was when my heart thumped like a bass fiddle in back of Barbara Cook -- I traced the signature . . . .

After I had done the initial copying I repaired to my apartment, or to my hotel if I was out of town, and replicated the letter . . . . I would return to the library the next day, request the same box, make the switch, and watch nervously as the librarian on duty counted and took -- I was always happy to note -- only a perfunctory look at the contents. I left the building after making a trip to the ladies’ room, where I put the valuable pelf in my shoe.

On one occasion, a Princeton archivist almost caught her with stolen letters on her person; however, Israel quickly devised a ruse that enabled her to return to the reading room, replace the stolen originals, and hide the copies she had created in an obscure book shelved in the furthest reaches of the room. None of the other repositories she visited ever questioned her actions or closely looked at her notes.

The noose was nonetheless tightening. On 27 July 1992, two FBI agents accosted Israel on the street. A suspicious dealer had contacted the FBI, and the friend who sold the letters for her instantly confessed. She was merely questioned on that afternoon; afterward, she went home and destroyed all the evidence she could. However, it was extremely easy to assemble a criminal case against her: at every repository she had visited, she had given her real name and address and presented legitimate photo identification.

Israel cooperated with the authorities and pled guilty to the thefts:

I drew the Get Out of Jail Free card. Judge [Robert W.] Sweet told me that he never wanted to see me again “in this context” (not a total rejection). I was sentenced to five years on probation, six months' house arrest . . . . I wasn’t to leave the state or consort with felons; I was to pay restitution within my means. I was directed to attend AA meetings, which I never did . . . .

Shortly after her house arrest ended, Israel managed to put her life back together and found freelance work copy editing children's magazines published by Scholastic, “the Spring Byington of the publishing world.” The work was dull, but she did it well and she was soon offered a staff position with benefits; starting as a freelancer allowed her to evade disclosure of her felonious past. She still works as a staff copy editor for Scholastic and still lives in the studio apartment in which she produced so many of her forgeries.

And how does she regard her past misdeeds? She seems to regret her thievery:

I had spent a good deal of my professional life hunting and gathering in annals and archives, and messing with those citadels was unequivocally and big-time wrong . . . .

I suffered and I paid by being barred from the libraries that I had plundered. An all-points bulletin was issued by Ex Libris, an archivists’ group, alerting all to my misdeeds, and it remains looming in cyberspace to this day . . . .

My guilt over the original thefts is mitigated somewhat by the gathering in of the epistolary diaspora. I cooperated with the FBI, and the real letters of the drunken American writers were so far as I know all recovered and returned safely to their archival homes.

However, she has little guilt about the letters that she herself created:

The forged letters were larky and fun and totally cool. Parodies of icons -- Coward, Ferber, Mrs. Parker, Louise, Lillian Hellman, and poor Clara Blandick. They totaled approximately 100,000 words, give or take. A quantitation falling somewhere between Madame Bovary and Madame X -- not bad for less than two years’ work. I still consider the letters to be my best work. Reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's summing up in Tootsie, I was a better writer as a forger than I had ever been as a writer. Any remorse I experience about this phase of my life in crime has nothing to do with the money various dealers might have lost; I think most of dealers came out ahead. The remorse here is personal. I betrayed some people whom I had grown to like. With whom I’d made jokes and broke bread. And in doing so I joined, to my dismay, the great global souk, a marketplace of bad company and bad faith.

Lee Israel really is a gifted writer -- some of her Coward fakes made it into a carefully edited documentary edition of Coward’s correspondence -- and she enjoyed doing legitimate archival research. Being denied access to the source material for her books and articles must be a genuine punishment. However, given that her regret over having been caught at times seems to outweigh her regret over having tampered with the historical record, it is gratifying to learn that her one post-conviction attempt to visit a repository -- the unsecured floor that houses the circulating collections of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts -- ended when she was spotted, searched, and escorted out of the building.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? provides fascinating insight into the mindset, motivation, and methods of one archival forger and thief. Every archivist and manuscript curator should spend a few hours poring over it . . . and then remain on the lookout for its author and others of her ilk.