Profit motive

Most of us, if we think about it at all, probably assume the Bible was first book printed by Johannes Gutenberg for religious reasons. Not true, says Simon Winchester in Knowing What We Know. Gutenberg printed the Bible first for financial reasons. He needed to make as much money as possible to recoup his expenses. That meant printing a book that someone would actually buy.

"What the Gutenberg publishing house was bent on creating during its three years of intense work was a book designed primarily for those who would pay for it," Winchester writes.

Before moveable type made printed books possible in large numbers, there was little reason for most people to learn how to read. Literacy was a gift enjoyed by few, mostly the elite and especially those within the Church. And these were the people with enough money to buy books. Winchester says the first printed Bibles cost the equivalent of $30,000 in today's money.

Just as important, Gutenberg needed to maximize income by selling his book beyond Germany. Why would people in France or other countries in Europe pay for a book printed in German? And there wouldn't be enough customers in Germany to make a book printed in German profitable.

But members of the clergy throughout Europe could read Latin, making a Latin Bible the ideal choice for the first book printed with moveable type.

"Thus did Johannes Gutenberg follow a rule that applies to this day: the books most likely to make money are the books that get published," Winchester says. And all these centuries later, Bibles continue to make money for publishers.

Encyclopedia's end

A few decades ago, encyclopedia sets were a fixture in any library, large or small. When I was in high school, the World Book was the first source — and in many cases the only source — most students went to when they had to write a theme paper. The entries were relatively brief and relatively easy to understand, a better choice than the Britannica for most students.

So what happened to encyclopedias? Why don't they exist anymore? The Internet, right? Well, no, says Simon Winchester in his book Knowing What We Know. They were done in by knowledge. Knowledge began expanding too rapidly for a printed encyclopedia to keep up.

Winchester writes: "The Britannica started showing its age, appearing to be long past its sell-by date, dying on its feet The pace of change was beyond the capacity of so unwieldy and arthritic a behemoth to record it. It had become a myth. It had become a victim of its own gargantuan ambition."

An encyclopedia took years to assemble, then became outdated long before it got into print and on anybody's shelf. The Encyclopedia Brittanica stopped publication in 2012, but it was essentially dead long before that. And it outlasted most other multi-volume encyclopedias.

Much the same is true of dictionaries and other kinds of reference books. There are quicker, cheaper, more reliable ways of obtaining the latest information. New words are added to the vocabulary and old words change their meanings faster than a printed dictionary can produce a new edition.

Those encyclopedias and dictionaries that remain in print are usually single volumes that collect information that doesn't change much, or doesn't change rapidly, such as a Bible dictionary.

Encyclopedias probably served their purpose, but I doubt that many people miss them. I only rarely ever opened it even when I had a set in my home. It may have been comforting to have all that knowledge there, easily available even if rarely used, but the books took up so much space and cost so much money that they were impractical for most people. I had a set only because the local library didn't want it any longer and I thought, mistakenly, that it might be useful.

Several years ago A.J. Jacobs read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from beginning to end and wrote a book about the experience, The Know-It-All. The successful book was published in 2005, or not long before the printed version was abandoned for good. He may be among the very few people who ever actually got their money's worth.

The history of knowledge

Knowledge makes humble. Ignorance makes proud.

Confucius

Books are depositories of knowledge. Now Simon Winchester has written a book about knowledge itself, Knowing What We Know (2023).

How is knowledge gathered? How is it used? How is it conveyed to others? How is it stored? Winchester tackles all such questions and in so doing discusses everything from oral traditions to schools to the invention of moveable type to the Encyclopedia Brittanica to Wikipedia and Google. He writes about libraries and newspapers and universities, as well as about many great individuals  down through the ages from all parts of the world, from Asia to Africa to Europe to America, who have advanced the cause of knowledge.

Yet knowledge has a dark side, and Winchester does not ignore it, devoting a few pages to propaganda, which either creates fake knowledge or emphasizes one side of a question while downplaying the other. In other words, he writes about such things as politics and advertising. Unfortunately Winchester sometimes turns political himself and tosses in his own propaganda.

The most disturbing part of his book comes near the end when he wonders if knowledge may be becoming obsolete. Because of calculators, we no longer need to know even basic math. Because we have GPS. we no longer need to know much about geography. In which direction does the sun set? We no longer need to know even that. Because of Wikipedia and Google and Siri, we no longer need to know much of anything. What does this mean for the future of mankind?

Winchester packs so much into this book that it seems hard to believe that it comes in under 400 pages.

Mostly funny stuff

In his introduction to P.J. O'Rourke's The Funny Stuff, a collection of brief excerpts from O'Rourke's writings, Christopher Buckley describes the selection of these quotations as being like plucking "one low-hanging fruit after another." In other words, what could be easier than finding funny things P.J. O'Rourke wrote?

When I read that, I agreed with it, for I have read a number of O'Rourke books and laughed my way through each of them. Yet after finishing this book, I found that I disagreed. So what went wrong?

The main problem, I think, is that O'Rourke's lines are funnier in context than standing alone. There are exceptions, of course:

"There is only one hard-and-fast rule about the place to have a party: someone else's place."

"If you run more than twenty miles a week, try not to die young, It will make people snigger."

"El Salvador has the scenery of northern California and the climate of southern California plus — and this was a relief — no Californians."

"Freedom of speech is important — if you have anything to say. I've checked the Internet; nobody does."

Yet so many of the lines quoted were, I'm sure, much more amusing in the context of the book or article in which they are found. They are like the punch lines without the jokes.

And many of the excerpts collected by Terry McDonell, the editor, are not really funny at all, but just good examples of clever writing, even witty writing, but not knee-slapping stuff. Here is a sample about Tanzania" "Probably every child whose parents weren't rich enough has been told, 'We're rich in other ways.' Tanzania is fabulously rich in other ways." That's a great line, but I wouldn't call it funny.

I enjoyed The Funny Stuff very much, but I think I would have called it The Good Stuff. 

Fowler play

Connie May Fowler

Before Women Had Wings, the novel by Connie May Fowler I reviewed favorably two days ago, was purchased by mistake in a used bookstore. I had become a fan of Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and other fine novels, and got the names confused. I wanted Karen Joy but got Connie May.

Some mistakes turn out to be blessings, and this was one of them. I enjoyed Connie May's novel as much as I have Karen Joy's.

But adding to the confusion, there is also Therese Anne.

Therese Anne Fowler is the author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, A Well-Behaved Woman and other novels. I have not read any of her books, but this Fowler may actually have sold more books than the other two. I don't really know about that, but her books seem easier to find. I do know that when one gets to the F's in the fiction section of a bookstore or library, one needs to be careful about those Fowlers.

There is also an Earlene Fowler, but fortunately she does not use her middle name, and her books are usually shelved with the mysteries.

Flying away

Domestic abuse runs in families, children often learning and later imitating the violent behavior of their parents when they have families of their own. How can this cycle be broken? Connie May Fowler explores this question in her striking 1996 novel Before Women Had Wings.

Set in Florida in the 1960s, during the Johnson administration, the story is told by Bird, a little girl whose actual name is Avocet. Her mother wanted to name her daughters after birds, and her older sister got Phoebe. Avocet, being so unusual, was soon replaced with the nickname Bird. And bird imagery flies in and out of the novel, including its title.

In Bird's family, her father often beats her mother after both have spent a night drinking, and then her mother beats her two daughters. These beatings are often brutal and graphic, such as a coffee mug struck hard into Phoebe's face and Bird being whipped with a belt, the buckle end striking her bare back repeatedly. Their mother confesses that her father beat her as a child.

Following Bird's father's death — was it suicide or murder? — their mother takes the girls to Tampa and moves into an old motel. She works in the office to pay for their cramped quarters, while buying food and alcohol with government checks. Every night Bird's mother resumes her drinking, while her two daughters walk on eggshells.

Miss Zora, an old and mysterious black woman, also lives on the property. Bird's mother dislikes her and tries to get the motel owner to evict her, but Bird forms a deep relationship with this woman who, despite her apparent wisdom, has lost contact with her own daughter. White authors often have difficulty creating authentic black characters, choosing to bestow on them moral perfection and often mystical powers. They can have similar difficulties with Indian characters in western novels. Fowler comes close to this, but in the end she makes Miss Zora a realistic, imperfect and vulnerable human being.

Bird and Phoebe dream of flying away from their abusive home, yet they love their mother deeply, just as their mother loves them when her anger is under control. Fowler finds a way to make love provide the answer to this terrible situation.

Clever foolishness

Sebastian Faulks

In his 1992 novel A Fool's Alphabet, Sebastian Faulks has 26 chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet. The story begins in Anzio, Italy, during World War II. It then progresses to Backley, England; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Dorking, England; Evanston, Illinois, etc., while going back and forth in time. It concludes back in Italy in Zanica.

I wish I would have known about this novel years ago when I wrote a newspaper column about novels with unusual chapter arrangements. There is one novel, for example, that consists only of first chapters. The first-person narrator begins her story and then, dissatisfied, begins it again and again, each time at a different point. Eventually the entire story is told without her ever getting past the first chapter.

And there is one author whose novels never have a chapter 13.

My favorite part of the Faulks novel is where a character refers to the Fool's Alphabet, a series of puns. There are different versions of this, and it is sometimes called the Cockney Alphabet. Reciting it with a Cockney accent, or simply by saying it quickly out loud, can help in catching the puns. Here are some examples.

A for 'orses

C for yourself (or C for miles, in some versions)

G for police

L for leather

M for sis

Q for a ticket

S for Williams (or, if you prefer, S for you, you can take a hike)

X for breakfast

Several of the puns I have yet to figure out, but those that I have, including those above, are very clever, clearly not the work of a fool.