by A. J. Jacobs
As we leave Au Bon Pain and walk to the subway stop, I throw out my final Semitic fact—that I am a descendant of a noted Jewish scholar. He was an 18th-century genius named Elijah ben Solomon, also known as the Vilna Gaon, the Wise Man of Vilna.
The rabbi seems impressed, almost startled. “That’s quite some yichus.” I am flattered, once he explains that “yichus” means “lineage.” I feel like a very minor star, as if maybe I should autograph a yarmulke. “He was the original know-it-all,” says the rabbi. “I hope that he would think you were following in his footsteps.” Oy. That’s a lot of pressure. No one’s calling me the Wise Man of New York City.
I had brushed up on the the Vilna Gaon before my meeting. According to the Britannica, he revolutionized Jewish study by expanding its boundaries. He argued that a complete understanding of Jewish law and literature required a broad education—the study of mathematics, astronomy, geography, botany, zoology, and philosophy. He was also violently opposed to the mystical Hasidic movement, which he thought of as un-scholarly. I ask the rabbi about that. “Yes, that’s a battle that rages even today. Some people have a great hunger for what we would call the touchy-feely side of spirituality. The Vilna Gaon didn’t like the touchy-feely side. He didn’t like those who got in touch with God through dance and music.”
For better or worse, I’ve inherited the Vilna Gaon’s worldview. His and my dad’s. I don’t think I had a choice. I was fated to be the obsessive scholar. I was genetically bound to be the wary-of-emotion, intellect-worshiping reader that I am.
Renoir, Jean
It’s the weekend, and I’m feeling sick once again. Got flulike symptoms. I’m moping around the house in my polar-bear-themed pajamas, drinking my Tropicana orange juice and shooting extremely expensive cold medication up my nose. Julie thinks I’m sick because of a lack of sleep. Then again, she thinks every health problem is caused by a lack of sleep. If I twisted my ankle or got pistol-whipped by a gangsta rapper, she’d blame it on my not getting the proper eight and a half hours.
Regardless of the cause, I feel terrible and achy and generally unsettled. But I’m trying not to wallow. Nowadays, I’m trying to think more positively about my frequent illnesses, trying to see the silver lining. There’s always a silver lining—that’s what the Britannica has taught me. When the volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883, it caused tremendous, unprecedented devastation. But it also threw so much dust into the atmosphere, it caused the most beautiful red sunsets around the world for the following year.
Well, maybe that’s not such a relevant example. But there are plenty of instances—dozens, even—when getting sick was the best thing that could happen to a guy. The great Latin American writer Jorge Luis Borges was a decent if unremarkable writer until 1938. That was the year when he banged his head, suffering a severe wound and blood poisoning that left him near death, devoid of speech and fearing for his sanity. Best thing that ever happened to him. The Britannica says this experience seems to have “freed in him the deepest forces of creation.” After that, Borges did his best work. Frida Kahlo began painting while recovering from a horrible bus accident. Henri Matisse took up the brush while recuperating from a bad case of appendicitis. Jean Renoir spent time recovering from his World War I leg wound in moviehouses, where he fell in love with the medium.
The key is to take advantage of the free time your health problem creates, to use it as a chance to explore some unknown creative alleyway. So far, this weekend, the alleyways I’ve explored have been pretty unimpressive. I doodled a bit in my spiral notebook, tried to think of some Big Ideas and failed, stacked five Cheerios in a column without tipping it over. Maybe this isn’t my breakthrough illness, so I go back to reading my Britannica.
reproduction
The bandicoot male has a two-tipped penis, and the female a double-slotted vagina, so they can have a little orgy without sending out invitations.
revelation
Another thing my dad and I have in common: bad cholesterol. Without Lipitor, we’d both have cholesterol approaching Avogrado’s number (6.0221367 × 1023). Now I’ve also started to take aspirin every night. I can’t remember when I decided this would be good for my heart—after reading a Newsweek article? after talking to Julie’s father, a fellow high cholesterol sufferer? But it seems like the right thing to do. (Aspirin, by the way, was originally made from the bark of the willow tree.)
When we’re on the phone, I tell my father about the aspirin habit. He’s not opposed, but suggests I should consult Dr. Mackin.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
But I won’t. And the main reason I won’t is that the Britannica has systematically, relentlessly eroded my faith in the authority of doctors. That’s what will happen when you read about page after page of bloody and bloody ridiculous medical history. I knew about leeches and bodily humors, but that’s just the start. I’m still unsettled by trepanning—the primitive practice of drilling a two-inch hole in the skull to let out the evil spirit. I’m sure during the heyday of trepanning, the chief resident for trepanning at Lascaux Grotto Hospital was very authoritative and assured his patients in a condescending tone not to worry about a thing. We’re professionals here, he said, as he smashed their skull with a rock.
Okay, so that’s too easy. But medical history in the postscientific age isn’t much more heartening. Here’s a quote that took me aback: “I believe firmly that more patients have died from the use of [surgical] gloves than have been saved from infection by their use.” That’s from one of the leading medical experts in the early 20th century weighing in on the surgical glove controversy—a controversy I didn’t even know existed. In my encyclopedia, I wrote a little note in ballpoint pen next to that quotation: “Doctors don’t know shit.”
That was an overreaction, of course. They do know a little shit. I do believe in science and double-blind studies. But I also have much less faith in the infallibility of these self-aggrandizing guys with diplomas on their wall. Plus, I can feel myself getting a little cocky. I’ve read about medicine, so I know this stuff too, right?
Cocky, that’s the word. In the last few weeks I’m not sure where, maybe the late Os—I started to feel my ego expand. I started to feel secure. I realized this when I did a little gedankenexperiment—a thought experiment. I imagined myself at a dinner with such established big brains as Salman Rushdie and Stephen Hawking, and I could see myself holding my own. (The good part is that I will never actually find myself at such a dinner, so there’s no way to disprove my thesis.)
The thing is, I don’t feel intellectually adrift as I used to. I feel that I have a handle on the map of all knowledge—and even if there are some details missing, I at least have the outlines of the continents and islands. When I go to meetings at Esquire, I’ve got this bedrock of confidence that wasn’t there pre-Britannica. Sure, they may talk about the football game I know nothing about, with names of Jets and Falcons that I couldn’t spell. But for every running back I’ve never heard of, I’ve got a handful of Portuguese explorers or Parisian archbishops or whatever in my mental pocket. I know they’re there if I need them.
Rice, Dan
We all know the cliché—politicians are a bunch of clowns. Well, here we have an actual, bona fide clown/politician. Dan Rice was perhaps the most famous clown of the 19th century. He started his circus career, says the Britannica, when he bought a half interest in a trained pig. He then switched over to a short stint as a strongman before settling on clowning and horse tricks. The 1860s were Rice’s glory days, the decade when he toured the country for a then amazing salary of $1,000 a week (not so far from my own, salary, come to think of it), recognized by his trademark white beard. He got so popular, President Zachary Taylor made him an honorary colonel. And here’s my favorite part: in 1868, he ran for the Republican nomination for president. He didn’t win, which is sad. I would have liked to read history textbooks about the Pie in the Face Incident involving the French ambassador.
riot
> You only need three rambunctious people to legally qualify as a riot. That’s all. So Julie, our kid, and I could hold our very own riot.
Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugène
Robert-Houdin was a French conjurer, the founder of modern magic—a man so revered that a Jewish kid in Wisconsin renamed himself Houdini in his honor. My favorite Robert-Houdin fact: in 1856, the French government sent him to Algeria to combat the influence of the mystical dervishes by duplicating their feats. I like the idea of magicians being called into war service. Maybe we should have air-dropped David Blaine into Iraq. A really dangerous part of Iraq. A minefield, perhaps.
Robespierre
Out to lunch with Dad again, one of our semiregular workingman meals at a midtown deli. Dad is already seated when I get to the restaurant, chewing on one of the complimentary pickles they leave in a bowl on the table.
“Be careful of that. Pickles have been linked to stomach cancer,” I say. “Pickled foods and salt both increase your chances of gastric cancer.” I’m not really concerned about my father’s health, which would have been nice. I’m just trying to show off.
“I’ll only have half,” my dad says.
“Also, Jewish women after menstruating are forbidden to touch pickles.”
As soon as I said that one, I wished I could take it back. That is just a rule of life, along with “shower every day” and “wear sunscreen”: Do not discuss menstruation with your father.
Luckily, Dad kind of ignores me. Which is better for both of us.
“So I’ve been reading about your profession,” I say.
“Oh.”
“Yes, they had a nice section on lawyers in the Britannica. Did you know that Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Lenin, and Robespierre were all lawyers?”
“A lovely group of people,” says my dad.
Sometime before our sandwiches arrive, my dad spots a colleague across the dining room—a man I’ve never met. He asks me to go up to the guy’s table and say, “Hi, Barry,” to see the reaction.
I feel even more uncomfortable than when I brought up the Jewish menstruation taboo. I just can’t do it. Dad looks disappointed.
rock tripe
A monthly story meeting at Esquire. It’s five of us in the conference room, with the editor in chief, Granger, at the head of the table, taking occasional notes.
My fellow editor Brendan is pitching a story about living “off the grid,” away from civilization.
“Getting your own generator is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Brendan.
“Actually, the tip of the iceberg can be pretty large,” I offer.
“What?”
“A tip of the iceberg doesn’t have to be small. In some iceberg formations, fully half of the iceberg is above water. So it’s not a very accurate cliché.”
Brendan thanks me with a glare, then finishes his pitch by talking about solar energy. Granger likes it, as evidenced by his scribbling pen.
A few seconds of silence follow, so I figure maybe I’ll jump in now.
“I’ve got a good one,” I say.
Granger’s listening.
“I think we should do something on an unsung hero of our country,” I pause dramatically, then: “Lichen.”
“The fungus thing?”
“Part fungus, part algae, and all-American.”
The faces of my colleagues indicate that they don’t quite follow. So I explain: George Washington’s starving troops ate lichen off the rocks at Valley Forge. Lichen saved our country. If it weren’t for lichen—or more specifically rock tripe, a type of lichen—we’d all be playing cricket.
Someone says that they actually think we should bolster our coverage of ferns instead. Everyone laughs. Someone else says that nothing can beat Norman Mailer’s article on peat moss.
And on it went. Back in the safety of my office, I give lichen some more thought. I honestly don’t think it would make a bad article. Everyone likes an unsung hero. Granger’s always asking us for ideas that haven’t been done before, and I can almost guarantee GQ hasn’t scooped us on lichen.
Originally I was thinking big—a two-page spread on lichen, a list of its other uses (perfumes, litmus, food dyes), a lichen recipe, the top ten varieties of lichen, a celebrity lichen angle that I hadn’t quite figured out yet. But after the reception at the meeting, I’d settle for a little box. I e-mailed Granger restating my case. Just a little box, I say.
He e-mails me back: “Fine.”
After two years at Esquire, I’ve mastered Granger’s e-mail code. “Great” means he loves an idea. “Okay” means he likes it. “Sure” means he couldn’t care less. And “fine” means he hates it, but he’ll let you do it to shut you up.
A few days later, I have written up a little salute to lichen and squeezed it on the bottom of a page. I’ve even had the art department call in a lichen photo. Let’s just say it’s not quite as attractive as Penelope Cruz. It looks not unlike a skin ailment. But it’s a proud moment—lichen is getting its due. When the article comes out, lichen will take its place next to Paul Revere and the guy with the fife as a Revolutionary War hero. I love when my knowledge has an impact on the outside world.
rodeo
The inventor of steer wrestling was an African-American cowboy named Bill Pickett. He would tussle a steer to the ground and bite the steer’s upper lip in a “bulldog grip.” Jesus. Makes rodeos today look like PETA conventions.
Rubens, Peter Paul
This much I knew about Rubens: the adjective “Rubenesque” may sound smart, but it’s something to avoid when trying to compliment a date. The Britannica had a little more for me. I learned that Rubens, the 17th-century Flemish painter, was prolific and inventive, his style partly influenced by our old friend Caravaggio. But their similarities end with their work. In his personal life, Rubens is the anti-Caravaggio. As the Britannica puts it: “The father of eight children—this prosperous, energetic, thoroughly balanced man presents the antithesis of the modern notion of struggling artist.” Yes! That’s comforting. Rubens will be my role model. Now I know: I don’t have to yell and scream and throw artichokes at waiters to qualify as an artistic genius. I don’t have to kill a man on a tennis court. So forget the tantrums. I just need some talent.
S
Sabbatarians
My God, I’m exhausted. I keep thinking about that scene in Cool Hand Luke in which Paul Newman shoves hard-boiled egg after hard-boiled egg into his mouth. I think I know how he felt after that forty-third egg. Same way I felt after I ingested that twenty-seventh Lithuanian poet.
And now I’m confronted with S. The killer. At 2,089 pages, the single longest letter in the Britannica. It’s like Heartbreak Hill in the Boston marathon. I look at the S volumes on my mustard-colored bookshelf. So silent, so thick, so smug. I take a deep breath and I march ahead into the Ss, right into the Sabbatarians—a term sometimes applied to Christians who believe the weekly holy day should be Saturday rather than Sunday. For me, neither Saturday nor Sunday this week will be a day of rest. It will be a day of Ss.
Saint Elias Mountains
The Saint Elias Mountains are a mountain range I already know depressingly well, having seen them up close for far too long. When I was growing up, my parents took my sister and me on a trip every summer. They wanted to show us the world, and they did such a thorough job, I now feel happy to do any additional traveling by watching the Discovery Channel, much to Julie’s dismay.
But anyway, when I was a freshman in high school, my parents took us on a trip to Alaska, where we visited Glacier Bay National Park, bordered by the Saint Elias Mountains.
It’s a huge park—five thousand square miles—about four thousand times the size of Central Park, though without as many Rollerbladers or drug dealers. And it’s spectacular, even for someone like me, who, as Woody Allen says, is at two with nature.
One afternoon, my sister and I rented a kayak (a craft, by the way, that was invented by Greenland’s Eskimos and was originally made of sealski
n over a whalebone frame). The man who rented it to us looked harmless enough, if overly familiar with the workings of a bong. My sister and I paddled out into the glorious bay—oohing and ahhing at the mountains and the seals that poked their noses out of the water. We saw no one else—no other kayakers, no campers, nothing to indicate humans existed at all. Just wilderness. And then, as planned, half an hour later, we started to paddle back. Problem was, we seemed to have made a wrong turn. The place where there was once a channel of water had now become a beach. (We found out later that the bong-loving kayak rental guy had forgotten to mention that the low tides would drain our channel.)
So Beryl and I just made a right turn and started paddling, figuring we’d find a way back eventually. Not the best philosophy, but our navigation skills weren’t honed to a sharp edge, seeing as going from Eighty-first to Seventy-sixth Street doesn’t generally require a compass.
We paddled and paddled some more. We passed the minutes singing TV theme songs—Diff’rent Strokes, Brady Bunch. We started on Gilligan’s Island, but decided that a song about an ill-fated nautical adventure was too appropriate, so we stopped. We talked about which of our classmates might be most upset by our deaths. I liked to imagine that Rachel Yassky might throw herself on my coffin and have to be dragged off. That was a nice thought.
After an hour or two, we ran out of songs and conversation, so the only sound was the paddles splashing in the water. That, and the occasional howl of an unidentified but no doubt ferociously carnivorous animal.