The Know-It-All

by A. J. Jacobs

  Rick motions me over. My arrival doesn’t do much to stop the tall woman’s monologue, which seems to be about how she prefers to read plays instead of novels. Right now, she’s going through a Strindberg phase. He’s much more complex than his more famous counterpart Ibsen, she explains. I can’t be sure, but I think she used the words “criminally overlooked.”

  Rick looks less than enthralled. In fact, he looks like he might, at any moment, pull a pillow out of his pocket and curl up on the floor for a quick nap.

  “A.J.’s smart,” says Rick, as she pauses momentarily to inhale. “He’s reading the encyclopedia.”

  “Really,” says the woman.

  “Yep, from A to Z.”

  “And where are you now?”

  “I’m up to C.”

  “But how much are you retaining?”

  I hate that question. Especially the way she asks it, which makes it sound more like an accusation than a question, like maybe I’ve violated the Mann Act or something. How much are you retaining?

  I respond: “There are a couple of rivers in Bolivia that I’m a little hazy on, but everything else I’ve got down cold.”

  I figured that would shut her up. Of course, I’m retaining slightly less than that. There are also a couple of rivers in Chad that I’m hazy on. And a few other bits as well.

  But honestly, my retention rate is far higher than I imagined it would be. My best gauge of this is those internal dings—the ones that happen whenever my life intersects with the encyclopedia—which have only increased. It’s a constant symphony in my head. I’d say at least two per minute.

  So I feel good that something’s sinking in. My main concern, however, is that my retention is not evenly spread out among the facts. Instead, my new knowledge is clustered around several themes and trends—and those trends aren’t always the most elevated ones in the world. Like syphilis. I’m retaining an awful lot about syphilis. I could tell you that Al Capone’s and Winston Churchill’s fathers both had syphilis. I could tell you that the French poet Baudelaire had syphilis—and that he caught it from a Jewish prostitute named Squint-Eyed Sarah. I could tell you that some Bedouins have a nonvenereal form of syphilis called bejel, which could be a handy excuse for those trying to explain to their spouses an unpleasant positive test result. “I’m Bedouin, you see. It’s not venereal.” In a way, syphilis is an appropriate example. These themes that keep popping up are like a disturbingly contagious disease. I don’t feel I have control over them. They just sneak their way into my brain, and all of a sudden I’m keeping a tally on the mentions of cannibalism, or following the recurrences of men blinded in one eye.

  But anyway, back to our Strindberg aficionado, who doesn’t seem to be buying the rivers-in-Bolivia line. She looks quite severe.

  “What do you know about Samuel Beckett?” she asks. Beckett, Beckett. I’m frantically searching my internal CD-ROM for a Samuel Beckett fact. But I’m coming up blank. “If you want to talk writers, I actually found Balzac much more interesting,” I say. “Did you know he was a huge perfectionist, and he kept making changes to his books way after deadline, and the printer’s bills almost ruined him? You got to let it go, you know? A good lesson for us all.”

  That is evasion strategy number one. If you don’t know something, deflect, distract, razzle-dazzle them with another fact, and hope they forget. This time, it seems to have worked.

  “Okay. What about cauliflower?” she says.

  “Not up to it yet. I think it’s under V for ‘vegetables.’ ”

  That’s strategy number two. The old I’ll-get-back-to-you trick. Of course, this tactic’s got a built-in expiration date. It’ll become harder and harder to rely on as I keep polishing off the letters. But for now, I’ve got twenty-three letters to choose from. “Speaking of which, I think I’ll make my way over to the canapes,” I say.

  And that’s strategy number three. Leave. I abandon poor Rick to what will no doubt be more searing insights on Scandinavian theater.

  Civil War

  Before I waded into the Britannica, I knew enough about the Civil War to make sure I wasn’t a complete embarrassment to my country. I watched that Ken Burns documentary a few years ago, or at least a half hour of it, before I flipped back to something in color with a zippier sound track. Also, I knew that Denzel Washington led a black regiment to a victory at the historic Battle of the Oscars.

  But I was missing just a few details. I was missing, for instance, any knowledge of a woman named Belle Boyd (who got her very own entry back in the Bs). I’m glad I filled in that particular gap because, having read about her, I’ve decided her tale is worthy of a summer blockbuster (Movie Idea Number Two) and much-needed proof that romance exists in the real world.

  Belle Boyd was born and raised in Virgina. At the start of the Civil War, Boyd gained fame after she and her mother refused to let some Union soldiers into their house. When one of the men in blue attempted to force his way through the door, Boyd shot him dead. She was put on trial, but acquitted on justifiable homicide.

  Instead of retiring quietly back to rural life, Boyd just got deeper into the war. While staying in the same house as some Union officers, she eavesdropped on their plans to destroy the bridges in the town of Fort Royal, Virginia. “She undertook a hazardous journey through the lines to inform General T. J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson of the Union plans,” says the Britannica. It turned out to be a key piece of intelligence. This led to her stint as a courier and scout for J. S. Mosby’s guerrillas. She was arrested by Union forces, but released from prison after a bout with typhoid fever.

  A pretty good yarn so far—your average tough-girl secret-agent thriller. But here’s where any Hollywood agents out there should pay attention, because this is where the romance comes in—an unlikely meeting between a Confederate lady spy and a Union navy officer. In 1864, Boyd was sailing on a Confederate ship to England bearing letters from Jefferson Davis. Boyd’s boat was intercepted by a Union vessel, and a Union officer named Hardinge boarded the ship. Hardinge was utterly distracted by Boyd. That’s what the Britannica says, “utterly distracted.” It doesn’t say what that means. Did she flutter her eyes? Compliment him on his big saber?

  Regardless, Hardinge was so distracted by Boyd, he allowed the Confederate ship’s captain to escape. For this snafu, he was court-martialed and discharged from the Union navy. Then in August of 1864, Officer Hardinge sailed to England, where Boyd was now living and—cue music—married his former enemy. Hardinge and Boyd lived happily ever after, or at least until he died a year later.

  This makes me wonder what the hell my high school history teachers were thinking. I remember my Civil War lessons being bone dry. We talked a whole lot about King Cotton and the economic rationale for the Civil War, which are important, no doubt. But couldn’t they have spiced things up with a nice romantic tale between a Union fellow and a Confederate lady? What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned love story? It’d certainly have skewed well with the girls in class.

  clammyweed

  This is a first. I fell asleep while reading the encyclopedia. Just drifted off somewhere around clam shrimp, clam worm, clambake, or clammyweed, I can’t be sure which. I was reading it while lying down on the couch—a dangerous proposition, I now realize—and could only fight off shut-eye for so long. Did I mention my schedule is fucking exhausting?

  Anyway, I woke up when Julie came into the room. I felt like I’d been caught doing something naughty, like masturbating or selling idealistic Christian kids into slavery.

  claque, aka canned laughter

  It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s nothing new under the sun (a heavenly body, by the way, that some Indian ascetics stare at till they go blind). I knew that some things had a history—the Constitution, rhythm and blues, Canada—but it’s the odd little things that surprise me with their storied past. This first struck me when I was reading about anesthetics and I learned that, in the early 1840s, it became fashionable to hold parties
where guests would inhale nitrous oxide out of bladders. In other words, Whip-it parties! We held the exact same kind of parties in high school. We’d buy fourteen cans of Reddi-Wip and suck on them till we had successfully obliterated a couple of million neurons and face-planted on my friend Andy’s couch. And we thought we were so cutting edge.

  And now, I learn about claque, which is essentially a highbrow French word for canned laughter. Canned laughter was invented long before Lucille Ball stuffed chocolates in her face or Ralph Kramden threatened his wife with extreme violence. It goes back to the 4th century B.C., when Greek playwrights hired bands of helpers to laugh at their comedies in order to influence the judges. The Romans also stacked the audience, but they were apparently more interested in applause than chuckles: Nero—emperor and wannabe musician—employed a group of five thousand knights and soldiers to accompany him on his concert tours.

  But the golden age of canned laughter came in 19th-century France. Almost every theater in France was forced to hire a band called a claque—from claquer, “to clap.” The influential claque leaders, called the chefs de claque, got a monthly payment from the actors. And the brilliant innovation they came up with was specialization. Each claque member had his or her own important job to perform: There were the rieurs, who laughed loudly during comedies. There were the bisseurs, who shouted for encores. There were the commissaires, who would elbow their neighbors and say, “This is the good part.” And my favorite of all, the pleureuses, women who were paid good francs to weep at the sad parts of tragedies. I love this idea. I’m not sure why the networks never thought of canned crying. You’d be watching an ER episode, and a softball player would come in with a bat splinter through his forehead, and you’d hear a little whimper in the background, turning into a wave of sobs. Julie already has trouble keeping her cheeks dry, seeing as she cried during the Joe Millionaire finale. If they added canned crying, she’d be a mess.

  Cleveland

  I had always figured the Ohio town was named for Grover Cleveland. No, the real story is that it was named for Moses Cleaveland, an employee of the Connecticut Land Company, who arrived with his surveyors in 1796. His mission was to speed up the sale of land in Ohio, and in his honor, the town was called Cleaveland.

  That day must have been the proudest day in the life of this real estate salesman. No doubt he wrote a letter to his mom: “Dear Mother, the family name shall not be forgotten. There is a town in this fair state of Ohio that bears the glorious name of our family, the magnificent Cleaveland!”

  Then, in 1832, the a in “Cleaveland” was dropped because “Cleveland” fit better on a newspaper masthead. That was the reason. His name was bastardized to fit a newspaper’s masthead? They couldn’t have reduced the font? Did they consider changing “Ohio” to “Ohi”? That would save some ink, too.

  Fame is a fleet-footed hussy. It’s not the most shocking lesson I’ve learned, but it sure gets driven home every day. I’ve learned of hundreds of people who were huge in their time, adored by millions, but now totally forgotten except by freaks who read the encyclopedia. And even if your name is remembered, it’ll probably be spelled or pronounced incorrectly. Cleaveland can have a support group meeting with Dutch explorer Cornelius Mey, for whom Cape May is named. It’s discouraging. If I ever do achieve anything and become famous, within a couple decades, I’ll become R. J. Jackobz.

  climate and weather

  Lightning goes up. It shoots right up from the ground and into the cloud. This is what the encyclopedia says in the section on climate and weather. I reread this passage a couple of times to make sure I hadn’t gone batty—but no, lightning goes up.

  To be technical, it does first go down—there’s an initial bolt called the “leader” that zips from the cloud to the ground. But the bright part, the part that flashes, is the “return stroke,” which goes from the ground back to the cloud.

  This is profoundly unnerving. When I didn’t know the history of canned laughter or the existence of a sexy Confederate spy, that was mildly vexing. But this is unnerving. This is a whole new level of ignorance. I’ve been looking at lightning all my life, and its sky-to-ground direction seemed about as certain as the slightly asymmetrical nose on my face. To be confronted with this totally counterintuitive information—it makes me paranoid. What other incorrect ideas do I have? Is the sun actually cold? Is the sky orange? Is Keanu Reeves a brilliant actor?

  coffee

  I obviously need to be drinking more coffee (which was discovered, according to legend, when a goatherd noticed his flock acting strangely after eating the beans). Or maybe I need more sleep. Or something—because I’m screwing up on the job. My latest was a particularly embarrassing bungle. I was helping to edit an article in which a supermodel gives relationship advice to men. My boss had sent it back to me, pointing out that was a little bland. So I figured I should try to spice it up.

  The supermodel had suggested that men, when they compliment a woman, should choose something besides the eyes. Too clichéd, she said. Flatter another body part, she said. Something unexpected, like the cheeks or knees. Good advice. I simply tacked on the sentence “Men who compliment a woman’s eyes should be taken out back and whipped by a Bulgarian dog trainer.” Okay, maybe it wasn’t worthy of Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw, but it was something. And it worked. My boss liked it better.

  The problem was, I completely forgot to send the piece back to the supermodel to make sure she was okay with my little addition. I had meant to—I know you can’t just insert something without the writer’s approval. But I forgot. A dunderheaded move—both bad etiquette and bad journalism.

  And now my dog trainer line has bitten me in the behind. I get in today and there, in the gossip column, the supermodel is complaining that Esquire put words in her mouth, and that she’s getting lots of angry e-mails from the Bulgarian community. Jesus! Who knew there was a Bulgarian community? And who knew that community had an antidefamation league! But I feel terrible. I should be whipped by a big Bulgarian man (whose average life expectancy, by the way, is sixty-eight years).

  I’m hoping this little scandal will blow over, which I think it will. And I’m even more confident that my career blunder won’t be written up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. That makes me feel better. Because there are people whose entire place in history rests on a screwup, who are famous for nothing other than their failure.

  I’m thinking, in particular, of poor James Challis. You’ve got to feel for this unfortunate 19th-century fellow. As the Britannica says in its very first sentence about him, Challis was a “British clergyman and astronomer, famous in the history of astronomy for his failure to discover the planet Neptune.”

  Here’s the sad planetary tale: Challis’s career was going along at a nice clip. Born in 1803, he published dozens of scientific papers in his twenties and early thirties, and got himself named director of the Cambridge Observatory. Not bad. Then came the fateful September of 1845. A fellow Cambridge astronomer had been making calculations of the perturbations of the orbit of Uranus, and asked Challis to look for an unknown planet in a specific position. Challis was apparently not impressed, and put it pretty far down on his “To Do” list.

  Finally, on further urging, Challis started looking closely in July of 1846. Every night he looked, and every night he found nothing new. Then on September 23, Challis was scooped. The Berlin Observatory made international headlines by announcing the discovery of Neptune. Challis went back and checked his calculations, and realized he had actually observed the planet one night in August, but because he didn’t compare his notes from that night with those of the previous night, he didn’t realize it.

  I pity the man. He must have gotten some serious ribbing from his astronomer buddies over that night’s sherry. “Say, James old chap, I lost my pocket watch. Would you help me look for it? Oh, I just remembered. Never mind.” And they’d all burst out laughing. Then another royal astronomer would pipe up, “James old sport, do tell us what happ
ened. Where was your head? Was it perhaps … up Uranus?” Then they’d all laugh so hard they’d spit up their cucumber sandwiches.

  I try not to revel in other people’s failure, but this does make me feel better about my Bulgarian debacle. So I’m embarrassed for a couple of days. Who cares? Everyone makes gaffes at work, and it’s not the end of the solar system. At least I’m not James Challis.

  I know it’s a mixed bag, this comparing your life to historical figures. Naturally, it can be incredibly dismaying—as when you realize how uneventful or unimpressive your life is. But it can also be inspiring, or energizing, or—in this case—comforting. I thank poor Mr. Challis and move on.

  Cortés, Hernán

  More syphilis. A lusty man “much given to women,” the conquistador contracted the disease in the 1500s, which caused him to miss an ill-fated expedition to South America in 1509. Luck is a weird thing. Sometimes getting an STD can save your life.

  cosmos

  In the entry on cosmos, the Britannica tells us the universe will end either as a “cold, dark and virtually empty place” or as a “fiery crucible.” So, which is it? Fire or ice? That’s a pretty big difference. Take a stand, Britannica! I want to know what lies in store for me, assuming I exercise daily and eat low-fat muffins and live another few billion years. Information can be maddeningly imprecise. If I had to bet, I’d go with ice, since I vaguely remember some magazine article saying that’s the current leading contender.

  But either way, it’s not an uplifting end to all of existence. Unlike a well-timed STD, there’s no way those could turn out to be a lucky break. I’m only in the Cs and already I’ve reached the horrible end to all existence.

  courtship

  I can’t believe what a bunch of sleazeballs these animals are. That’s what strikes me whenever I read about courtship rituals in the animal kingdom. These critters—at least the male ones—are some slimy, deceitful operators. Consider the shameless debauchee known as the swordtail characin fish (whom I first encountered in the animal behavior section). The male swordtail characin, you see, has long stringy bits that dangle from his gills—bits that are designed to look exactly like the daphnia worm, the characin’s favorite snack. When a hungry female characin sees this tantalizing daphnia, she naturally approaches, anticipating a nice a meal. Instead, when she’s close enough, she gets an unpleasant surprise: the male shtups her. A literal bait and switch.