Letter-perfect story about reading A-Z

Scott C. Yates, Special To The News

Published October 15, 2004 at midnight

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Book reviews aren't supposed to talk about other book reviews, but the day I sat down to write about A.J. Jacobs' The Know It All, The New York Times Book Review printed a full-page lambasting of this story about a guy who decided that he just wasn't smart enough, so he decided to read all 44 million words in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The review was written by Joe Queenan, who hates everything except himself. A few years back, I reviewed Queenan's book about his attempt to make his own independent movie. I liked it, and I would have thought that a guy who's written about his own Quixotic quest would have a little more sympathy for a guy on his own journey to try something grand against the advice of, well, everybody.

Queenan even makes fun of Jacobs for the sin of doing something just to be able to write a book about it. You'd think the man who wrote an entire book about his own six-month effort to be nice would not be so quick to throw stones.

But no, Queenan couldn't turn off his sneer. Well, upon reflection, I want to take back all the nice things I said about his book, now selling on Amazon for less than a buck, and praise Jacobs' book as much as possible.

Admittedly, I went into it with reservations. It was awfully big for what it was setting out to do and also looked a bit too cute. Once into it, however, I couldn't put it down.

Jacobs gives each letter in the encyclopedia it's own chapter. In segments ranging from a handful of words to several pages, he writes about what he learns, but also about the encyclopedia itself, the nature of intelligence and himself in his yearlong journey.

It's all leavened with a pastiche of self-mocking.

He writes with real excitement, for example, about the time he stopped his wife from from throwing coriander into a dish on the stove. He had just finished the "Cs," so he knew that coriander and cilantro are the same thing.

While his wife knew her friend sharing dinner with them hated cilantro, she didn't know it was the same thing as coriander.

Jacobs saved the day, and his wife, mostly annoyed by his encyclopedia project, for the first time smiled and thanked him.

He says he hopes that his knowledge will help him in many practical ways, but admits the cilantro victory was about as fantastic as it got. No doubt second to that was when he learned something that's always puzzled me: When ice skaters and ballerinas spin around, they try to keep their heads in one place for most of the spin.

I always thought they did that to look good on stage or in front of the camera, but actually it's so that they don't get dizzy. By focusing their eyes on one point, it helps them maintain their equilibrium.

Using this tidbit in a game of Simon Says, Jacobs was able to induce his nieces and nephews to spin themselves until they couldn't stand, while Jacobs - armed with his new knowledge - was more or less OK.

He admitted that it was a bit cruel, but he was dying to use his newfound information for something, and he knew that dropping facts randomly into conversation with adults made him about "as welcome as an assassin bug at a Sunday barbecue (the assassin bug, by the way, can shoot a stream of blinding saliva up to twelve inches)."

The book is more than just a cute treatment of trivia. Jacobs also looks into what it means to be smart by going to a Mensa meeting, talking with professors and high school teachers, interviewing Alex Trebeck, reading Sartre's and Flaubert's stories of fictional men who tried to improve themselves by reading, and eventually getting on the syndicated version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Queenan takes Jacobs to task for not knowing more about high culture and world history before undertaking his adventure, but he misses the point. Like nearly all 30-somethings these days, Jacobs knows way too much about pop culture. Unlike most 30-somethings, however, he wants to improve himself in a broader way.

Jacobs seems just as wide-eyed and enthusiastic about learning about Goethe as he does discovering that the Mensa crowd is so socially inept that at their meetings they have color-coded stickers for members to signal if they want a hug or if they prefer to be asked first.

A subplot involving Jacobs and his wife and their attempt to get pregnant is also touching.

Jacobs, a magazine writer at heart, can't help but spot some trends, and includes a guide on how the average person can get written about in the venerable Britannica. The tricks include getting beheaded, becoming a noted botanist or designing a font.

He also tells some of the great stories behind the stories. I've always enjoyed the Pythagorean theorem, in part because of the interesting sidewalk mosaic at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, before renovation destroyed it. It showed a triangle with the tiled representation of "a-squared plus 'b-squared equals c-squared."

What I learned from Jacobs was that Pythagoras also "founded a religious brotherhood in ancient Greece - and by religious brotherhood, I mean a fringe cult." One of the brotherhood's rules: Do not touch beans.

Beans?

Perhaps the cruelest fate for Queenan is this: Jacobs' book has already been sold to a studio planning to make it into a movie, and I bet it will be a big, funny hit, unlike the movie Queenan made.

But even so, the book will always be better than the movie, and this is a great book.

Scott C. Yates is a Denver entrepreneur and freelancer.

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