Odd Chapter for Author : He’s Suspected of Making Off With Hundreds of Library Books

All the book dealers in town knew Gustav (Gus) Hasford. They knew he had written a well-received novel about his experiences in Vietnam. They knew he had co-written the screenplay for the movie “Full Metal Jacket,” based on his book, and that he had been nominated for an Academy Award. And they knew he was a fanatic book buyer.

What they didn’t know was that his collection included hundreds of books allegedly taken from libraries throughout the world and that he was being sought by police in connection with the missing books.

“Gus has no house, no family, no furniture--these books represent his total state of being,” said Bruce Miller, owner of Phoenix Books in San Luis Obispo. “Book dealers sometimes see people who get totally passionate about books, who value the books more than the value of right and wrong.”

Locker Searched

Hasford’s library collection was discovered when police at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo recently searched his rented storage locker near the campus and found about 10,000 books. More than 800 were from libraries and most had either been checked out or simply taken from the shelves, said Ray Berrett, a campus police investigator.

Berrett said campus police took their evidence to the district attorney’s office Thursday and asked for a charge of felony grand theft against Hasford. A spokesman for the district attorney said the evidence will be reviewed before a decision is made on whether to file charges.

Hasford, 40, already has been charged with grand theft for checking out 98 books worth more than $1,000 from the Sacramento Public Library three years ago and never returning them. A warrant for misdemeanor grand theft was issued for his arrest in 1985, and bail set at $50,000, but authorities were unable to find him, said Sacramento County Sheriff’s Detective John Woodhouse.

Dozens of other libraries have been searching for Hasford since he disappeared with their books, moved away and left no forwarding address, Berrett said. In Hasford’s locker were books from 62 libraries--including Santa Monica and Los Angeles public libraries--and a number of rare, 19th-Century books from England and Australia. Most are history books, with a concentration on the Civil War.

“After the case broke we sifted through the books and called the libraries where they were checked out,” Berrett said. “We got the same response over and over. All the librarians said he had checked out books, didn’t return them and then disappeared.”

But Hasford said in a telephone interview from his San Clemente home that he has not been dodging authorities. He has simply traveled quite a bit during the last few years and has not had a permanent address. On the advice of his attorney, Hasford refused to discuss the library books, but he talked freely about the rest of his book collection. He denied that he is a “book fanatic.”

“I’m a writer, not a book collector,” he said. “To me books are tools, not art objects. I use them for various projects that I’m researching. I’ve accumulated my books over about 30 years; I buy books that I think will be useful to me. When I travel I visit writers’ graves and that type of thing, and I visit bookstores.”

About 10 years ago, Hasford said, while writing “The Short-Timers,” he moved from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo. A woman he was living with at the time was hired as a librarian at Cal Poly.

“I got tired of hauling everything around, so I figured I’d put all my research materials and books in storage,” he said. “That way I could move around but my things would stay in the same place.”

He rented a large storage facility near the Cal Poly campus.

Sorting It Out

Campus police are still sorting through the books that were found there and trying to determine how many may have been stolen, Berrett said. He said he recently received a telephone call from a man who said Hasford was a house guest in 1984 and left “unexpectedly with a number of books.” Berrett said about 30 of the man’s books were found in Hasford’s collection.

University police are accustomed to investigating reports of such crimes as beer drinking on campus and backpack thefts. The case of the missing library books is their biggest in years, Berrett said.

The investigation began Dec. 14, when Hasford checked out from the Cal Poly library 87 books and five years’ worth of issues of Civil War Times Illustrated magazine.

“I used to talk to Hasford when he came in the library and he’d tell me: ‘This library doesn’t have anything I need. . . . Your collection is too small,’ ” said Cal Poly reference librarian Wayne Montgomery. “So I was somewhat shocked when I found out how many books he had taken.”

After a few months, when the books and magazines--worth about $2,000--still had not been returned, library officials asked campus police to investigate. The address Hasford had listed on his library card was a motel near campus, Berrett said. Hasford lived there for a few months, but had moved and not left a forwarding address. And the Social Security number listed on his library card, Berrett said, was false.

“We were running into a lot of dead-ends when someone remembered an article written about him in the local paper,” Berrett said. “I got the article and there was a picture of him standing in a storage shed surrounded by his books. . . . When we got to the shed we found wall-to-wall books, stored in boxes, from floor to ceiling. . . . We had a 2 1/2-ton truck and it took us two loads to get all the books out of there.”

The 10,000 books are being held at a county storage facility until their ownership is determined. Hasford had packed the books neatly into boxes, lined with newspaper and plastic sheeting, and labeled each box by subject. The labels indicate his eclectic tastes: Mark Twain, Anarchy, The Alamo, Death Camps, Van Gogh, Screenwriting, and Abraham Lincoln, among many others. The books were in good condition, but some pages that carried library identification stamps had been cut out, Berrett said.

Vietnam Experiences

Hasford’s book “The Short-Timers” is based on his experience as a combat correspondent with the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive of 1968. He was discharged that same year and eventually moved to Kelso, Wash., where he married and worked as a night clerk in a loggers hotel “and a number of other cheapo jobs nobody else wanted.”

In the early 1970s Hasford separated from his wife and moved to Los Angeles, he said, “to become a starving writer, which I did quite successfully.” He moved to San Luis Obispo in 1978 and the next year “The Short-Timers,” his first novel, was published.

He eventually moved back to Los Angeles, but left his books in San Luis Obispo and traveled quite a bit, he said. Stanley Kubrick purchased the rights to his book and Hasford shares screenwriting credit on “Full Metal Jacket” with Kubrick and Michael Herr. He recently signed a contract for publication of his second novel, a sequel to “The Short-Timers” entitled “The Phantom Blooper.”

“I didn’t ask anybody to nominate me for an Oscar,” Hasford said. “I never really had any desire to be a celebrity; I’m just a guy who writes books. But the limelight was thrust on me. And along with it you become a target. . . . I would really like to respond to some of these charges. But right now I just can’t talk about the case.”

Warrant Possible

The San Luis Obispo County district attorney could issue a warrant for Hasford’s arrest, Berrett said. Campus police might send the warrant to the Los Angeles Police Department and ask them to post an officer at the Academy Awards ceremony, scheduled April 11 at the Shrine Auditorium.

“If he gets the Oscar, someone could hand it to him and say: ‘Here’s the good news,’ ” Berrett said. “Then an officer could hand him the warrant and say: ‘Now here’s the bad news . . . put your hands behind your back and away we go.’ ”

But Hasford says he probably won’t attend the ceremony. “I can’t see myself in a tuxedo,” he said.