The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Ob

Given the number of times throughout history that books, especially racy or religious texts like these—including the Krautterbuch 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, 1920, 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.