The Smartest Book in the World

by Greg Proops

  ELGIN MARBLES

  Phidias, created c. 447–438 BC

  (British Museum, London)

  Lord Elgin, who was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, nicked the marbles—meaning statues and reliefs of heroic heroes being heroic—from the Parthenon and other temples in Greece. The Turks had been running Greece for 350 years. Elgin thought the Turks were wrecking the art and sculpture and received permission from the government to start lifting them. On the way, some sank in a boat and had to be recovered. Was it a curse? Greece has been petitioning to get them back for a long while. The British Museum refuses to part with them. Time for us to get them back for Greece. This one we don’t do for gain but for immortality. The British Museum website states they were “acquired,” which means pilfered. The museum bought them from Elgin after much ado, and they low-balled him on the price. We’d come disguised as a moving company and say we are taking the statues out for a wash. We’d load up the van and speed to the coast, where we have hired a Greek vessel with a ne’er-do-well captain named Stavros. We would then sail back the same route the marbles came, and when we hit Greece, we’d alert the New Acropolis Museum, where they already have a room prepared for the treasures awaiting their return. We’d dine in triumph; you get the mullet, and I get the lamb. We’d send the plaster casts back to the British Museum with a note saying the cleaning was free. Chance of success: hang the success; we did this for the gods.

  PAINTINGS

  George W. Bush, created c. 2010

  (Dick Cheney’s Fridge, Wyoming)

  George W. Bush was almost voted president twice during the terror/war/depression boom of the 2000s. Dick Cheney was nominally vice president, but in reality he was the shot caller. Since his retirement from public life, W has been pursuing his goal of being the worst artist who ever held office since Hitler. His portraits of world leaders he has met are a tribute to the primitive school of art brut, or outsider art, usually meaning art made by people from without the art world, such as children or mental patients. Cheney’s house in Wyoming is filled with trophies and war crime memorabilia. We’d pitch up as an honor guard with a band, uniforms, and everything. We would perform a number on the lawn and ask to use the facilities. On our way to the loo, we’d steal the Putin portrait off the refrigerator and drive like fury. We can be at the Devil’s Tower (non-ironic) before noon and then, freedom. Win/win. Chance of success: like winning a war in Afghanistan.

  VODKA-FLAVORED VODKA

  I live on shameless flattery . . . and vodka . . . but the two usually go hand in hand.

  —Vicktor Alexander

  Vodka fell from heaven at the gods’ caprice. A cold, clear, bracing shower. The one that saved humankind from itself. The planets had spun too far away, the forces of good were abating. Vodka descended and chilled the Earth so we could survive in this caustic, poetry-barren atmosphere.

  Beautiful, benign, multihued bubbles rose from the puddles of the new ambrosia. Exploding in effervescent flashes that salve the soul and delight the winkles of your cockle. Like an unsullied lake from a zillion-page Russian novel, vodka lies waiting for you to dare. Vodka means “water” in many languages. Water is simply vodka reduced to survival mode. Water is vodka that won’t fight, merely survive. Liquid inspiration, crystal-clear nectar, the monarch of spirits, breakfast of champions, companion to caviar and sassy radishes, bloodier of Marys, emergency antiseptic, handler of Chelsea. Take it not lightly, but do take it nightly. Vodka is a boon friend that never lets you down. Scientists assert vodka is a depressant. Fuck that. Watching the Learning Channel is a depressant; vodka takes us where we need to be, to the mellow, altered state of bliss just over the border from where you were when your boss climbed up your ass like an armadillo. People ask, “What kind is your favorite?” The answer is, “Do it come in a bottle?” Beware the flavored kinds. Vodka already has a flavor—it is its flavor. You don’t need fruity kiddie-flavored vodka any more than you need vodka-flavored fruity vodka drinks. Fruit joins vodka; it should not blag its way in and perform cold fusion with the flaves. No one in Russia or Poland or Finland drinks vodka with fizzy soda pop while watching crappy sports in a loud bar. They drink it freezing cold gathered in secret, sullen reading groups. They know it is too profound a drink to besmirch in that way. Never mix; never feel disappointment.

  The Smartest Book in the World VODKA RECIPES

  Vodka-Flavored Vodka Drink

  1 bottle of vodka

  1 bucket of ice

  1 bowl of lemons (sliced)

  1 glass (any size will do but something short of a flagon)

  1 moon

  1 vast field of stars

  Fill glass with ice. Add lemon. Pour a heaping tot. Silence any heaping tots in the vicinity. Gaze skyward at the moon. Add stars. Listen to the music of the spheres. Drain glass. Refill. Consider your life. Consider changing it. Reload. When the bottle is empty, you will have come to a decision. Seize the day.

  Vodka Goddess Swirling

  1 bottle of vodka

  1 bucket of ice

  1 bowl of lemons (wedged)

  1 glass, shot-sized

  1 tumbler

  1 telephone

  Chill bottle in freezer. Take bottle from freezer. Promptly fill shot glass with vodka. Drink immediately. Fill tumbler with ice. Add lemon wedge. Fill with vodka. Drink with relaxed, rocking motion. Alternate between shots and tumblers. Dance. Call old friend. Cry tears of joy. Compose a letter of thanks on that stationery you have been saving.

  Vodka-Flavored Funky Screwdriver

  1 bottle of vodka

  1 bucket of ice

  1 bowl of lemons (sliced)

  4 glasses

  1 jam kicker with which to kick jams

  Take four glasses and fill to the brim with ice. Add a slice of lemon to each. Offer the following toast: “May we never be farther apart” or “Let’s do this, kittens.” Turn on jam kicker. Play funk jams. Let the funk preside. Repeat. Rest. Switch jam kicker to “The Smartest Man in the World” podcast. Listen. Feel renewed. Wipe tears of unalterable joy from face. Return to funk.

  Proople Rain

  1 bottle of vodka

  1 bucket of ice

  1 bowl of lemons (sliced)

  1 glass

  Fill glass with ice. Add lemon. Pour vodka to brim. Guzzle gently. Lean on wall. Sing show tunes. Make up your mind to quit your job and become a freelance sex symbol. Or Argentinian rancher. Or expert on Asian art. Or mystery millionaire philanthropist. Stir. Renew. Repeat if ambulatory.

  NOTES, ADDENDUM, ERRATA, AND ERIK ESTRADA

  Firstly, a note on the Oxford comma. It is employed throughout the book. This was specifically against my wishes; I was sentenced by the publishers to sit captive in a darkened room with ghastly, uncomfortable furnishings, horrible music by Sting, and dismal New York weed while they peppered my masterpiece with this abomination of punctuation. The willful disregard for my feelings on this matter is an illustrative example of how the sincere common person is being trod upon by the vast, unsympathetic corporate powers that be. This explanation is the one that I prefer to believe rather than the fact that I never perused my copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. I instead used it to balance a wonky table leg. There, I feel it finally served some purpose. The Oxford comma and I have called a truce. The exclamation point had better watch out if I see its overenthusiastic lame ass in a dark alley.

  As for the amount of poetry in the book, medicine does not always taste good, but it can make you well. I am not certain what that means. At the outset, it seemed a good idea to shove some old-fashioned culture in here. I may possum have been misapprehending. There is a boatload of poetry and baseball. I don’t apologize; I merely note and agree with you that it was a lot. Try reading the poetry aloud—even better, have someone read it aloud to you while you lie recumbent on velvet cushions drinking cherry wine and smoking a hookah. That ought to solve any metric problems. For the next book, if there is one, less baseball and more Women at
hletes, scientists, artists, and heroes. This I vow to Diana.

  Books form the major source of information in this tome. We stayed away from wiki anything for obvious reasons. My vast personal experience as a groom, paperboy, pizza delivery dude, steelworker, longshoreman, rodeo clown, baseball fan, comic, waitress, busboy, improvateur, car parker, kitten wrangler, voice-over artist, world traveler, and amateur drug addict also informed my writing. For your information, darling, this book was extensively fact-checked by one Ms. Tate, who was meticulous and quite helpful, arguing every morsel down to where Satchel Paige met his first wife and which baseball executive proclaimed Japanese players would never play in the big leagues. That was not from a book but an actual question I posed to an executive in the press box at the San Francisco Giants spring-training facility in 1987. I asked if he thought we would ever have Japanese players in the bigs and he responded to me, “Never.” I responded, “That is what they said about blacks during World War II.” His beardy mug darkened and he scowled at me, not happy with my youthful brash attitude and being called out on his wholesale racism, but sic semper tyrannis. I was there literally on a pass. Ex ore infantium. As for Paige, there is no one figure on whom you may rely on less to tell the whole truth. John Holway, acclaimed historian of the Negro Leagues, starts his book Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues with this quote from Napoleon: “History is a myth agreed upon.” Then let us agree.

  Speaking of myth, there is a comprehensive book on Casey at the Bat in all of its permutations and implications called Mighty Casey: All American by Eugene C. Murdock, 1984.

  More baseball books have I consumed than you have had hot meals. This we presume is not a surprise to you, dear reader. We will not list them all but hit you with some highlights. Donald Hall’s Fathers Playing Catch with Sons has terrific first-person material with colorful pitcher Dock Ellis. Indeed, Mr. Hall wrote a biography with Dock called Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball. Hall is a poet as well as a very good writer and journalist, so I find his writing far more entertaining than the usual baseball history. He cares. Well, almost all baseball authors care because they are sick with it. Leigh Montville authored The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, both so groovy you don’t have to like baseball to dig them. Robert Creamer is a distinguished baseball writer with loads of sensational biographies where he gets to the core of the player—Babe: The Legend Comes to Life and Stengel: His Life and Times are where you should start if you want the real story. My favorite book about old-time ball is The Glory of Their Times by Larry Ritter. He personally interviewed dozens of pre-WWI players, and you can download the actual recordings. To hear the old men speak of hanging out at firehouses and finding hairpins for good luck . . . It is not mere nostalgia, it is great oral history. I had the fortune of meeting and hanging with Larry Ritter, and he was one of nature’s gentlemen. An unusual book about Ruth that astounded me with stories I had never known is The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs by Bill Jenkinson. It shows Ruth to be a superhuman baller. Other great baseball authors whose work I consulted include: the amazingly informed Donald Honig; the magisterial Dr. Harold Seymour; John Thorn, who appears to know everything about the game—maybe because he is the game’s official historian; and Charles Alexander’s biographies of Ty Cobb and John McGraw, which are vivid and frank. Also Cait Murphy, who wrote a wild ride called Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History. And Jane Leavy wrote the warts-and-all biography The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood. Hank Aaron wrote his own book, I Had a Hammer, which is characteristically honest about his life and the racism he endured.

  Willie Mays is my favorite player and I have read a bunch of books about him. I read all the kiddie ones when I was little, which are still fun if you can find them. For now, the definitive authorized biography Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend by James S. Hirsch is the standard, but Say Hey: The Autobiography of Willie Mays by Mays with Lou Sahadi and Willie’s Time and Willie Mays: My Life In and Out of Baseball by Charles Einstein are far more fun and anecdotal. Einstein also edited the awesome Fireside Book of Baseball series and was the son of vaudeville comic Harry Einstein and the half-brother of comedians Super Dave Osborne and Albert Brooks. So there. Start there, oh novice baseball reader. If you have the grit.

  The Negro Leagues and Satchel Paige have been covered wonderfully by many better scribes than I. The ball got rolling in 1970 with Robert Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White. Much has been done about writing the history of the Negro Leagues since that book came out, but no one had ever bothered to get the story from the players’ mouths, so now everyone follows in Peterson’s wake. Baseball’s Great Experiment by Jules Tygiel is a riveting account not only of Jackie Robinson but also of the frustration that many veteran Negro League players felt over being shuttled about in the minor leagues. It is also candid about the white owners and press. Jackie Robinson wrote many books and I have sourced from them all. I Never Had It Made, his autobiography with Alfred Duckett, is tremendously gripping. Baseball Has Done It is Jackie Robinson’s take on the game after he left. The new version was reprinted in 2005 and has a very informative preface by Spike Lee. Opening Day by Jonathan Eig was given to me by my editor, Matthew Benjamin, and is a terrific and informative book about Jackie’s first season. Satchel Paige was, among many things, an author, and his two autobiographies, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever with John Holway and David Lipman and Pitchin’ Man with Hal Lebovitz, are truly delightful and painful. Larry Tye wrote the recent Satchel biography Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, and it is well worth it. Beautifully researched. But my favorite book on Paige is William Price Fox’s Satchel Paige’s America. It starts with Fox meeting Paige in the Twilight Zone Lounge at the Rhythm Lanes bowling alley in Kansas City, where he is drinking beer, smoking, and holding court. They spend a week together, and Paige takes him out for barbecue, to a nightclub, to get a new muffler, and to play ball with a kids’ team he is putting together. Paige is a hero and a celebrity everywhere they go, and he teaches Fox about growing up in Alabama, and how to hunt, fish, cook a burger, do a cakewalk, and live your life like a legend. Amazing, moving, human book, and quite short. A Complete History of the Negro Leagues 1884-1955 by Mark Ribowsky is quietly factual and a great resource. For my money, the greatest authority on the Negro Leagues is John Holway. He went to his first Negro League game in 1945 and saw Paige’s Monarchs play Josh Gibson’s Homestead Grays. His first-person interviews with all the living Negro League players are the most entertaining and enlightening books on the subject. Black Diamonds: Life in the Negro Leagues from the Men Who Lived It, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, and Black Ball Stars have interviews with Cool Papa Bell, Willie Wells, and Effa Manley, the Woman owner of the Newark Eagles. I also consulted Holway’s Josh Gibson and Josh and Satch.

  Ancient history is best told by the ancients, all of whom had an agenda, and from the distant past you can hear the distinct sound of axes grinding. Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars is rude, ribald, partially factual when he could be bothered, and also just great reading. He covers the first twelve emperors, and that includes Caligula and Nero, so dig in. Julius Caesar by Nigel Cawthorne is a splendid little book that hits all the high points. Perfect if you just want to while away an afternoon with lust and carnage. Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy has written on Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony. He can be a bit straightforward, which is no crime, but the work is fascinating. I found his Caesar: Life of a Colossus and Antony and Cleopatra to be most helpful. Honestly, I quite enjoyed the bestseller Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. Anyone who can fling the phrase “cool raspberry dawns” into a history book has me by the asp.

  Among the many books on Alexander the Great, some are painfully detailed and others whole cloth. Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives and used Julius Caesar and Alexander as his conquerors. Plutarch is great fun, and he certainl
y twists the story to suit his own needs, sometimes forcing the analogy between the two generals. He prefers illustrative tales to dates and facts. Don’t we all? Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander clips along, and he is sometimes judgmental about our hero. All to the good. Arrian was well educated, lifelong pals with Roman Emperor Hadrian, wrote loads of books, and had a huge career in Roman politics, holding many posts. He sources Ptolemy, who was Alexander’s close friend and general, as well as Nearchus, an admiral of the fleet. Robin Lane Fox is a historian and an expert gardener; his Alexander the Great is a beautifully realized portrait and one I would highly suggest if you are questing for more. I also found his engaging portrait of ancient times, The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian, a great way to get an overview if that is what you seek. Lewis V. Cummings was a cartographer for the British Intelligence Service, and his Alexander the Great is exhaustive and detailed and wow, strap in for maps and places and dates, but he has the best account of Alexander at Malia, fighting for his life. Skip it unless you want to go deep. Alexander the Great by Professor Norman F. Cantor is a lovely and personal tale. Notice how all the books have the same title? I guess so you don’t get dazzled by other less great Alexanders.