What were people's impressions of Blumberg?
People who knew Blumberg had various impressions of him. Each of these quotes come from Philip Weiss in his article “The Book Thief: A True Tale of Bibliomania” in Harper’s Magazine, January 1994. Weiss interviewed Blumberg as well as his neighbors. His article also references Blumberg’s trial and those involved in it. All impressions described within these quotes are specific to the individuals, as described, selected, and edited by Weiss.
Childhood
“…I wondered how anything could come out of him, he was such a dry little stick. I remembered a passage from the trial transcript, when an elderly antiques dealer was asked to describe Blumberg at twelve. ‘A skinny little guy, dirty,’ she said. ‘When I say dirty, like dry old soot. I can remember his eyes. His eyes were very prominent. A gentleman, a very gentle young boy... Can you imagine a twelve-year-old boy being interested in the design of hardware on a door, door hinges, window openings?... At that point he could see the beauty. I think it was just pure instinct.’”
“One psychiatrist told Henry Blumberg that his son’s case was a tragedy. The boy was so gifted, but his gifts had been plowed under.”
Character
“He’s imbued with his importance—overly. I don’t know quite how to phrase this. He thinks he’s done something of great merit here.” – Jerry Geib, librarian at the Ottumwa Public Library, quoted by Weiss.
“I want nothing to do with him. He sent me this many letters and I wrote ‘Return to sender’ on them. He’s a genius—he could steal Fort Knox, just about. But he’s where he belongs.” – Carl Thrasher, Blumberg’s neighbor, quoted by Weiss.
“Blumberg was an ‘unkempt Howard Hughes type eccentric.’” – Ottumwa Courier, quoted by Weiss.
“Dr. Blumberg told me, ‘I've protected this kid for so damn long, I've been in essence taking care of him for twenty-five years.’”
“Only when I got back to New York and talked to my editor did I realize how odd it was that I'd gone haring around doing errands for a prisoner. Stephen Blumberg had gotten under my skin. But then, any authority Blumberg confronted he sought to subvert, and authorship is a form of authority. It was one reason the librarians reacted the way they did; Blumberg was a shadow librarian. His collection mocked their calling. ‘Are we brothers, Stephen and I, fellow collectors beneath the obvious distinction of thief and librarian?’ Harvard's Stoddard had wondered, writing in the Bulletin du Bibliophile.”
During Theft
“Some library employees said they had seen ‘a transient-looking individual, standing before the expensive Shakespearean’ collection, ‘an individual whose manner was somewhat eccentric and his dress somewhat shabby ... [but he] appeared very knowledgeable about books.’”
“He'd never married and his friendships were expedient, fragmentary, but he had found a kind of peace in libraries or among his books, sitting for hours, fixating on people out of the past. He was inordinately quiet. He had an acrobatic sinewyness; an associate called him Spiderman. Now and then he put on a sports jacket: to get into Harvard's libraries, where he stole some 670 books, or Claremont Colleges, where he stole approximately 780, he had masqueraded as a professor, though he had graduated only from high school. Several times he had been caught for trespassing--entering empty homes to steal cash or stained glass, things he would sell.”
Trial
“Several times he had been caught for trespassing—entering empty homes to steal cash or stained glass, things he would sell. That was what had hung him. ‘He had regular bouts with reality,’ the prosecutor, Linda R. Reade, had told the jury, as she chipped away at his insanity defense.”
“Once she (Linda Reade, the prosecution) said, ‘Steve Blumberg, according to [his] psychiatrist, had a delusion that the rich picked on the poor and that the government picked on the poor. I submit to you that that is not a delusion, that's reality.... Steve Blumberg is a very articulate man who perceives these things.’”
"[He] stole the cultural history of the United States" – Linda Reade, head prosecutor, quoted by Weiss.
“Well, there wasn’t anything noble, he was a thief.” – Linda Reade, head prosecutor, quoted by Weiss.
(William Logan, leading expert on insanity and the law, who offered expert testimony in Blumberg’s defense.) “Logan examined Blumberg for thirty-three hours. He found that he could describe the things from his youth far better than the people. ‘He could even talk about the smell of the rugs, Logan testified. He told the court the boy's identity had become so intertwined with his father's that he had never been able to see the ways in which his father hurt him, by helping to force him from his beloved brick mansion, for instance. ‘His father, while appearing supportive, will do something quite hostile to Stephen. Stephen cannot quite incorporate that and will then begin to focus away from his father on to more abstract ideas, such as the government,’ Logan said.”
“’He's my Al Capone, I love him,’ Huntsberry told me. ‘Jesse James without the violence,’ said Ray Cornell, the private investigator.”
“’He [Blumberg] was smarter than I am,’ Hubbard said. ‘He was too smart to be insane; he covered his tracks. I felt he knew what he was doing every inch of the way.’” – Werdna Hubbard, a juror in Blumberg’s trial, quoted by Weiss.
Interview
“His flat monotone came out of his throat like a gear turning.”
“Then one night in October 1992 I got a collect call and heard a nasal midwestern accent on the line. Stephen Blumberg's manner was genteel and Seventies-hippieish.”
“He was small, about five seven, and his posture was droopy…”
“He had a calm staring expression, and his arms looked pale, effete-bookish. His eyes were round like a child’s but also had crow’s feet.”
“He sat perfectly still. Sometimes he crossed his legs, but he left his hands in his lap and looked at me. He had a salt-and-pepper mustache with white wires of hair coming from it. His graying hair looked to have the consistency of straw. A webbed military belt with a steel clamp buckle was squinched tight around his narrow waist. I don't think I've met someone so dry before. His eyes didn't glint, his wide mouth was dry.”
“The prisoner's language was a mixture of genteel discussions about this or that book studded with lines that might have come from a 1940s gangster movie. ‘I seen it was an easy shot, so I worked it for a week. . .. I was up to my stuff. . . They rekeyed it, so I knew that place had gone sour.’”
“Blumberg's talk was salted with bitterness, but there was never any profanity, and there were glints of refinement.”
“On the phone he'd said that he wouldn't tell me how he'd ‘compromised systems,’ but soon that prohibition dissolved. He seemed proud. His methods had been the cat burglar's. He was five seven, 125 pounds (prison had fattened him to 145), and anything he could grab with his hands he could pull himself up on, anything he could get his shoulders through he could get the rest of his body through. He would avoid alarm systems, or set them off a couple of times and observe the security response. He'd squirmed through ventilation ducts and the eight-inch gap between the top of a caged enclosure and the ceiling. At some libraries he had shinnied up the cable of the book dumbwaiter to get from open areas to restricted ones. ‘I'm pretty sharp about that,’ he said.