Blumberg

[everett <everett@CHS.ORG>]

Following in this and perhaps two more messages is the transcript of the
29 December 1993 "All Things Considered" interview with Phillip Weiss
concerning his interviews with Blumberg.  The text is copyrighted by
National Public Radio and is here reproduced with permission.

                        Profile of a Bibliomaniac

Robert Siegel, host:  They don't come much stranger than Stephen Blumberg,
who stole thousands of rare books from university libraries around te
country with the perseverance and cunning of a jewel thief.  He could con
his way into Harvard University's library by claiming to be a visiting
professor of psychiatry.  He could also pick locks like the practiced break-in
artist that he was.  But to judge from Phillip Weiss' article about him in
the current Harper's magazine, Blumberg was no calculating charmer.  He was
a loner who spent time in psychiatric hospitals from his days in high school.
He became outraged at the injustice of American life and somehow identified
them all with libraries.   He evidently felt about them the way radical
animal rightists feel about zoos.  They're prisons for books in need of
liberations.  Phillip Weiss interviewed Blumberg in a real prison and found
him to be a classic of the type of obsessive collector and thief of books
known as a bibliomaniac.

Phillip Weiss, Harper's Magazine: He would have collected books by any
means.  He loves books.  To quote Flaubert, who also wrote about
bibliomania, this is a person who loved a book because it was a book, loved
its odor, its form, its titled.  That is the sort of classic definition
of a bibliomaniac, and that is Stephen Blumberg.

Siegel:  And the more beautiful and the more rare the book then the more
beautiful and more desirable the object?

Mr. Weiss:  To some degree, although obviously that's a subjective
consideration.  I think what drew him was the extent to which it drew on
American pioneer days, to a better age, what Blumberg considered a better
age, the pioneer days.  Also if it mentioned Indians or was about Indians,
with whom Blumberg identified, it had great appeal to him.

Siegel:  This is fascinating.  His collecting was extremely orderly in the
same way that a law abiding collector might specialize in a particular
artist's etchings or in paintings from the same period.  He specialized in
American history, and, as you say, particularly if it involved Native
Americans.

Mr. Weiss:  That's true.  It had a logic.  I don't know that orderly is the
right word because the logic was so sort of whacked out.  At one point he
had broken into a library at Columbia, I believe Avery Library, the
architectural library, and found a box containing some of the original
plates for the Empire State Building, I imagine very beautiful plates, and
looked through the box for a couple of seconds or a couple minutes and then
pushed it aside and said, 'That's not my period,' and moved on.

Siegel:  [laughs] It was too recent.  It was 20th century.

Mr. Weiss: That's right.

Siegel:  He wasn't interested in that.

Mr. Weiss:  So presumably that volume had great value and great beauty, but
it was just not his area.

Siegel:  Was he a big reader?  I mean, you would imagine he would be.  But
did he actually go through these books and read them?

Mr. Weiss:  No, I think that once again this is a classic hallmark of the
bibliomaniac.  Blumberg did not read very much.  He would read
bibliographies to find out what his next book would be.  He would read
something about the individuals who had produced the book, published the
book, sold the book, written the book.  But he really was not interested in
the books as pieces of information or collections of information.  And
other bibliomaniacs are similar, even bibliophiles.  I mean, this is a very
subjective distinction between bibliophile and bibliomaniac.  But in his--
in defense of logic--I can't defend his logic.  But just to show that he
had a certain logic about it, I can tell you that he would share his books
with the insulted and injured of society, as it were.  Blumberg often had
young men working for him.  He was something of a Fagin, and the young men
that he had around him were often delinquent youths.  And he would make a
point of showing them the books.  There was a young Native American boy who
was in his gang, and he made a point of getting down Curtis' Indians, a
great photographic record of Indians from the turn of the century or the
late 19th century, and paging through that with this boy to show him the
tradition from which he had come.


                                END OF PART 1
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                     Everett C. Wilkie, Jr.
                Head Librarian and Crofut Curator
                   of Rare Books & Manuscripts
                The Connecticut Historical Society
                       1 Elizabeth Street
                     Hartford, CT 06105 USA
Email: everett@chs.org   Phone: 203-236-5621, x250   Fax: 203-236-2664
              Anytime, anywhere number: 0-700-EWILKIE

"Library is seeking highly killed administrator for Associate Director"
                                                        --Recent job ad

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