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osprey_archerAlison Hoover Bartlett's The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is a wasteland of missed opportunities.
It tells the story of John Gilkey, a man who steals books in order to build a magnificent collection. It also purports to tell the story of the man who caught him, but in fact Gilkey gets three times as much page count.
Herein lies the first problem with the book: it's tremendously padded. Here's a topic through which you could explore book-collecting and book-collectors, collections in general, the psychology of thievery, curses written on early manuscript books to keep away thieves, book construction through the ages, the meaning and purpose of literature and indeed art in general, identity and the attempt to construct identity through material objects...
And instead Bartlett reports at great and repetitive length her interviews with Gilkey.
Astonishingly, given the verbiage devoted to him, Bartlett fails to build a vital sense of his character. Whenever she achieves an insight into his soul, she repeats it ad nauseum: Gilkey is just like other book collectors...except he steals! Gilkey's moral reasoning is so elastic as to make anything he wants to do all right! Doesn't that just BLOW YOUR MIND?
No. Nor did it first time you said it.
As if this were not enough, about a quarter of the book is devoted to the author's exploration of her own psyche and experiences. Tragically, her insight into herself is about as shallow as her insight into Gilkey. Often this is just boring: her lackluster attempts to kick-start a book-collecting passion of her own, for instance, are pointless but not irritating.
No, what's irritating is her realization (which she has four or five times) that she's no longer an impartial observer; that her presence is shaping events. She attempts to preserve her facade of journalistic objectivity (she's already lost the actuality of it) until the reader realizes that she values said "objectivity" mainly as excuse for cowardice.
This culminates in the scene where she visits Gilkey's childhood home, where his mother shows Bartlett Gilkey's bookshelves - where the books are shelved with the spines toward the wall. Bartlett stares at them, paralyzed: if she turns them over she could help booksellers retrieve thousands upon thousands of dollars of stolen property.
Now, if she had become friends with Gilkey and didn't want to land him a richly deserved jail sentence, that would be - not laudable - but understandable. Even interesting, written by a more self-aware author. But that doesn't cross her mind. No, she's afraid "what responsibility [she] might bear in knowing the books were there" (239-240).
But she already bears the responsibility, because she already knows the books are there! She mentions that she "curse[s] her lack of courage", but I don't think she realizes that her lack of courage is not merely a flaw, but a moral failing. It sinks her not only as a person, but as a writer: her book is shallow and out-of-focus because her fear clouds her vision.
It tells the story of John Gilkey, a man who steals books in order to build a magnificent collection. It also purports to tell the story of the man who caught him, but in fact Gilkey gets three times as much page count.
Herein lies the first problem with the book: it's tremendously padded. Here's a topic through which you could explore book-collecting and book-collectors, collections in general, the psychology of thievery, curses written on early manuscript books to keep away thieves, book construction through the ages, the meaning and purpose of literature and indeed art in general, identity and the attempt to construct identity through material objects...
And instead Bartlett reports at great and repetitive length her interviews with Gilkey.
Astonishingly, given the verbiage devoted to him, Bartlett fails to build a vital sense of his character. Whenever she achieves an insight into his soul, she repeats it ad nauseum: Gilkey is just like other book collectors...except he steals! Gilkey's moral reasoning is so elastic as to make anything he wants to do all right! Doesn't that just BLOW YOUR MIND?
No. Nor did it first time you said it.
As if this were not enough, about a quarter of the book is devoted to the author's exploration of her own psyche and experiences. Tragically, her insight into herself is about as shallow as her insight into Gilkey. Often this is just boring: her lackluster attempts to kick-start a book-collecting passion of her own, for instance, are pointless but not irritating.
No, what's irritating is her realization (which she has four or five times) that she's no longer an impartial observer; that her presence is shaping events. She attempts to preserve her facade of journalistic objectivity (she's already lost the actuality of it) until the reader realizes that she values said "objectivity" mainly as excuse for cowardice.
This culminates in the scene where she visits Gilkey's childhood home, where his mother shows Bartlett Gilkey's bookshelves - where the books are shelved with the spines toward the wall. Bartlett stares at them, paralyzed: if she turns them over she could help booksellers retrieve thousands upon thousands of dollars of stolen property.
Now, if she had become friends with Gilkey and didn't want to land him a richly deserved jail sentence, that would be - not laudable - but understandable. Even interesting, written by a more self-aware author. But that doesn't cross her mind. No, she's afraid "what responsibility [she] might bear in knowing the books were there" (239-240).
But she already bears the responsibility, because she already knows the books are there! She mentions that she "curse[s] her lack of courage", but I don't think she realizes that her lack of courage is not merely a flaw, but a moral failing. It sinks her not only as a person, but as a writer: her book is shallow and out-of-focus because her fear clouds her vision.
