The Know-It-All

by A. J. Jacobs

  The dinner is held at a high-decibel Italian restaurant called Da Silvano in Greenwich Village. Unfortunately, I am seated at the round table at the exact farthest point from Schott. The only way I can interact with him is if I call him on his cell phone, or maybe by engaging in the elaborate greeting ritual of the black-tailed prairie dog, which involves throwing its foreparts vigorously into the air, directing its nose straight up, and uttering an abrupt yip.

  With Schott out of reach, I’m stuck talking to my table mate, a woman who says she works for a small New York paper. She is unusually attractive for a journalist, with long black hair and a face that wouldn’t look out of place in a Tommy Hilfiger catalog. She is also, I decide, completely insane. Either that, or she’s more hammered than I’ve seen anyone since my friend John drank fourteen Olde English 800s in college.

  “My mother loves Ben,” she confides to me.

  “Oh, how does your mother know about Ben?” I ask. I figure this is a fair question, since the book hasn’t been released in America, and Ben resides full-time in London. But she chooses not to answer it directly, instead saying this: “My mother loves him so much that she bought a house so she could communicate with him.”

  She smiles at me and bites her lower lip. As the dinner wears on, I figure out that was sort of her trademark: make a cryptic statement, then smile and chew on her lip. She also enjoys rearranging her hair so that it covers her face completely, giving her a little private time to come up with new cryptic statements.

  But anyway, back to her mother, who had me truly perplexed. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow,” I say.

  “She bought a house so she could communicate with him,” she repeats.

  I still shake my head.

  “In Costa Rica,” she says. Her tone indicates that she thinks this will clarify things once and for all, and that maybe I should stop asking all these dumb questions.

  I don’t care how much knowledge I have, there is just no way to process this information. So the dinner is looking to be quite the waste of time. But a couple of hours—and several plates of carbs—later, I do finally weasel my way into a seat next to Ben Schott. So in the end, I suppose I didn’t need a semaphore to communicate with him.

  Turns out he is a lovely chap. That’s what I’d call him, a chap. Very genteel, much like the Britannica itself. He is well groomed and sharply dressed, self-effacing, and he seems just pleased as punch to meet me.

  We trade some talk about our favorite defenestrations—he likes the second one in Prague that kicked off the Thirty Years’ War. Then I figure I’ll impress him with some of the Britishisms I’ve picked up in my Britannica. If you recall, I’d already scored a big success in this department with the Coriander/Cilantro Incident of 2003. So I feel I am in safe territory.

  “So do you think we’ll have an old wives’ summer this year?” I ask Schott.

  He looks at me much the same way I had looked at my dinner companion after she told me about the Costa Rica house.

  “You know, an old wives’ summer. Isn’t that what the British call Indian summer?”

  “No, actually we call it Indian summer,” he says.

  Oh. That’s not good. The Britannica said it was called old wives’ summer in England—but it’s hard to argue that to a man who actually speaks the Queen’s English.

  “Well, I hope the timothy grass didn’t give you allergies this year.”

  Again, confusion.

  “Timothy grass—that’s what causes allergies in Britain, right? In America we’ve got ragweed. There you have timothy grass?”

  I can feel him about to turn away to talk to an actual journalist who might be interested in discussing his book. So I quickly throw out a final question:

  “I was just wondering—what do the British call those machines in Vegas?”

  “Oh yes, one-armed bandits.”

  “No, fruit machines,” I say, frustrated.

  “Oh yes, we do call them fruit machines. Because they have fruit on the little displays.”

  I know why they called them fruit machines, dammit. I wanted to clarify to Schott that I’m not a complete dimwit. But too late—he is off and talking to someone else.

  I didn’t get to impress him with any other British-to-American translations, so I’m printing them here.

  •Our “ladybug” is their “ladybird.”

  •“Lumber” in Britain refers to old furniture.

  •What we call “English” in billiards, they call “side.”

  •A surgeon in Britain is called “Mr.” The honorific “Dr.” is reserved for physicians.

  •Aluminum in Britain is called “aluminium.”

  We barely speak the same language, I tell you.

  After my conversation with Ben ends, I see him having a chat with mysterious Hair Girl. I can’t hear what they are saying, but I can tell from the look on his face that she is up to her old cryptic tricks, perhaps the same ones involving communicative Central American houses. I wonder who he finds more baffling: me or her. Sadly, I’m not sure.

  missing links

  Julie and I are having some friends over tonight. No particular occasion—though it is Paraguay’s Independence Day (May 14), so that’s more than reason enough.

  “Honey, can you get out the cheese knife?” asks Julie.

  I could if I knew where it is. I open five drawers before I stumble on the cheese knife. I pick it up and look at it. And look at it some more.

  It strikes me at that moment that cheese knives must have quite a story to tell. No doubt, cheese knives have an inventor. Who was he? What was he like? And what about the titans of the cheese knife industry? Who are they? What are the cheese knife legends and rumors? And there must be an eccentric but lovable cheese knife designer who revolutionized its look, right? And then there’s cheese knife science—the blade shape best for cutting cheese, the debate over what metal to use in the blade, and what wood varnish to use on the handle.

  And I have read none of this in the encyclopedia.

  I am staring at the cheese knife for a good twenty seconds, thinking about this, slack-jawed, like someone who dropped too much bad brown acid at Woodstock.

  “Great,” Julie says, as she returns to the kitchen. “I’ll take it.”

  “Oh yes,” I say, snapping awake. “Uh, here’s the cheese knife.”

  The cheese knife revelation sends me into a mini panic. Everything in the world is packed with facts. Just look around the apartment—the little knob on the cabinet, the toaster, the lipstick on Julie’s lips, which are right now asking me for the ice tongs. And ice tongs—they have their own history too.

  What do I know of these things? Nothing. I am in the Ms, and I know nothing.

  Montaigne

  I like this 16th-century French writer quite a bit. I like that he coined the term “essay,” which translates to “attempts,” or a little “project of trial and error.” That’s what I want my Esquire articles to be. Little attempts, even if my attempts happen to involve more Wonderbra jokes than Montaigne’s attempts. It just takes a lot of pressure off when you call them attempts.

  But even better than the origin of the word “essay,” I like the story of how Marie de Gournay—a French intellectual at the time—fainted from excitement when she read Montaigne’s work for the first time. She fainted from reading. What a great image. We’ve become far too jaded. I’ve been intrigued, bored, titillated, annoyed, amazed, but I’ve never even come close to fainting while reading any book.

  Which is sad. I wish ideas could still get people so excited that they fainted. I wish people—including me—had a more visceral reaction to reading. The closest I’ve come to fainting during Operation Britannica was when I felt queasy after reading about the botfly, which lays eggs in horses’ nostrils, and I had to stop eating my ice cream sandwich.

  moron

  I think I’m starting to lose my sense of humor. I was watching a Friends rerun with Julie, and there was this scene with Joey, the
show’s certified moron (Morón, by the way, is also the name of a town in Cuba). In the scene, Joey observes his costar turn a lock. He marvels at this, and says: “It’s amazing how keys open doors.” It gets a big laugh. It’s supposed to show that he’s got the IQ of a candelabra.

  But all I can think is that, yes, he’s right, it is amazing how keys open doors. I think back to the diagram in the lock section, with all the pin tumblers and springs, and am proud that I finally understand how keys work. I don’t understand keys as well as Joseph Bramah—the famed locksmith who created a lock that remained unpicked for fifty years, despite his promise to reward the picker with £200—but still, I understand them. Joey and I—we both know that keys are amazing.

  Morozov, Pavlik

  Here we have one of the most odious little schmucks in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A truly horrible little human being. And, I’m afraid, one who reminds me a lot of myself as a youngster.

  Pavlik was a communist youth who eventually became glorified as a martyr by the Soviet regime.

  The son of poor peasants, Morozov was the leader of the Young Pioneers’ group at his village school and was a fanatical supporter of the Soviet government’s collectivization drive in the countryside. In 1930, at age twelve, he gained notoriety for denouncing his father, the head of the local soviet, to the Soviet authorities. In court Morozov charged that his father had forged documents and sold favours to kulaks (i.e., rich peasants who were resisting the collectivization drive). Morozov also accused other peasants of hoarding their grain and withholding it from the authorities. As a consequence of his denunciations, Morozov was brutally murdered by several local kulaks.

  Morozov was subsequently glorified as a martyr by the Soviet regime. Monuments to him were erected in several Soviet cities, and his example as a model communist was taught to several generations of Soviet schoolchildren.

  I know I should have felt sorry for young Pavlik. He was, after all, the victim of Stalin’s psychotic brainwashing regime. But I couldn’t help feeling a bit of glee when I learned he got his comeuppance, the sanctimonious little fuck.

  In Pavlik, I saw the worst qualities of myself as a twelve-year-old. That was the age when believed I was the smartest boy in the world. And like Pavlik, I decided I knew far more than my dunderheaded parents. Plus, like Pavlik, I was a Marxist. Somehow, I had gotten my hands on The Communist Manifesto. I understood maybe 14 percent of it, but I did like the catchy saying at the end about throwing off chains. So I declared myself a communist.

  Some of my childhood intellectual endeavors make me proud—my analysis of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Starlight Express comes to mind. That didn’t hurt anyone, and I think I might have been right. But this communist phase makes me cringe. I was so thoroughly convinced of my correctness. Embarrassingly so. I couldn’t believe my father worked for a capitalist law firm, exploiting secretaries by giving them only four weeks of vacation a year. If there had been proper authorities, I might have called them and denounced him.

  Occasionally, I’d engage my father in a debate. I remember one on the beach in East Hampton, as we walked collecting beach glass. My dad said that Marxism was a nice theory—it would be great if there were no poverty and everyone cooperated. But in reality, communism just didn’t work. In reply, I gave him one of the half dozen lines I had memorized. It could have been about how communism would cause the “withering away of the state” or that capitalism contains the “seeds of its own destruction.” Something like that.

  My dad tried to get me to clarify by asking reasonable questions. It soon became clear to both of us that I didn’t really understand what those catchphrases meant. Which only got me angrier and more self-righteous. So I repeated my catchphrase, told him that he should read The Communist Manifesto, and then stomped off the fascist beach. At the very least, I thought to myself, he’ll understand when the revolution comes.

  I’m not sure what Pavlik’s motivation was. But I’m pretty sure, looking back, that this was the intellectual version of our heated games of Wall Ball. My dad had far more knowledge and life experience than me. But if I could just beat him at one thing—if, say, I could overthrow the socioeconomic system he was a part of—wouldn’t that be something?

  Mosconi, Willie

  “When his father forbade him to play pool, hoping that he would pursue a career in vaudeville, young Mosconi practiced with potatoes and a broomstick.” I like the image of a dad hoping his son will pursue pie-in-the-face humor. But I am also impressed that pool champion Willie followed his dream by using misshapen vegetables. Another inspiring overcoming-odds story.

  motion

  Julie and I drive down to New Jersey for a little suburban Saturday (we buy lower-temperature gas in the morning, at my suggestion). We’re going to visit Julie’s brother Eric and his wife, Alexandra. As always, we start the day playing mixed doubles with them at their tennis club.

  Eric is infuriatingly good at tennis. It reminds me of that fact I read about in the intelligence section—the higher the person’s IQ, the better he or she is at the thirty-five-yard dash. Maybe the same holds true for tennis. It seems that nature hasn’t heard that you’re not supposed to put all your eggs in one basket.

  Making things worse, Eric is one of those types with a closet full of the proper equipment. Today, he’s arrived at the court in his white-collared shirt, white shorts, and white wristbands, all with a tasteful blue trim. He takes out his latest tennis racket, which is made from some material usually reserved for NASA’s Mars exploration vehicles.

  We begin our pregame leg stretches.

  “You up to L yet?” Eric asks. “For ‘loser’?” He chuckles. “You must have read about aces in the A section. You’ll be seeing a lot of those.”

  “Leave my husband alone,” says Julie.

  “I’m okay, sweetie,” I say. I turn to Eric. “After I’m done with you, you’re going to need Vladimir Nabokov to give you some lessons.”

  “What?” Eric says.

  “Nabokov was a tennis teacher before he became a writer. He also appeared as an actor some German movies.”

  “Well, you’re definitely not up to T for ‘trash-talking,’” says Eric.

  “I thought that was very good, A.J.,” says Julie.

  Julie doesn’t actually believe my Nabokov trivia was an appropriate comeback, but she knows what it’s like to be tormented by Eric. She endured a childhood of it, including one particularly vicious fight over the merits of Burger King versus McDonald’s.

  Regardless, I am feeling more confident than usual. I’ve come up with a bold new strategy. I’ve been brushing up on the physics I learned in the Britannica, visualizing the mechanics of flying spheres, and I’ve semiconvinced myself that this will make me a better player. I will see the court in angles and forces and arrows. I will be Master of the Natural Laws of Tennis. I will turn knowledge into power, specifically a powerful forehand.

  As we warm up, I tell myself to be aware of the Magnus effect. The Magnus effect is what causes tennis balls with topspin to dive downward. It’s actually a special case of Bernoulli’s Theorem which we can thank for keeping airplanes aloft, and has to do with a greater pressure on top of the ball than under it. Every time the ball comes to me, I watch that yellow fuzzy projectile spin, understand what’s going on, and thwack it back. I am doing it! The Master of the Natural Laws of Tennis is in the house! I am playing as well as—if not better than—my impeccably dressed brother-in-law.

  “Nice shot, A.J.!” Alexandra says, after one of my down-the-line Magnus-enhanced forehands.

  When the match begins, Julie and I jump out into an early and somewhat surprising lead. We’re up 2–0. This causes Eric to walk and talk very briskly.

  I keep focusing on my beloved Magnus effect. But I’m not forgetting about the parabola of the lob, discovered by Galileo himself. I’m not even forgetting about how gravity is stronger toward the Equator, so the north side of the court should have a little more bounce. Okay, well, I’
m trying to forget that one, because that’s probably not going to help me. And I’m trying not to get caught up in the Coriolis effect either, which says that a projectile moving north will drift to the east because of the earth’s rotation. That won’t likely have a huge effect on my ground strokes. But still, the Master of the Natural Laws of Tennis is thwacking back forehands and backhands, visualizing the projectiles in all their Newtonian splendor. We are winning! After one of my knowledge-enhanced forehands, Eric dumps his volley into the net.

  “Eric!” shouts Eric.

  That’s the word I’ve been waiting to hear. A sure sign that my Harvard-educated, wristband-wearing, cavity-free brother-in-law is pissed as hell at himself. There’s no other thing I’d like to hear, with the possible exception of “the pregnancy test is positive.”

  That makes the game worth it. And that, sadly, is also the highpoint of Julie’s and my own parabola. Because, in the end, Eric and Alexandra beat us. As much as I try to keep in mind the Magnus effect, I eventually fall under the sway of my Piss-Poor Backhand effect. So be it. We have had our moment of glory among the yellow spheres.

  motion picture

  The first true talkie wasn’t the The Jazz Singer, which the Britannica dismisses as “essentially a silent picture with a Vitaphone score and sporadic episodes of synchronized singing and speech.” The first 100 percent talkie: The Lights of New York, in 1928. More myth shattering, courtesy of the Britannica.

  Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy of

  This is the organization that gives out the Oscars. I know this well, seeing as I spent several weeks every year at Entertainment Weekly writing breathless articles about who was going to win those little gold statuettes. In fact, I have firsthand knowledge of the Oscars.

  It happened in 1997, right after the movie Shine—the one about the schizophrenic pianist—came out, to much critical acclaim. The actor who played the pianist as a young man was named Noah Taylor, a gawky-looking Australian fellow with a pageboy haircut and thick black Kissinger-style glasses. I’m sorry to report that I also had a pageboy haircut and thick black Kissinger-style glasses, not to mention his narrow face and prominent nose. I looked like Noah Taylor’s clone, or at least his older brother.