The Utah Humanities Great Salt Lake Book Festival has become one of my very favorite rites of autumn. It’s right up there with the Dodgers and USC and the annual Park City vs. Wasatch football game, which is coming up a week from tomorrow, by the way.
Going back to when the book fest used to be held at Westminster College, I would carefully pore over the schedule each year as fall rolled around and begin a succession of tailgate parties in order to have my game face properly in place when the first page was turned. Admittedly, I probably got over-prepped a time or two.
The writers in attendance became nothing short of rock stars to me. I’d show up early and stand in line for Gary Snyder, Luis Alberto Urrea, Ivan Doig, William Kittredge, Terry Tempest Williams, Mark Spragg, and the like. The biggest difference would be that instead of wearing a “Taj Mahal” T-shirt I might be sporting one with an R. Crumb caricature of “Hayduke.”
And, I must admit, I’m feeling a bit over-stoked once again this year with the announcement that Salt Lake bookshop proprietor Ken Sanders will be hosting presentations at the Salt Lake City Main Library, where the Festival has held forth for several years now, both Wednesday night, October 21, and again during the Saturday, October 24, day-long book bash.
The intrigue levels for both loom large. On Wednesday Ken will look back on the life and times of the late great novelist, essayist, naturalist, desert obsessive, cantankerous observer, and voice crying in the wilderness, Ed Abbey. The multi-media presentation gets underway around 7 p.m.
Just the title of his presentation, “Ed Abbey, Earth First!, The Monkey Wrench Gang, and Me,” was enough to set the hook. With Sanders possessing a story-teller’s art worthy of his iconic subject, the evening will no doubt be very special for the red-rock faithful.
Sanders’ close relationship to Abbey came through joining him in the running of Western rivers, exploring the canyon country on foot, various publishing enterprises, and not a few monkey-wrenching exploits. It would seem that most of what they were up to, although usually with high purpose, was mischief.
What I want to learn more about is Ken’s 1981 trip down to the Lone Rock campground at the western edge of “Lake Foul” where he hooked up with Abbey and the bunch who would become “Earth First!” and set about deploying a 300-foot plastic “crack” down the front of Glen Canyon Dam.
I’m not sure if it transpired during that trip or another, but there also was this houseboat adventure where Ken and the boys pestered then Secretary of the Interior James Watt who came to celebrate a particular anniversary of what Abbey called “the most hated piece of concrete on earth.”
And, no doubt, considering Abbey’s vast literary output, there will probably be selected readings from “Desert Solitaire,” “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” and assorted other rages against the machine.
On Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. in the Level 4 Special Collections Room, Ken will be featured in conversation with author Alison Bartlett discussing her recently published volume, “The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession.”
The detective in question in this true tale of high-end book thievery is Ken Sanders himself, who for four years held the post of Security Chair for the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA). Ken prefers the term “biblio-detective,” however, when describing a bookseller who doubles as a sleuth.
Bartlett’s riveting tale follows a singularly quirky book obsessive, seemingly without the means necessary to properly acquire a “fix.” and an equally quirky and persistent bibliodick with sufficient deductive powers to put an end to the mysterious string of larcenous acquisitions.
The tale of how book bandit John Charles Gilkey finally succumbs to a succession of sting operations put in his path by Sanders and some law-enforcement cohorts is as compelling as it gets in the nonfiction mystery genre.
Sanders and his bookshop continue to hang out at the confluence of alternative literary culture and environmental activism both in Utah and the West as a whole. Tremors in their comfort zone don’t seem to scare them much. They’ve learned to thrive at the epicenter. That’s why Abbey trusted them.
Just don’t try and walk out of Ken Sanders Rare Books unless the book in your possession has been bought and paid for. Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe got nothing on this guy.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.