The Know-It-All

by A. J. Jacobs

  Tunguska event

  This was an “enormous aerial explosion that, at about 7:40 A.M. on June 30, 1908, flattened approximately five hundred thousand acres of pine forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, central Siberia, in Russia. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to that of ten to fifteen megatons of TNT. Uncertain evidence of various kinds suggests that the explosion was perhaps caused by a comet fragment colliding with the Earth.”

  I had more than a passing acquaintance with the Tunguska event. For a couple of weeks there, when I was eight or nine, I was obsessed with it. I had read about the massive Siberian explosion in a collection of unsolved mysteries, and I can now recall the black-and-white drawing of thousands of trees splayed out on the forest floor. I looked it up in other books after that. I knew all the theories—that the Tunguska event was really the result of a UFO doing target practice, or that it was a chunk of antimatter that somehow took a left turn and sailed into our atmosphere. Naturally, I worried—if it can happen in Siberia, why can’t it happen on Eighty-second Street in Manhattan? Who’s to say that I won’t be vaporized in the Upper East Side event?

  And then, when that didn’t happen over the next few weeks, the Tunguska faded from my memory. In the past twenty-six years, until just moments ago, I had given absolutely zero thought to the Tunguska event. I guess unexplained Siberian explosions don’t come up too much in celebrity journalism.

  turnip

  It’s Halloween today. In the British Isles, the Halloween jack-o’-lantern used to be made from a turnip, not a pumpkin. The savages.

  By the way, another good thing about Julie being pregnant: she’s too tired to go out. No pumpkin carving. No turnip carving. No costumes. (In the past couple of years I was enlisted to be Colonel Sanders, then Colonel Mustard from Clue, so who knows what colonel I’d be this year?) Instead, we get to stay inside and watch something scary on TV. We opt for a show about former child actors going out on dates.

  tutelage

  My friend Jamie has invited me to speak to an adult education class he’s teaching. Finally, after enduring the speed-reading and memory fiascoes, a chance to be on the other side of the adult education table. This time I will be the one pontificating.

  It’s a writing class. There are about a dozen students who want to shed their real jobs and join the lucrative field of writing, where you can earn lots of money if your name happens to include both the words “Stephen” and “King.” The students seem nice enough. One has spent a lot of time as a ski bum and wants to go into magazines, another wants out of her hellish PR job.

  I decide to start with some good writing advice I’d culled from the encyclopedia. I printed my speech on little index cards to make myself look organized and professional. I begin reading.

  First, I tell them to be aggressive. The poet Langston Hughes was a busboy at a hotel in Washington, D.C. While in the dining room, he slipped three of his poems beside the dinner plate of established poet Vachel Lindsay. The next day, newspapers announced Lindsay had discovered a “Negro busboy poet.” The moral: get your writing in people’s face—no matter how you do it.

  Second, I tell them they can write anywhere. If you have a job at the Gap, steal a few minutes and write some lines in the sweater section. No excuses. Hugh Lofting wrote Dr. Doolittle while in the trenches of World War I. Amid exploding grenades and gas masks and rats, he created a lovely little story about talking animals that he sent home to amuse his children. Be like Hugh. Write everywhere.

  Then I tell them that if you write with style and passion, you can make any topic interesting. Any topic at all, as William Cowper proved. Cowper was a poet whose friend challenged him to write a long discursive poem about a sofa. He did, and it was a smash success. Personally, I’d rather read a footrest-based novel, but I can see the allure of sofas.

  Jamie’s students all nod politely. But I notice a remarkable lack of movement of their pens. Every time I look up from my speech, all the pens are still lying on their desks. Notes are conspicuously not being taken.

  Then one of them asks if I know anyone at The New Yorker.

  Well, yes, I reply.

  “How do we e-mail them?” he asks.

  I don’t feel comfortable giving out my New Yorker contact’s name, but I tell them that all e-mail addresses at The New Yorker are made with an underscore between first and last names.

  This time, the pens in the classroom begin scribbling: first name_last name@newyorker.com. That they find interesting.

  typewriter

  I haven’t touched one of these since my mom’s electric Remington back in the early eighties, a machine that hummed so loud it drowned out anything resembling a coherent thought. It was like trying to write my high school essays about Huck Finn or the Whiskey Rebellion on the tarmac at La Guardia. Still, I feel I should pay some attention to typewriters, since I spend most of my day pecking away at the typewriter’s electronic descendant.

  I learn that Mark Twain was an early adapter, submitting the very first typewritten manuscript to a publisher. Those antediluvian typewriters were the size of pianos, and also had only capital letters. In 1878, typewriters finally introduced lowercase letters. Yes, the shift key was born—but mind you, it wasn’t an easy birth. The shift key had to do battle with a rival, the double-keyboard machine, which contained twice the number of keys, two for each letter, a small and a large. After many years, the shift key won out thanks to the invention of touch typing.

  I take a minute and look at the shift key on my Macintosh PowerBook G3. Good for you, shift key. I’m glad you trounced that evil double-key method. CONGRATULATIONS! There, I just used you. Thanks again.

  That’s a nice thing about reading the Britannica. I’m constantly learning to appreciate things that I didn’t even know deserved appreciation. The lightbulb and the theory of relativity—they get more good PR than Tom Hanks’s visit to a children’s hospital. But it’s the little things, the forgotten mini revolutions that need our thanks.

  U

  ukelele

  THE HAWAIIAN UKELELE is adapted from the Portuguese machada and is quite unsuited to indigenous musical forms. In other words, Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles” is not an ancient Pacific island chant. Disillusioning.

  umlaut

  It’s time for my haj. Time to make the pilgrimage to the Britannica HQ. These thirty-two volumes have consumed the last months of my life, and I’m desperately curious to see their birthplace.

  Well, the real birthplace is Edinburgh, Scotland. I won’t be going there. But since the 1930s—when the Britannica was owned, briefly and improbably, by Sears Roebuck—the offices have been located in Chicago. I haven’t been to Chicago since my days at Entertainment Weekly, when I visited the city to report on another highbrow cultural institution, The Jerry Springer Show. If I had to guess, I’d say the Britannica trip will involve slightly fewer lesbians wrestling in chocolate pudding. Julie wants to come—she has friends in Chicago—so we book a flight.

  “You know, it’s not called the Windy City because of the wind,” I tell her. “It’s because the early Chicago politicians were full of wind, as in hot air. That’s how it got the nickname.”

  “A dollar, please.”

  I’ve lost about $20 so far on fines for irrelevant facts. But this one I’m going to fight.

  “That’s not irrelevant. That’s useful meteorological information. I’m saying it’s not as windy as you might think. Don’t pack a windbreaker.”

  Julie shrugs, gives me that one.

  The morning after we arrive in Windbag City, I wake up, put on a blazer so I look all professional, and go meet the Britannica’s publicist, Tom Panelas, for breakfast. As a journalist, it’s part of my job to think of all publicists as soldiers of Satan. But with Tom, that’s not possible. He’s a burly man with a booming, from-the-diaphragm voice and an easy laugh. As I mentioned before, Tom is smart—he’s got a frightening vocabulary and range of references. I remember once, while talking to Tom on th
e phone, I mentioned my birth date for some reason—March 20, 1968—and Tom said, “That was right between the Tet offensive and MLK’s assassination,” which simultaneously dismayed me about my birthday and impressed me greatly with Tom’s memory. He unabashedly carries three or so pens in his shirt pocket. He’ll tell the occasional intellectual joke. Like: “René Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Yo, René, how you doing? Can I get you a beer?’ ‘I think not,’ replies Descartes. And then he disappears.” After which joke, Tom will immediately apologize.

  The only time I saw Tom even slightly rattled was when I mentioned an article that claimed that, at one time, the domain name encyclopaedia-britannica.com had been swiped by another Web site—one that featured blond women doing things you probably wouldn’t even find in the reproduction section of the encyclopedia. Linking Britannica and hardcore porn—that made him a little nervous. And he wanted to make quite clear any problem like that had long since been remedied.

  In any case, Tom has scheduled a packed day for me, a breakneck tour of the Britannica’s highlights. So off we go. It is an odd feeling walking off the elevator and into the offices. I’ve been reading the Britannica so much, it has become this disembodied mountain of knowledge. It seems somehow delivered from on high, whole and intact, like Deuteronomy. I almost forget there are people who put it together, people who put on their pants—often corduroy pants, it would turn out—one leg at a time.

  But there are indeed editors, and they are indeed mortal. Also quiet. This could be the quietist office in America. Tom has told me that, at one point, the company that owned Muzak also owned the Britannica, which meant the office was constantly bathed in soothing cheesified versions of Simon and Garfunkel. But no more. All I hear is the click-clack of of computer keyboards and an occasional polite, low discussion of Gothic architecture, or what have you.

  The offices are clean and clutter-free, not counting a smattering of highbrow cubicle knickknacks, like the foam rubber brain issued by the Britannica a few years before. The office walls are appointed with a tasteful selection of Britannica lore: a Norman Rockwell–painted ad showing Grampa reading a volume to his eager granddaughter; the first timeline (not the first timeline in the Britannica, mind you: the first timeline, which appeared in the third edition); and some of the original engravings for the 1768 edition—most notably some extremely disquieting images of old midwifery contraptions that look like something you’d find alongside a ball gag in an S&M closet. And so on.

  My first stop is with the two top editors—Dale Hoiberg and Theodore Pappas. Dale studied Chinese literature, and his office has a print of Confucius on the walls. For some reason, Dale reminds me of the father on the eighties puppet sitcom Alf—a fact I decide to keep to myself. This is not the place for that. Theodore has a mustache and a blue vest and a tie and is very precise. You get the feeling his CD rack does not indiscriminately mix classical and jazz. Both Dale and Theodore are very kind, in that gentle academic sort of way.

  I immediately decide I like them, partly because they seem very curious about me. What’s not to like? I tell them my quest is going well. Their thirty-two-volume work is a great read, if incredibly challenging.

  “The math sections,” I say, “are my bête noir.”

  Bête noir? I can’t believe that came out of my mouth. Who talks like that? I realize I’m more nervous than I thought I would be. I’m so desperate to impress these guys, to prove I’m no lightweight, that I’ve resorted to the injudicious use of absurd French phrases.

  When we start talking specific things I’ve learned, somehow the first fact that springs to mind is one about embalming. In particular, the tale of the crafty widower who kept his wife aboveground so as to inherit her money (see embalming). I’m a little embarrassed that—out of all the thousands and thousands of facts in the EB—this is the one I share. On the other hand, at least I don’t tell them the one about the five-butted abalone.

  “I found that embalming story fascinatingly morbid,” I say, trying to recover by using a well-placed adverb.

  They chuckle graciously. They didn’t know about that one.

  Didn’t know about it? That takes me aback. Somehow, I assumed that the editors of the Britannica would have a handle on pretty much everything in the encyclopedia. They edit the damn thing, right? Well, if I give that notion more than three seconds’ thought, I would realize it is moronic. The editor in chief couldn’t possibly read or remember all his books’ 44 million words. But hearing it in person—getting proof that I have at least one piece of knowledge Dale and Theodore don’t have—well, it’s a huge relief.

  Emboldened, I decide to forge ahead. “I’ve got to say, the accuracy is remarkable. I found very few errors in the Britannica.”

  They seem pleased.

  “But I did find some.”

  I tell them about how Robert Frost is listed as a Harvard graduate even though he dropped out, and about a backward quotation mark. I watch their faces for shock or hostility, but they just seem curious. They want to fix them. Theodore actually takes notes. This is a huge feeling of power, a strange and great sensation. Can you imagine? I am going to have an impact on the esteemed Encyclopaedia Britannica. It has always seemed so imposingly static; to be able to change it was unthinkable, as likely as changing Teddy Roosevelt’s chin on Mount Rushmore. But here I am, doing it.

  “Also, my wife is upset there’s no mention of Tom Cruise.”

  Again, Theodore jots down a note. This one is much more of a long shot. But Theodore did say they want to beef up the pop culture coverage, to make the Britannica more accessible without sacrificing the gravitas or dumbing it down. Man, if I got Tom Cruise in, I would be golden with Julie. I could forget a half dozen anniversaries, but I’d always have that.

  I spend an hour chatting with Dale and Theodore—during which I start to understand a smaller and smaller percentage of what they are saying, since they begin to discuss the theory of databases. I also, embarrassingly enough, have to ask what the word “ligature” means—it’s when two letters are smushed together, like the a and the e in the official title of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. (I’ve used the nonconnecting ae in this book, partly because I can’t figure out how to get the ligature on my Macintosh keyboard.)

  But there is much more to see, so Tom hustles me out of Dale’s office. He shows me the illustration department (I particularly like the disemboweled laser printer being used as a model). And the animation department, which makes short movies for the Britannica CD-ROM (I comment that the video of a dragonfly eating its prey reminds me of a Bruckheimer movie, a reference I immediately wish I could take back). I am whisked to the indexing department, which is still riding high from its Wheatley Medal, the Nobel for index people (I get them to show me how they indexed the concept “index,” since I still enjoy a little postmodernism). I talk to some fact checkers (and learn about the time they were confirming the population of a tiny Scottish town, and they called up some guy in the town, who told them, “If you hold the phone a second, I can count,” and he went out and counted). I meet a handful of editors (each has an area of expertise, and assigns the articles out to specialists in the field). I visit the library (a book on Indian treaties, a Malay-to-English dictionary—generally, the oddest collection of books I’ve encountered).

  And then Tom has a surprise for me. The wily folks at the Britannica are going to put me to work. They want me to really understand how this encyclopedia is built, so they’re going to have me lay a couple of bricks myself. I’m led to a cubicle, which is all set up for me with two red pencils, a highlighter, a stack of books, and a Britannica mug. And I am left alone, in the silent Britannica offices, listening to the clacking keyboards of other employees.

  My first task is to fact check an article on the history of sports. I can do this; I spent several months as a fact checker at the New York Observer. I start by trying to confirm that sumo wrestling uniforms were designed in 1906, not the Middle Ages as many ass
ume. I scan the table of contents of my stack of books. No sumo there. I start clicking though Web sites, spending several tantalizing minutes at one Drexel University page before coming up empty. I begin to sweat. Not metaphorically, but actual perspiration, at least a sponge worth. I get that panicked, I’m-flubbing-this feeling I haven’t gotten since the Mensa test. I want to dazzle these Britannica folks, show that I’m worthy of reading their book. And I’m failing.

  After forty minutes—during which time I confirm exactly two of the fifteen facts—I switch to my next task: editing. I’ve been given an article on international criminal law, and been charged with adding “meaningful cross-referencing.” This I can do. Cross-referencing is the art of adding “see such-and-such” at the end of a sentence. If there’s a mention of broccoli, I’d add “see vegetables”—that kind of thing. I start adding cross-references with near giddy enthusiasm, filling up the page with red pen marks, trying to compensate for the fact-checking Chernobyl. International airspace? See sovereignty. Now that’s what I call “meaningful cross-referencing.”

  After twenty minutes, I’m called back to Theodore’s office, where I boast about all the references I crossed. He seems moderately pleased.

  “Was there anything you would have changed in the international law article,” asks Theodore. “Any big suggestions?”

  Damn. I was so busy with my meaningful cross-referencing, I didn’t devote any brain space to the grand picture of whether this was actually a good article. See moron.

  “Maybe, um. Well, it could have talked more about the history of international criminal law. Like, did they have the concept in ancient Greece?”

  I kind of think this isn’t a half-bad answer. But it isn’t the right one.