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Disappearing Ink: The Insider, the FBI, and the Looting of the Kenyon College Library
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About this ebook
Like many aspiring writers, David Breithaupt had money problems. But what he also had was unsupervised access to one of the finest special collections libraries in the country.
In October 1990 Kenyon College hired David Breithaupt as its library’s part-time evening supervisor. In April 2000 he was fired after a Georgia librarian discovered him selling a letter by Flannery O’Connor on eBay, but that was only the tip of the iceberg: for the past ten years, Breithaupt had been browsing the collection, taking from it whatever rare books, manuscripts, and documents caught his eye—Flannery O'Connor letters, W.H. Auden annotated typescripts, a Thomas Pynchon manuscript, and much, much more. It was a large-scale, long-term pillaging of Kenyon College’s most precious works.
After he was caught, the American justice system looked like it was about to disappoint the college the way it had countless rare book crime victims before—but Kenyon refused to let this happen.
In October 1990 Kenyon College hired David Breithaupt as its library’s part-time evening supervisor. In April 2000 he was fired after a Georgia librarian discovered him selling a letter by Flannery O’Connor on eBay, but that was only the tip of the iceberg: for the past ten years, Breithaupt had been browsing the collection, taking from it whatever rare books, manuscripts, and documents caught his eye—Flannery O'Connor letters, W.H. Auden annotated typescripts, a Thomas Pynchon manuscript, and much, much more. It was a large-scale, long-term pillaging of Kenyon College’s most precious works.
After he was caught, the American justice system looked like it was about to disappoint the college the way it had countless rare book crime victims before—but Kenyon refused to let this happen.
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Reviews for Disappearing Ink
Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
4 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very readable, straightforward account of David Breithaupt's thefts from the Kenyon College library (and several others), as well as the ensuing legal cases. A useful case study and an example of the affected library reacting appropriately and strongly to special collections theft.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've read all of the works by this author, and I have to say this is probably the weakest. The construction of the story was so immediately straightforward that there was not even a hint of suspense or mystery. Labeling a legal decision by the thieves as awful signaled that the case would be lost, making any forward momentum of the narrative all but impossible. The story he tells in inherently interesting, so it is still a worthwhile read. It just struck as more of a police blotter than a story to draw the reader in. The thief, btw, is some kind of reporter in LA now, encumbered not at all for being a convicted destroyer of literary treasures. The author should have obtained some of that background, to find out why people don't care.