The Reasons for My Absence

I know, I know, it’s been more than a month since I posted, which is an eon in blog time. Even my brother Steven, who only reads Ghost Word when he’s finished reading everything else in sight, including the cereal boxes on the breakfast table, asked why I was missing in action.

Lots of reasons.

What Lengths Would You Go for a Book? Would You Steal?

John Gilkey has an aspiration for his life: to own a first edition of every book on Modern Library’s list of Top 100 novels.

The trouble is that Gilkey has no intention of buying any of these books, which include writings by authors F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabakov, Virginia Woolf, and more.

Instead, he has tried to acquire them in another way: through theft. It’s a journey that has let Gilkey “own” many modern masterpieces – but has also sent him to jail for extended periods of time.

In her fascinating new book, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession, San Francisco writer Allison Hoover Bartlett has told the tale of unrepentant book thief John Gilkey and the rare book dealer who chased him down. The cat-and-mouse game is played out against the backdrop of antiquarian book fairs in San Francisco and New York, featuring manuscripts worth thousands of dollars and book collectors who will go to any length to possess a particular tome.

Bestselling author Erik Larson characterized Bartlett’s book as “compelling.” Novelist Larry McMurtry called it “a fine read.”

I concur. I gobbled up the book in less than 48 hours, swept away by Bartlett’s taut narrative that has book dealer Ken Saunders chasing an elusive Gilkey, who grew up in Modesto, and who has a sketchy work history but a stunning criminal resume.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much will be published Sept. 17, but I have five galleys to give away. Just email me at FDinkelspiel@gmail.com if you are interested in the book. Tell me a bit about your favorite book to help me choose the winners.

In one riveting scene, Bartlett describes standing outside 49 Geary Street in San Francisco with Gilkey on a bright September morning in 2005 as he explained his philosophy of “book collecting” to her. The building was once the West Coast headquarters of Western Union, but it now houses more than 20 art galleries as well as three antiquarian book stores. Gilkey has filched a copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy from one of the stores, Brick Row Book Shop, and wanted to give Bartlett a tour, almost as if he was the proud owner of this store.

“I was still wary, but too curious to walk away from an opportunity to see Gilkey in his element,” writes Bartlett. “What sort of person returns to the scene of his crime?”

What kind of person does that? Part of what makes The Man Who Loved Books Too Much so fascinating is how Bartlett tries to get inside Gilkey’s mind to understand what drives him to steal rare books – which he generally doesn’t read – and how he feels absolutely no guilt about his crimes.

Read it yourself to find out more.

The Grotto: San Francisco's Book Factory

The Grotto, the South of Market writers’ collective, is proving once again to be a very lucrative place to work. Clearly there are many talented writers renting offices there, but it looks like the cachet of the place also provides an added value when selling a book.

Take this recent posting from Publisher’s Marketplace about one Grotto resident’s recent book sale:

Melanie Gideon's The Slippery Year, pitched as similar to Elizabeth Gilbert and Nora Ephron, a bittersweet and wise month-by-month account of the year in her life during which, upon turning 43 and confronted with her own mortality, she chooses to wake herself up, embrace the passage of time, identify what matters (and what does not) -- and "finally decide to live," to Jordan Pavlin at Knopf, for six-figures, in a pre-empt, by Elizabeth Sheinkman at Curtis Brown UK (NA).

The six-figure sale comes after an excerpt from the book appeared in the New York Times’ Modern Love column. Gideon also wrote a well received children’s book called Pucker.

In the past year, nine of the Grotto’s approximately 30 writers have sold books. Many were sold for $300,000 - $600,000 and one may have even gone for more than $1 million. Writers are always happy to get big advances, but they don’t always want to advertise the fact, so I won’t attach numbers to names.

Some of the sales since January 2007:

Po Bronson, one of the Grotto’s co-founders, sold a “counter-intuitive examination of the new science of parenting,” to Jonathan Karp at Twelve. (He and Gideon use the same literary agency, Curtis Brown.) Now Karp’s imprint is called Twelve because it only publishes 12 books year. You know they look for books they think will sell a lot of copies, and that they pay their authors accordingly.

Jason Roberts sold Every Living Thing about the audacious, often-fatal program launched by scientist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), to compile a catalog of all life by sending acolytes to every corner of the globe (billed as "The Right Stuff of the 1700s"), to Star Lawrence at Norton, in a major deal, in a pre-empt, for publication in 2009, by Michael Carlisle at Inkwell Management.

Now “major deal” in Publisher’s Marketplace parlance means $500,000 and up. (I must reveal that Jason and I have the same agent.)

Allison Hoover Bartlett's The Man Who Loved Books: The True Story of a Rare Book Thief, A Book Detective, and the World of Literary Obsession to Sarah McGrath, executive editor at Riverhead Books, by James Levine

Allison and I are in a writing group together, North 24th, and I can vouch this will be a fascinating, utterly-compelling book. It came out of a piece she did for San Francisco Magazine. The article was included in the anthology The Best American Crime Reporting of 2007.

Ethan Watters', another Grotto co-founder, sold Crazy Like Us, exploring the imperialistic spread of the American perception of mental illness throughout the world, looking at the complexity of cross-cultural psychiatry, the spread of our syndromes around the globe, and the problems that come when the US inflicts its own definitions and treatment of mental illnesses and peculiarities on other cultures, to Dominick Anfuso at Free Press, in a pre-empt, for publication in January 2010, by Chris Calhoun of Sterling Lord Literistic .

(Now pre-empt means a publisher likes a book enough to pay more than other publishers to guarantee they get it.)

NPR commentator Andy Raskin's The Ramen King and I: Searching for God in a Cup of Noodles, his quirky efforts to meet the inventor of instant ramen noodles, who died earlier this year at age 96, to Erin Moore and Bill Shinker at Gotham, in a pre-empt, by Stuart Krichevsky at Stuart Krichevsky Agency (NA).

Raskin also had a piece in the Modern Love column in the Times about love and looking for a parking space. See “pre-empt” again.

Rodes Fishburne sold Going to See the Elephant, following the picaresque adventures of a young man in San Francisco seeking to be the greatest writer of his generation and unwittingly igniting forces larger than he could have ever imagined, to Kerri Buckley at Bantam Dell, by Fredrica Friedman at Fredrica S. Friedman and Company.

Laura Fraser, the author of the memoir, An Italian Affair, recently sold another memoir.

Cameron Tuttle, the author of The Bad Girls Guides, recently completed a five-book deal.

Grotto filmmakers Xandra Castleton and David Munro apparently just found a distributor for their film Full Grown Men.

Do you think it is something in the water?