by A. J. Jacobs
Year
Today, another Hanukkah/New Year’s gift exchange at my parents’. It’s been about a year since I started reading the Britannica, which is hard to believe. It doesn’t feel like a year. It doesn’t even feel like a lunar year (twelve lunar cycles, about 354 days, used in some calendars).
We get there early—before Beryl and Willy—which means there’s time for Julie and my mom to go to the back room and look at some jewelry designs my mom has been working up.
Leaving Dad and me alone.
“Want to see the latest sonogram?” I ask.
“Absolutely,” says Dad.
It’s a good sonogram. The spine shows up in bright white, resembling a tiny comb. And you can see his face—Julie and I had an argument over whether he looks more like E.T. or Jason from the Friday the 13th series.
I take the sonogram out of the bag and hand it to Jasper’s grandfather.
“Good-looking kid,” he says, studying it.
“Yeah, he’s got the Jacobs nose,” I say.
“Any more thoughts about naming him Arnold Jacobs V?” my dad asks.
“Sorry, no.”
He nods his head. He knew.
“I have something else you might want to see,” I say.
“What is it?”
I dig a piece of paper out of the bag.
“It’s a little something I wrote up. Something I’m submitting to the Britannica board for inclusion in next year’s edition.”
My dad takes the paper. He reads it:
Jacobs, Arnold (b. February 26, 1941, New York)
An expert on insider trading and world record holder for most footnotes in a law article. Jacobs grew up in Manhattan, the son of a lawyer and an art teacher. He graduated in the 78th percentile in his high school class—but has the excuse that he only studied during subway rides. Jacobs attended many, many graduate schools that we cannot list for space reasons. With his wife, Ellen Kheel, a fellow collector of buffalo memorabilia, he had two children. He imparted to his son, Arnold Jacobs Jr. (aka Arnold Jacobs IV), a love of learning and scholarship that could be excessive at times—but as far as excesses go, it was a pretty decent one. Jacobs Sr. also impressed his son with his accomplishments, devotion to family, and expertise on Genghis Khan. And perhaps most important, Jacobs Sr. made a great scientific leap when he discovered the speed of light in fathoms per fortnight: 1.98 × 1014. Jacobs Jr. built upon his father’s discovery by calculating the speed of light in knots per nanosecond: .000162.
I watch my dad read it—for what seems like a very long time. Finally, he smiles.
“This is great,” he says. “I’m honored.”
“Well, we’ll see if they accept it,” I say.
“Knots per nanosecond?”
“Yeah, I worked it out.”
“That’s good stuff.”
“Yeah, useful information,” I say.
“You even got the alliteration down.”
“Yeah, I thought it was better than knots per picosecond.”
“It’s great. It can be the first thing I’ll teach my grandson.”
I probably won’t be joining my father in the really byzantine practical jokes featuring bison statues or lemon Kool-Aid. But I figure, why not join him in a little one about fathoms and fortnights? Why not take his cue, as Lorenz’s goslings did, and give him a little praise? I knew he’d love it.
As I approach the Z’s, I’ve finally beaten my dad at something. I finished a mission that he started, and I suppose that’s helped me exorcise a demon—specifically the demon of envy, also known as Leviathan in the Bible. Right now, at least for the next couple of weeks, I probably have more information in my cerebral cortex than he does. Am I smarter? Maybe not. Most likely not. Do I know as much as he does about rule 10b-5? Certainly not. But I do know this more than ever: my dad and I are the same. I’ve learned to stop fighting that fact. I’ve learned to like it.
yodel
The Swiss do not have a monopoly on this. The pygmies and the Australian Aborigines are also proficient yodelers. On the other hand, their cuckoo clocks are below average.
Young Men’s Christian Association
This started with twelve young men in the drapery business in England before blossoming into a Village People song.
Young, Thomas
Proposed the wave theory of light—and was widely disparaged because any opposition to Newton’s theory was unthinkable. As George Bernard Shaw said, “All great truths start as blasphemies.” See—I got something out of this.
Zeus
I guess it’s no big news that men can’t keep their pants on. That was clear even in the first hundred pages of the Britannica, what with the scores of “dissolute” men and their mistresses. But Zeus is in a league of his own. He deserves a gold medal, or better yet, some saltpetre (well, actually, I learned that saltpetre doesn’t dampen the libido; so maybe a cold shower). Zeus was the Wilt Chamberlain of Greek gods, spreading his seed far and wide. Every one hundred pages in my reading, there Zeus would be, making it with another woman or, occasionally, with a man. Sometimes Zeus would have sex as Zeus himself, but more often he’d go in disguise. He’s taken the shape of a bull, an eagle, a cuckoo, a dark cloud, a shower of gold coins, and an ant. An ant? He seduced Eurymedusa in the form of an ant. I don’t even understand what that means. I have a guess, but I can’t imagine Eurymedusa found that pleasant, and she may have required ointment.
Zola, Emile
According to some sources, Zola, as a starving writer, ate sparrows trapped outside his windowsill.
zoo
The Aztecs had a magnificent one in Mexico that required a staff of three hundred zookeepers. Also, you should know that Londoners during World War II ate the fish out of their city’s zoo.
Seventeen pages left. I’ve got a tingle in the back of my neck. I want to skim, but I force myself slow down, savor these final entries.
zucchetto
The skullcap worn by Roman Catholic clergymen—the last liturgical vestment in the Britannica!
Zulu, the African nation (whose founder, Shaka, by the way, became “openly psychotic” when his mother died, and refused to allow crops to be planted).
My God, seven more pages.
Leopold Zunz, a Jewish scholar.
Zurich ware, a type of Swiss porcelain.
Zveno Group, a Bulgarian political party.
Zywiec
And here it is. I have arrived. The final entry of the Britannica’s 65,000 entries, the last handful of the 44 million words. The bizarre thing is, my pulse is thumping as if I were running an actual marathon. I’m amped up.
I take a deep breath to calm myself, and then I read about Zywiec. Zywiec is a town in south-central Poland. It’s known for its large breweries and a 16th-century sculpture called The Dormant Virgin. Population thirty-two thousand.
And that’s it. At 9:38 P.M. on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night, sitting in my customary groove on the white couch, I have finished reading the 2002 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I’m not sure what to do. I shut the back cover quietly. I stand up from the couch, then sit back down.
There’s no ribbon to break, no place to plant a flag. It’s a weird and anti-climactic feeling. The entry itself doesn’t help. If the Britannica were a normal book, the ending would presumably have some deeper meaning, some wrap-it-all-up conclusion or shocking twist. But everything in the EB is a slave to the iron discipline of alphabetization, so I’m left with an utterly forgettable entry about a beer-soaked town in south-central Poland. Zywiec. I guess I knew it wouldn’t hold all the secrets to the universe (zywiec: a mysterious substance found in badger fur is the reason to go on living!), but still, it’s a little disappointing. There’s something sad about finishing a huge, yearlong project, an immediate postpartum depression.
I slide the volume back into its space on the mustard-colored shelf, where I expect it will stay for a long time. I wander out to the living room.
“Done,” I tell my wife.
“Done for the night?”
“No, done. As in done, done.”
She throws open her arms. I get a congratulatory hug and kiss.
“Wait a second,” she says. “I have to document this.” Julie runs off to the bedroom and reappears with our video camera.
“A.J. Jacobs, you finished reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z. What are you going to do now?”
“Um…” I shake my head. I really don’t know. I’m stumped.
“Are you going to Disneyland?” prompts Julie.
“Yes, maybe I’ll go to Disneyland, founded by Walt Disney, creator of Oswald the Rabbit.”
Julie clicks off the camera.
“How about a celebratory dinner?” she asks.
“Yeah, why not?” That’ll be nice, a dinner with the long-neglected Julie—that is her name, right? “You want to finish your West Wing?” I ask.
“Sure.”
So I sit on the couch next to Julie and watch the end of The West Wing, which is set in the White House, a structure Thomas Jefferson called “big enough for two emperors, one pope, and the grand lama.”
I think back to my parents’ friend who told me the fable wherein the wise men of the kingdom condensed all the encyclopedia’s knowledge into a single sentence: “This too shall pass.” That’s not a bad moral. If you want a single sentence, you could do worse. What’s my sentence? I better come up with one now, because at this very moment, I’ve got more information than I ever will, before that evil Ebbinghaus curve kicks in.
Frankly, I’m not sure what my sentence is. Maybe I’m not smart enough to come up with a single sentence summing up the Britannica. Maybe it’d be better to try a few sentences, and see what sticks. So here goes:
I know that everything is connected like a worldwide version of the six-degrees-of-separation game. I know that history is simultaneously a bloody mess and a collection of feats so inspiring and amazing they make you proud to share the same DNA structure with the rest of humanity. I know you’d better focus on the good stuff or you’re screwed. I know that the race does not go to the swift, nor the bread to the wise, so you should soak up what enjoyment you can. I know not to take cinnamon for granted. I know that morality lies in even the smallest decisions, like whether to pick up and throw away a napkin. I know that an erythrocyte is a red blood cell, not serum. I know firsthand the oceanic volume of information in the world. I know that I know very little of that ocean. I know that I’m having a baby in two months, and that I’m just the tiniest bit more prepared for having him (I can tell him why the sky is blue—and also the origin of the blue moon, in case he cares), but will learn 99 percent of parenthood as I go along. I know that—despite the hyposomnia and the missed Simpsons episodes—I’m glad I read the Britannica. I know that opossums have thirteen nipples. I know I’ve contradicted myself a hundred times over the last year, and that history has contradicted itself thousands of times. I know that oysters can change their sex and Turkey’s avant-garde magazine is called Varlik. I know that you should always say yes to adventures or you’ll lead a very dull life. I know that knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing—but they do live in the same neighborhood. I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning. And I know that I’ve got my life back and that in just a few moments, I’m going to have a lovely dinner with my wife.
Additional Sources
BROWN, CRAIG. “How the First Fly Guy Went Up, Up and Wa-hey…” Edinburgh Evening News, December 9, 2003.
COLEMAN, ALEXANDER and CHARLES SIMMONS. All There Is to Know: Readings from the Illustrious Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE. Bouvard and Pécuchet with the Dictionary of Received Ideas. New York: Penguin Group, 1976.
KOGAN, HERMAN. The Great EB: The Story of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
KONING, HANS. “Onward and Upward with the Arts: The Eleventh Edition.” The New Yorker, March 2, 1981.
MARKS-BEALE, ABBY. 10 Days to Faster Reading. New York: Warner Books, 2001.
MCCABE, JOSEPH. The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Escondido, Calif.: The Book Tree, 2000.
MCCARTHY, MICHAEL. “It’s Not True About Caligula’s Horse; Britannica Checked—Dogged Researchers Answer Some Remarkable Queries.” Wall Street Journal, April 22, 1999.
MCHENRY, ROBERT. “Whatever Happened to Encyclopedic Style.” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 28, 2003.
OSTROV, RICK. Power Reading. North San Juan, Calif.: Education Press, 2002.
SARTE, JEAN-PAUL. Nausea. New York: New Directions, 1964.
SHNEIDMAN, EDWIN/ “Suicide On My Mind, Britannica on My Table.” American Scholar, autumn 1998.
STERNBERG, ROBERT J. Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determine Success in Life. New York: Plume, 1997.
———ed. Handbook of Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Index
accents, glottal stop in
accidents:
blindness resulting from
fabricated
accomplishments, EB-worthy
Adams, John:
Jefferson’s July 4th predeceasing of
retirement pleasures of
air travel, ethical dilemma in
Alaska:
AJ and Beryl lost in
“mosts” claimed for
Allah, in tampered database
alphabet, self-taught man’s reading arranged by
American Crossword Puzzle Tournament
American Gothic, who are these people?
anesthetics
animals:
guard, unexpected example of
humans and
sleazeball behaviors of
stuffed
voices of
Zeus transformations into
anti-neutrino particle, memorizing definition of
aposiopesis T-shirts
Archimedes’ screw, EB blasphemed on
Ardrey, Robert, on miracle of man
Aristotle:
self-serving marriage maxim of
telegony endorsed by
art, serious appreciation of
atomic bomb (Fat Man), Nagasaki as secondary target of
Attila the Hun:
pros and cons of
unfortunate wedding night death of
audiences, riots and uproars avoided by
Australia, hereditary obsession with
authors, good looks an asset to
Aztecs, Planet of the Apes idea lifted from
Babinski reflex, testing for
bad ideas, inertia of
Baghdad, monument to Ali Baba’s housekeeper in
Ball of Fire (movie), anti-intellectual vs. pro-education themes in
barnacles, crab testes consumed by
baseball:
bearded apocalyptic cult in
how to talk about
Reggie era in
bastards, notable
battles, nudity in
beans, Pythagorean commandment against
beauty, eternal
beauty patches, design and placement of
Bender, Steve, Operation Britannica graded by
Bible
encyclopedia as
loopholes in
walnut-sized
Binet, Alfred
bioweapons, Louis XIV’s suppression of
birthdays, Einstein’s rejection of
blasphemy case, boob defense in
blue-footed booby (just a coincidence), mating dance of
blue moons, cause of
bodies, temperature of
body parts:
embalming of
modification of
in note designations
official names for
unusual numbers of
body types, classification of
Bo
livia, haziness about a river or two in
book title, one-size-fits-all
Bouvard and Pécuchet (Flaubert, that superior bastard)
brain:
atrophy of
common hazards to
cranial capacity and
of Einstein
gullibility of
mucus originating in
ongoing loss of cells in
playroom compared with
brain damage, AJ’s fear of
breasts:
in boob defense
modification of
see also nipples
British cryptic, clue to “astern” in
British-to-American translations
Brod, Max, Kafka’s final wish interpreted by
Brown University
ecstasy at
famous attendees at
Brummel, Beau, rise and fall of
burial:
positions in
premature, cell phones for
Bush, George W., days taken off by
calculator tricks, Mensan interest in
camps, all-male, hazards of
capitalism, businessman’s attack on
Carol, Aunt, Sartre’s Nausea as gift from
cats:
Big Boy and Wild Thing
character of
cry of (cri-du-chat syndrome)
in grammar question
songs about
celebrities:
anatomically interesting
cautionary lessons taken from
Dalton offspring of
real names of
Celebrity Deathmatch
cellphones:
in coffins
in movie theaters
Central Park, identification of
Chad (as well as Bolivia), haziness about a river or two in
Challis, James, planetary gaffe of
Charles II, King of England, illegitimate children of
Charleses, aids to memorizing of
cheese knives, unanswered questions about
cholesterol, high
cilantro, see coriander
civilization, Pax Mongolia and spread of
Civil War, U.S.:
Garibaldi invited to
oratory in
rebel spy–Union officer love story in