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Is There a Klepto in the Stacks?

John Maxwell Hamilton is the author of "Entangling Alliances: How the Third World Shapes Our Lives" and "Edgar Snow: A Biography."
Published: November 18, 1990

THE New York Public Library, true to the spirit of a knowledge-propagating institution, irrepressibly provides all sorts of facts about itself. Speaking about the Central Research Library on Fifth Avenue at 42d Street, staffers reel off statistics on the number of visitors (1.3 million a year) and the length of the book stacks (88 miles). They'll tell you how many inquiries come to the library's Telephone Reference Service (235,404 this year) and even some of the most common questions people ask: What is the word for fear of the number 13? ("Triskaidekaphobia.") And is the country of Rwanda for sale? (No.) But ask one certain question and the first reaction comes from another great library tradition: Shhhhhhhhh!

The question? "Which books are most frequently missing -- you know, disappear from bookshelves or never seem to be returned?" Or, if you are less delicate: "Which books do people steal most often?"

Librarians are not alone in being troubled by this question. All guardians of books are -- bookstore proprietors, the nice attendants in Christian Science Reading Rooms, and you and I, who loan our dearest books to our dearest friends, knowing but not admitting that the volumes are gone forever.

Yet, for all the angst the question causes, it is worth asking. The answer tells us as much about our intellectual lives as Alfred Kinsey's studies did about our sex lives.

Best-seller lists like those that appear each Sunday in these pages are supposed to be a barometer of our tastes. But they merely reflect the capacity of an affluent middle class to throw a casual $20 or $30 at a diet book they won't use or at a slim volume relating lessons one is supposed to learn in kindergarten. The most-stolen list, in contrast, tells us which kinds of books people really want -- want so much that borrowing them for a week or two is not enough. For these books, people risk arrest or at least public humiliation.

Don't dismiss book theft as the work of a few ordinary crooks. Everybody does it. "People who steal books are some of the best people in the world," says Allan Robbins of the Alexandria, Va., library system. Journalists, seminarians, lawyers, doctors, teachers and especially librarians steal books, "which shouldn't come as any surprise -- they use them and value them," says William A. Moffett, head of the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., and a former president of the Association of College and Research Libraries.

IN the 17th century, Pope Innocent X is supposed to have ripped off a book, though he was a monsignor at the time, and the Alexandrian Library in ancient Egypt plundered rare volumes from voyagers who pulled into port. "Never lend books, for no one ever returns them," said Anatole France, the French writer and son of a bookseller. "The only books I have in my library are books that other folk have lent me."

Book theft is an integral part of the life styles of the rich and famous. In California last year, Gustav Hasford, a novelist and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, was convicted for the theft of almost 800 library books. The Waldorf-Astoria, whose $3,500 rate for a night in the Presidential suite would cover some people's annual mortgage payments, buys about 200 used books a year, according to its manager, Richard Cotter. The hotel puts these on shelves in the rooms and along the hallways so wealthy guests can steal them.

Recognizing that we all aspire to these same perks, the Hilton hotel chain, which owns the Waldorf-Astoria, does both us and itself a service in its more mundane lodgings. It stocks rooms with Conrad Hilton's autobiography, "Be My Guest." When the book appeared in 1957, Library Journal said it was "well recommended, but may have a limited appeal." Hilton executives, however, proudly report thefts of 50,000 copies a year, with another 20,000 to 30,000 tossed out because coffee is spilled on them, "or whatever." Perhaps the king of vanity publishing, Hilton periodically orders up a new supply from the book's original publisher.

The only thing that apparently keeps you from stealing books is that it hasn't occurred to you yet. "I have to tell you I don't enjoy talking about this subject," said one librarian in a typical statement. "I don't want to give people ideas."

This primordial urge to pilfer books stems from a different part of the brain than, say, the inclination to swipe a car. Librarians admit as much when they refrain from words like "stolen" and talk about long-overdue books not having been "returned yet." They obviously would not be so charitable about the kid who hot wired their car last night and drove off. The difference between books and cars is that books deal in ideas, and ideas are supposed to be free.

Erik Barnum, manager of Sidney Kramer Books in Washington, finds a common attitude among "customers," many wearing three-piece suits, who try to bypass the cashier: "Oh darn, I have to go through the inconvenience of paying for these."

Authors know this attitude well. No one with self-respect would ever ask a barber for a free haircut. But perfect strangers ask writers for free copies of their books. One colleague of mine, an occasional writer, proudly told me she wheedled two free copies of one of my books from the publisher.
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