‘Noble Fragments' Review: Scripture in Pieces
In 1921 a rare-book dealer in New York acquired a Gutenberg Bible, one of only about four dozen believed to exist at the time. The dealer, the Hungarian émigré Gabriel Wells, disassembled his copy and sold it off in pieces, an act that scholars and book conservators have labeled vandalism, sacrilege and even a tragedy.
Wells marketed the individual leaves as 'Noble Fragments,' a phrase the journalist Michael Visontay borrows for the title of his absorbing investigation into the fates of the separated pages. The search was prompted by the author's discovery of yellowed legal documents suggesting a connection between his grandfather and Wells. In his book, Mr. Visontay weaves his family history into an account of Wells's brazen business move.
As a child in Australia, Mr. Visontay knew something of his Jewish-Hungarian family's experiences in the Holocaust. His paternal grandfather, Pali, was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp and survived the war. His father, Ivan, and his paternal grandmother, Sara, were transported to Auschwitz, where Sara was killed.
Shortly after the war, Pali married a woman named Olga, who died not long after she, Pali and Ivan emigrated to Australia. While Olga had been erased from the family memory, Mr. Visontay discovered that Wells was her uncle and that she had inherited a share of his estate (but alas, no Gutenberg leaves) upon the bookseller's 1946 death. This windfall enabled the small, battered family to begin anew in Australia.
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