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His resume might read: Former entomologist, former nurse, currently employed in the obsession of acquiring books by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Out of money.
By JEFF KLINKENBERG
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 28, 2000
I cannot live without books.
-- Thomas Jefferson to John Adams
GAINESVILLE -- Eyes wide, Paul Carlson gasps in surprise. Before him is a first edition of The Sojourner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' final novel, discovered on the shelf of a used bookstore. Asking price: Ten bucks.
The book, which I chanced upon first, yawns open in my hands. Carlson looks dismayed.
"You going to buy it?" he whispers.
I gaze into those sad brown eyes and shake my head no. He can have it.
"Go ahead," he says. "You buy it. I'm broke. I don't have 10 dollars."
I purchase the book.
"You just got a steal," he says. "That book is worth at least $120."
Outside, he taps me on the arm.
"Promise me one thing. If you ever decide to sell it, please give me a chance to buy it first."
It all started two years ago, when AIDS nurse Paul Carlson read his wife's paperback copy of Cross Creek, the late author's account of her life in rural North Florida.
He so identified with her love of Florida and her painful personal life that he attended the next meeting of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society, a 300-member club that promotes the writer's work and the preservation of her farm. Carlson decided his life would be incomplete unless he owned lots of her books.
Days off, he visited every used bookstore within 70 miles of his North Florida home. He started buying stuff off the Internet.
Carlson has not counted lately but figures he has amassed at least 2,000 books, plus another 500 Rawlings items, including cypress shingles from her old roof, movie posters and photographs.
One treasure is a color photo of Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan's ex-wife, posed in a sexy bathing suit. She starred opposite Gregory Peck in the 1946 film version of Rawlings' Pulitzer-prizing winning novel, The Yearling. The film won a technical academy award. Carlson saw the Oscar statuette for sale on the Internet. Asking price: $49,995. He would have been tempted -- if he had any money left.
He has spent at least $40,000 on Rawlings items, but the cost of his obsession can hardly be measured in dollars alone. His once-neat house is stacked neck-deep in stuff. Hidden in the valleys between mountains of books and memorabilia are piles of unpaid bills. He is behind in the mortgage, and he has little income, having abandoned several good careers to work for minimum wage in a bookstore. His plans to recoup money by selling books from a Cross Creek location have come to nothing.
How can this happen? How can an innocent hobby get so out of control that it takes over someone's life?
If Paul Carlson knew, maybe he'd write a book of his own.
On their first date more than a decade ago, Paul and Joy Carlson ate supper at the Yearling Restaurant, which later went out of business. Back then it was famous for country recipes Rawlings published in Cross Creek Cookery.
Joy, who taught nursing at the University of Florida, was a Rawlings fan from way back. She remembers crying in her daddy's arms the day she saw the film, The Yearling. When the little boy Jody had to shoot his pet deer, she thought her heart would break.
Paul had special feelings for Rawlings, too. In 1949, when he was 5, his favorite uncle took him on a tour of Florida. They hit Marineland and St. Augustine and drove past the Cross Creek home Rawlings bought in 1928. She was living then, and her house was no historic site, but Paul remembers the farm and his uncle's joy.
Uncle Bud, a World War II veteran who suffered from traumatic stress syndrome, took comfort in books. He passed the love to the little boy, even giving him a Latin dictionary for the purpose of learning one new word a day. When Paul studied for his doctorate at Clemson, that Latin came in handy.
Before he realized a lifelong dream of becoming a nurse, Paul Carlson was a prominent entomologist who taught science at high schools, at Rollins College and at Florida A&M. More than a dozen insects are named after him, including Stenonema carlsoni, a mayfly. Later he discovered several new species of crayfish, notably Distocambarus (Fitzcambarus) carlsoni.
The bulk of his once vast compilation of invertebrates is stored in the Smithsonian. At home he has room for only a small insect collection; his house is otherwise so stuffed with books he has to lead visitors through the maze. The books sprawl across the floor of his den and tower above the overflowing ashtray on his dining room table. They're stacked neatly on shelves and stashed carelessly in the closet.
"Excuse the mess," he tells visitors. "I'm embarrassed."
Most people collect something. It may be baseball cards, stamps or Barbies. They may line shelves with Matchbox cars, antique fountain pens or old Life magazines. For most collectors it's harmless fun, a way to connect with something memorable from childhood. Folks with a different kind of personality -- they could be workaholics or compulsive exercisers, or they might be unconsciously working out a childhood trauma -- have trouble with moderation. Psychologists say their hobbies can be a way of avoiding coping with their problems.
Paul Carlson is no shrink. But he says: "The urge to discover, to learn, to contribute to our knowledge is an overwhelmingly powerful drive. Whether it is persistence, obsession, love, the yearning to discover, it's powerful."
A bearded, bespectacled man of 55, shy to the point that he perspires nervously when he meets a stranger, Carlson wonders if his obsession with books goes back to the day his father caught him reading outside their apartment.
"When I was your age, I had three jobs," his dad roared. "Reading is a luxury."
Reading became a guilty pleasure. He read on the sneak, in the library or under the covers at night with a flashlight.
He speaks with sadness about his father, an alcoholic prone to violent fits of rage. Sometimes Paul and his brother went hungry when their dad disappeared on a bender. Their mother left, too, and saw her sons only occasionally.
It's something Paul Carlson has in common with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who had a troubled relationship with her perfectionist mother. Her pain shines through the pages of The Yearling; what makes the novel more than a children's story is the complicated portrait of Ma Baxter -- a damaged woman who is afraid to bond with her only child.
Rawlings' books are only the most recent passion for Carlson, who pronounces himself a recovering orchid collector. "Another obsession," he tells people with the wistful smile of a man who knows himself all too well.
He pampered his rare plants with a father's love -- until he gave them up for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in 1998. His few remaining orchids cling to life in the back yard, withered and littered with broken twigs and fallen leaves.
"If my wife saw our lot now she'd kill me," he says between drags on a cigarette. "It used to be the pride of the neighborhood."
Joy teaches nursing at the University of South Alabama, but they see each other regularly and talk daily over the Internet. "Follow your bliss," she wrote him when he told her he was taking out a second mortgage to pay for Rawlings' books.
"My opinion of Paul's collection is that it is a magnificent obsession," she says. "I think he's a wonderful man."
She plans to retire within the year and move back to Florida. She loves their house, especially the backyard oak under which she sits and writes poetry. If they manage to hang on to the house, she has no clue where she will put all her things.
With all those books there is little room.
"It seems to me the earth may be borrowed but not bought," Rawlings wrote in Cross Creek, a gritty biography of life in rural Florida. "It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its season flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters."
Paul Carlson hatched a plan. No Rawlings books are sold at the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Historic Site. Carlson figured that making books available to more than 30,000 annual visitors might constitute a public service -- and pay a few bills.
Alas, he found out that Rawlings, in her last will and testament, discouraged commercial enterprises involving her name.
Undaunted, last month he set up a table of her books inches from the state historic site's boundaries. But he fled without selling a one, fearing the sheriff might be on the way.
"I made my point," he says. "Books should be sold there."
He corresponds daily with hundreds of Rawlings fans over the Internet. They argue, they critique, they celebrate her work.
A few weeks ago he proposed that prominent signs directing visitors to the state historic site should be erected on Interstate 75. The idea was nixed by a park ranger and ridiculed by other Rawlings fans. Possessive of the author, they think too many people already besiege the old house, rebuilt years ago after decades of visitor use.
The Yearling Restaurant, about a mile from Rawlings' home, was supposed to reopen in January, complete with a gift shop featuring Carlson's Rawlings display and an ample supply of books for sale.
The restaurant has yet to serve a plate of frogs legs. Carlson's savings continue to dwindle.
Things started getting out of hand last summer when he began buying books like a man possessed. He discovered an out-of-print book site on the Internet -- Advanced Book Exchange, abebooks.com for short -- and felt like a mosquito in a nudist colony. Everywhere he turned was something tasty.
He found the first-known dust jacket from a special edition of Rawlings' second novel, Golden Apples. The jacket had been unknown for 62 years.
He found something more rare: a paperback "book review" copy of Golden Apples that preceded the regular printing.
Next he discovered the Holy Grail, a limited edition copy of The Yearling -- fewer than 800 were printed -- autographed by Rawlings and illustrator N.C. Wyeth. Carlson spent more money than he ever dreamed, so much he is afraid to tell anyone.
"They'd say I'm crazy," he says. "They may be right."
He's unusual, but there have been other collectors afflicted by what Lawrence C. Wroth, a 20th century librarian, called "Book madness." Most of them, however, had the means to buy rare volumes.
Carter Burden, of the Vanderbilt family, owned thousands of books valued at more than $10-million. Psychiatrist Haskell Norman's collection, which included books printed during the Renaissance, was sold for $18-million. Then there was the notorious bibliomaniac Stephen Blumberg, sent to federal prison for stealing $22-million worth of rarities from libraries and homes -- not because he wanted to sell them and get rich but because he just wanted the books for his private collection.
Earlier this year, with bill collectors sniffing his trail, Paul Carlson had to sell his precious special edition of The Yearling. He got his asking price: $2,600.
"Parting with it broke my heart."
What wild desires, what restless torments seize
The hapless man, who feels the book-disease
-- Dr. John Ferriar, in a poem about bibliomania
On his day off Paul Carlson visits the University of Florida's Special Collection Library. Other than Rawlings' Cross Creek homestead it ranks as his favorite place in the world. Her manuscripts and letters are stored in a vault. A painting of her hangs near a collection of rare photographs.
He rings a doorbell at the high-security library and gets buzzed in. Sweating -- he always feels nervous here -- he hands the librarian his driver's license and fills out a request form for what he would like to see.
Visitors are allowed no briefcases -- things could be hidden in briefcases -- nor are they permitted to write with pens. An ink stain would ruin a historical work.
Rawlings material covers about a dozen linear feet of the library. Carlson is working through it in chronological order, page by page.
He has become an expert on her handwriting. It's a handy skill when someone e-mails him a copy of a page from an inscribed book. He can tell if the signature is authentic.
"Reading her letters in a chronological way, from her earliest years to her late years, from early in the day to late afternoon, you can see how her signature changed with time."
In the morning her signature was clear and bold. By late afternoon, after hours of whiskey, her signature grew careless and illegible.
"Sometimes I think I can almost get into her head by looking at her signature. I feel close to her."
He opens a book containing 219 photos -- he has counted -- and studies every one. There are pictures of Rawlings as a child and as a college student, as a young author and as a celebrity on the movie set of The Yearling. There are photos of her late in life, when she was chronically depressed and bedeviled by self-doubt, looking sad and old.
"God, she looks like she's lying in a casket in this one," Carlson whispers. She was not dead, just broken and weary and not long for this world.
She was 57 when a stroke took her.
"I'm not sure how I got into the book business," he laments. "I'm a nurse, for God's sake."
Carlson earned a bachelor's degree in nursing in 1996, did post-graduate work in gerontology and became certified in AIDS nursing. He worked as a nurse in the Florida Correctional Institution near Ocala and later for the North Central Florida AIDS network.
He likes to give copies of Rawlings books to patients and discuss with them what they have read. Bibliotherapy, he calls it.
"Dying people always get something out of Marjorie," he says. "The young ones -- well, they read about stuff, about adventures they'll never experience. For the older ones, it's life. They recognize real life in the work."
He loved nursing, but he loved dabbling in Rawlings books more.
Carlson's favorite book is Rawlings' least known.
The Secret River was published after her death. Some biographers believe she intended her only true children's book as a tune-up for a serious novel she wanted to write about the same subject: black life in rural Florida.
It's about finding hope in a hopeless situation. Backwoods Florida, in the story, is suffering through a drought, and poor black residents are going hungry. The community wise woman, Mother Albirtha, tells a precocious little girl, Calpurnia, about a secret river that is not bone dry.
Calpurnia finds the river. She catches a mess of catfish and brings them home to feed family and friends.
"I grew up feeling hopeless," Carlson says. I think back to his stories of childhood deprivation and hunger. "I wonder if reading that book when I was a kid would have made my life any different."
When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue -- you sell him a whole new life.
-- Literary critic Christopher Morley
Driving through North Florida, I always try to visit the Rawlings site. I seldom tour the house; I more enjoy sauntering through the grounds, smelling the orange blossoms, getting chased by roosters and sitting in the shade of the biggest magnolia tree I've ever seen while reading a paragraph or two from a lovely book.
"Who owns Cross Creek?" Rawlings wrote. "The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages."
The thought of delinquent mortgages reminds me of my friend and the bills gathering dust on his desk. Will he sell a few books and get by? Will he donate his rarest books to the UF library for a tax write-off?
Will his marriage prosper?
Will he go back to nursing elderly AIDS patients as he says he might?
Someday I should like to walk the grounds with him. But I really want to take him to Island Grove.
Rawlings is buried in Island Grove.
Carlson has never visited, a surprise, becauseevery passionate Rawlings fan I've met has visited the cemetery. Carlson, the only person I know who owns a copy of Rawlings' death certificate, declines invitations.
"I don't want to go -- at least not yet. Maybe some day, when I have a real urge, the time will be right. Ah, I can't explain."
The cemetery is hard to find, and I get lost almost every time. You drive past tin-roofed Cracker houses and dilapidated churches until the road gets narrower and bumpier and almost disappears. Then you turn left and take a dirt road, and the dust rises behind you mile after mile.
Finally a narrow road veers off to the right. There's a fence and the Antioch Cemetery beyond. Her grave is a few steps from a cedar tree.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Through Her Writings She Endeared Herself To the World
Rawlings' legions leave presents on the tombstone. I've seen toy stuffed animals, usually little deer or bears, and potted plants. One time I found a bag of tangerines and ate one -- feeling guilty as I spat the seeds.
This time there's money on the grave. A quarter, a dime and 15 pennies.
I wish my friend were along to see the peculiar gift. Fifty cents won't buy Paul Carlson out of his financial hole. But it might buy him an inexpensive paperback written by his favorite author.
Another book might not be what he needs, but it would certainly be what he wants. I don't think Marjorie would mind the loan.
The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Scribners, $28.
Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Touchstone Books, $12.
Cross Creek Cookery, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Fireside Books, $12.
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, by Nicholas A. Basbanes, Henry Holt Books, $18.95.
The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Historic Site is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Tours of the house are conducted on the hour beginning at 10 a.m. Thursday through Sunday. From the Tampa Bay area, take I-75 north to Micanopy. Exit east to U.S. 441, drive 2 miles south to County Road 346. Turn left and drive 5.1 miles to County Road 325. Turn right and drive 3.5 miles to the Rawlings house. For information, call (352) 466-3672. On the Internet, http://www.dep.state.fl.us/parks/District_2/MarjorieKinnanRawlings/index.html.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society, Department of English, University of Florida, P.O. Box 117310, Gainesville, FL 32611-7310. Phone (352) 392-5299, ext. 281. On the Internet, http://web.english.ufl.edu/rawlings/page.htm
The University of Florida's special collection library has preserved Rawlings' manuscripts, photographs and correspondence. On the Internet, http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/Rawling/Rawtitle.htm