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.

Read it again

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

François Mauriac, French novelist

François Mauriac

If finding time to read is a challenge for most people, finding time to reread is a much greater challenge. With so many books waiting our attention, how can we dare spend time — some would say waste time — reading the same book multiple times?

Yet I have heard or read about individuals who read certain books, such as Middlemarch or Pride and Prejudice, repeatedly, sometimes as often as once a year. I admire these people. They may not be able to read as many new books as they might wish, but they have managed to find one book that speaks to them deeply and says something new and different each time they return to it. That seems wonderful to me, and as François Mauriac says, the book they choose to reread tells us something about them.

I have read a number of books more than once, and a few three times — J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King and Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt come to mind —but taking the time to be dedicated to one particular novel over a lifetime seems like a luxury to me.

My passion for Charles Dickens has come rather late in life, but I think now that Our Mutual Friend or Little Dorrit would be excellent books to devote a lifetime to. They are so long and deep and detailed that it might take a lifetime to fully appreciate them. One reading clearly is inadequate. This helps explain the devotion some have toward Middlemarch. I read George Eliot's novel once and felt like I could only begin to understand all that was going on.

Of course, if one is going to focus on a single book, especially at my stage of life, it would be much easier to choose something shorter. Maybe it's time to pick up Franny and Zooey again. What does that say about me?

Mind the middle

Mickey Spillane

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

Mickey Spillane

When reviewing Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge the other day, I complained about the Dutch travelogue the author inserted into the middle of her story, which seemed to me to be mostly padding intended to make her novel for children longer than it needed to be. True, Dodge does introduce some characters in this part of the novel and creates some subplots. Even so it is the dullest part of the book and over the years has probably caused many readers to put down the novel and never pick it up again.

So many novels are like this, even if not to the extreme of Dodge's book. Most novels start out exciting, or at least interesting, to get the reader hooked. And they conclude with a flourish, as love, truth or whatever prevails and questions are answered and loose ends are tied up.

But then there is that middle part where the story slows down. The novelist fills in the background, telling us what happened before the opening chapter. We find out more about the characters and are introduced to new ones. Sometimes all this is necessary, yet often it seems like padding, sort of like Dodge's travelogue. Even mysteries and thrillers often have dead spots in the middle where nothing much seems happen.

Novelist Siri Hustvedt said, "Novels often sag under their own weight halfway through." Readers are reading for resolution of the plot, while writers are struggling to achieve 300 pages or 400 pages or whatever the desired length may be.

Ideally the author can let tension build during this central part of a novel, rather than hit a pause button on the plot. Of novels I have read recently, I would rate William Kent Krueger's The River We Remember highly this regard. The author brings in backstory without seriously slowing down the momentum of the main story. In a very different kind of novel, Thrity Umrigar does something similar in The Space Between Us.

And so it can be done. Too many authors fail to do it well.

Good story buried in detail

Mary Mapes Dodge

Because the name of Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905) shows up in my family tree, I wanted to like her most famous book for children, Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1865), more than I did.

One problem with it is simply that the passage of time has dated Dodge's language and story-telling techniques. More seriously, she apparently didn't think she had enough story to make a book — for a children's book I think she did — and so the middle part of the novel becomes a sort of travelogue. A group of boys, which does not even include Hans Brinker, takes a skating tour through much of Holland. The author describes scenes and customs,  remembers Dutch history and recalls Dutch folk tales. Meanwhile readers — or at least this reader — want to get back to the story.

And that central plot is a good one. Hans and Gretel Brinker are poor children who can afford only hand-crafted wooden skates, which will be hopeless for the upcoming big skating race for children. The prize is a pair of silver skates, one pair for the fastest boy and another for the fastest girl. The reason for their poverty is that their father, Rafe, suffered a serious head injury 10 years previously and has not been the same since. Sometimes he even becomes violent.

Eventually a crusty physician, whose own sadness has soured his personality, performs a risky operation, bringing Rafe back to his senses. With his memory restored, Rafe remembers two secrets that give the Brinkers prosperity and respectability again — and also make the doctor as beholding to the Brinkers as they are to him.

As for the race, that doesn't end quite as you might expect.

So this is a pleasant, sometimes exciting, story for children packaged in such a way that few children, at least today, would care to read.

Dolls within dolls

Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds. Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world.

Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

Kate Atkinson's second Jackson Brodie novel, One Good Turn (2006), reminds me of a typical episode of Seinfeld, the 1990's situation comedy. No, it's not funny. Rather there are several characters with their individual subplots that turn out to be connected in surprising ways. Coincidences abound, yet because they are deliberate and expertly crafted, these coincidences are not as objectionable as they might be in some other novel. The way the different stories tie together is the whole point.

The story starts with a road rage incident in Edinburgh, one driver attacking another with a baseball bat. Martin, a lonely and ordinarily passive crime writer, intervenes, saving a man's life while putting his own life in danger. Brodie, a former cop and former private investigator, also happens to be on hand. He is in Edinburgh with Julia, a mismatched girlfriend who is appearing in a play.

Soon there are murders, seemingly unrelated to that road rage incident. A female cop doesn't know whether Brodie is a criminal, a witness or really an ex-cop with more insight than she has, but she falls for him anyway. Meanwhile her teenage son somehow winds up with the only copy of Martin's missing book.

Another subplot concerns a crooked homebuilder in a coma and a wife who hopes he never recovers. And there is so much else going on, including repeated references to Russian dolls, which turn out to be an apt metaphor for the entire novel.

Atkinson took a chance building a story around coincidence, when that is something most quality writers take pains to avoid. And she gets away with it.

Science embraces science fiction

Ironically, the older science fiction is, the less likely it is to have been tainted by modern preconceptions about alien life, and therefore the more accurate it may be.

Arik Kershenbaum, The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy

Arik Kershenbaum

Science fiction — including both novels and movies — gets mentioned surprisingly often in Arik Kershenbaum's The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy, a book about what alien life, if it exists, might be like. I found this interesting for three reasons.

1. A scientist actually enjoys reading science fiction stories and watching science fiction films and TV shows. It is sort of like gangsters watching The Godfather or baseball players reading Bernard Malamud's The Natural. Those who know the facts can enjoy the fiction created by those who mainly use their imaginations.

2. He takes this fiction seriously. He doesn't make fun of sci-fi, but instead makes use of it. Of course, it could be argued that Kershenbaum's book is itself a form of science fiction, because like sci-fi it amounts to speculation based on facts.

3. He finds older science fiction more useful than newer science fiction, as the line quoted above suggests.

He often mentions Fred Hoyle's novel The Black Cloud, a book I read as a teenager. He also makes mention of such old-time sci-fi writers as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. There are numerous references to Star Trek and even The Planet of the Apes.

Imagining alien life

Anyone who has even wondered if life exists elsewhere in the universe has probably also wondered what that life might look like and act like. Zoologist Arik Kershenbaun has done more than wonder. He has written a book about it, The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (2020).

Not having any real evidence of life on other planets Kershenbaum must confine himself to examining life on earth and then trying to determine what features of life must be universal. If most animals on Earth have two eyes and two ears, would most alien life have two eyes and two ears? What is likely and what isn't?

He reaches conclusions like this:

"So we can be confident that alien worlds will (much to the delight of Hollywood) be full of voracious predators."

And this:

"Some aspects of alien communication will always be alien to our comprehension — even if we can decode its meaning."

And this:

"Their screams will probably be very much like ours."

Where Kershenbaum really gets weird is when near the end of his book he begins speculating about whether any intelligent beings elsewhere in the galaxy might be considered human simply by reason of their intelligence. He even wonders if dolphins and chimpanzees should be called human because of their intelligence relative to that of other animal species.

He deflates his own speculation, however, when he refers to a Star Trek movie in which Captain Kirk suggests that both he and Spock are human. Spock replies, "I find that remark insulting." Any intelligent life, including dolphins, would probably be smart enough to find Kershenbaum's comments equally insulting.