When I walked into Todd Pratum’s apartment in Eastlake earlier this summer, I gasped audibly. The walls were covered with books — old spiritual tomes, religious histories, eccentric scientific texts. It was the stuff of old-timey movies; the kind of mysteriously inviting library you expect to discover in a historic mansion, not a two-bedroom Oakland apartment.
I was there with a photographer to report on Pratum’s looming eviction and his related attempt to sell the 13,000 rare books that live in his home before he was potentially forced to leave it.
I expected Oaklandside readers to share some of my awe at the sight and description of Pratum’s scholarly collection. But I didn’t predict just how far the story would travel after it was published.
“I couldn’t believe how many people directly contacted me — at least 100,” Pratum told me last week. “I got a lot of calls, texts, everything. I got some really remarkable, long emails. People were really sad and wanted to help.”
There were the prestigious and public libraries. The woman whose grandmother belonged to a spiritual society and owned thousands of books on the subject. A well-known musician. And there were plenty of “goofballs.”
“One guy even called and said, ‘I’m parked in your neighborhood and I have $50,000.’ That’s not the way anybody does any serious business,” Pratum said.
Pratum has decades of experience as a bookseller, both in shops and libraries he’s established and to dealers out of his apartment. He also does literacy work with homeless youth.
A couple of weeks ago, a particular inquiry rose to the top of Pratum’s towering pile. Someone named Mollie Thomas in Los Angeles was interested in buying the books for the community space she runs, Wu:uM.
“I said, ‘I can’t do anything unless you come up and see the books,” Pratum recalled. “Three hours later she flew in, and spent eight or nine hours here.”
When I reached her by phone last week, Thomas explained that a little over a year ago, she bought 13 pallets of books at an auction on something of a whim.
That purchase changed her life. Suddenly owning thousands of books prompted Thomas, an events planner who collects rare books, to do something she’d always wanted to do: open a community space and library.
Pratum’s books will join an already expansive library at the community space Wu:uM in Los Angeles. Credit: Vanessa Augustin/Courtesy Wu:uM
Wu:uM is a membership-based organization in East Hollywood serving women and queer and non-binary people and offering room to relax, work, and attend workshops and creative events. It’s also a functional library, mainly consisting of the diverse range of books Thomas bought at auction.
Recently, a friend of Thomas’, a trained astrologer and tarot reader, joined Wu:uM as its esoteric counselor.
“We were talking about wanting to build out the esoteric end of the library,” Thomas said. During those conversions, someone sent her friend the Oaklandside article about Pratum, who specializes in “hermetic philosophy, spirituality, and psychical research.”
“I read it, and I was like, ‘Track him down,’” Thomas said. At the time, she was smack in the middle of a stressful move after a flood in her home, but she acted quickly.
“It was just this instant moment of this is a mission,” she said. “It’s how I work. Something clicks into my orbit, and I know it’s right and I move mountains to make it happen.” She was also disturbed to read in the article that Pratum was considering, under time pressure, selling his collection to an AI company to scan the books — a process that involves breaking their spines.
Meeting Pratum, Thomas became even more certain of her plan.
“We went back and forth, and I was so impressed by the way he was also vetting me,” she said. She could tell how important it was for Pratum to find a buyer who cared about the collection like he did, rather than offload it to the first person who agreed to pay his $50,000 asking price. Thomas respected that he’d turned away several people.
Thomas hadn’t slept in a week at that point, but she didn’t need to sleep on the decision.
Pratum told me he had similar respect for his buyer. He felt she trusted his expertise and was eager to learn from him. She’s made the whole process smooth, he said.
The books will be driven down to Los Angeles in pods in the next month or so. Pratum is helping Thomas figure out how the books will be organized and displayed in Wu:uM’s library, she said. Some rare books will need to be encased in glass, but most will be out and available for perusing and borrowing.
“Todd feels the same way I do, that books are meant to be experienced and picked up and held,” Thomas said. She’s also eyeing another, even larger, collection Pratum has in storage.
“Down the road I would like to keep his life’s work together,” she said.
As for Pratum, he’s hoping not to stick around long enough to learn the verdict of his eviction case. He’d like to move to the desert. Specifically, a town called Morongo Valley “full of a lot of weird, eccentric people” north of Palm Springs. It’s pretty close to the famous Giant Rock, Pratum pointed out. He grew up in Southern California and spent a lot of time hiking and camping around the area.
When I asked him if he could envision opening another bookshop down there, Pratum, who’s almost 70, didn’t hesitate to answer affirmatively.
“I’ve always been a storekeeper,” he said. “I love meeting people in the doorway and finding out what they’re interested in.”
But the response to the Oaklandside article only highlighted something Pratum already knew about his industry. The market for rare books has waned tremendously. Very few of the many inquiries he received were from professional dealers. He’s worked in the field for decades, and described a healthy competition between dealers in the past.
“Back then, the whole game was to find books. We’d spend the night camped in front of the San Francisco Public Library’s used book sale,” he said. “Now it’s exactly the opposite.”
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