Encyclopedic memories

We were as excited as when we'd bought our new car,
and it, too, weighed a ton, ... 

Thus begins a poem -- a hymn almost -- that relives a family's joyful purchase over fifty years ago.  The poem, by Jane Shore and appearing in this week's New Yorker, is entitled, simply, "Encyclopaedia Britannica." 

The poet reminds us that before Wikipedia, before the Internet, there was the encyclopedia -- a publication -- printed and illustrated on tangible paper -- that, at its most expansive, attempted to summarize and explain all knowledge of any importance.

The poem brings to mind, prosaically and less poetically, my own fond memories of the World Book Encyclopedia.

I'd always known of encyclopedias, of course, from the school library.  But until I was about 11, I had never dreamed of having my very own, within reach at all times -- ever available to solve all puzzles -- to enable us to replace, as Ms. Shore's verse reminds me, our accepted opinions with verifiable facts.  It was in that year that the salesman for the Book of Knowledge came door to door, displaying his sample volumes.  I was overwhelmed not only by the number of bound volumes in the set, but by the presence of a limited number of full-color plates.  (I recall specifically the page that showed samples of various precious stones in full color; colored illustrations and photos in those days, even in, say, the National Geographic magazine, were not common.) 

Please, please, please, I begged.  We have to buy it.

My dad hesitated, but finally said no.  We already had a set of the Book of Knowledge, he claimed -- his own set from his own childhood.  He'd dig it out of storage and give it to me.

And so he did, and I was grateful.  But it wasn't the same.  It was old, old in every way.  It was the 1923 edition -- the year in which, ironically, my dad was himself 11 years old.  It might as well, from my callow perspective, have been the 1823 edition. 

I was an inter-planetary travel devotee long before I turned eleven, and I was scandalized to see the distance between earth and various heavenly bodies illustrated by drawings that showed express trains barreling along on inter-planetary railway tracks.  This is how long it would take a train, going 60 mph, to reach Mars, the volume exclaimed.

Well, really! 

The issue simmered below the surface, until a few years later, a nice lady came to our door. I was now 15.  She was met by my mother, rather than by my father.  My mother agreed I needed a modern encyclopedia of my own..  The order was placed.  I have no idea how much it cost.  More, I'm sure, that we could afford.  But, I'm proud to say, my parents ranked education higher than they did many other discretionary indulgences.

A few weeks later, I came home from ninth grade to find an enormous box waiting for me in the living room.  My mother and I opened it together.  Each of the nineteen volumes -- in pebbly-grained red and blue bindings -- was carefully wrapped in paper.  Over a matter of hours, each volume was reverently unwrapped and given an initial inspection.  They met with my full approval, even though, looking back, many of the articles now seem rather rudimentary for the studious 15-year-old that I was -- or, at least, as I like to recall my being.  They certainly didn't match the level of the more erudite essays to be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as I was to learn in high school.  But they were mine.  I was ecstatic.
 
Jane Shore's poem concludes that her Britannica now

... resides
in a climate-controlled storage unit on River Road,
in the cartons I packed after my parents died:
...
between covers, warped and moldering,
its defunct contributors bulldozed under
for eternity, as in a family graveyard --

Well, that sucks!

I'm happy to reveal that my 1955 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia, together with a number of subsequent annual supplements, now rests proudly on display within a few feet of my computer, in a dining room bookcase. (One shelf above my dad's Book of Knowledge.)  I often pull out a volume, either seeking a specific subject or simply browsing.  Yes, the material is dated, provincial, naïve -- and at times embarrassingly so.  The entry for "New York City" begins "New York City is probably the greatest city in the world."

I've grown much older, more complex in my thinking, and somewhat jaded, even cynical, as I compare myself now to myself as a boy of 15. But my World Book has not.  It still insists, it still reminds me, in a touchingly Whiggish, Macaulay-esque manner, that all of history had been but prelude to mid-20th century American civilization, and that we of 1955 were then living in the best of all possible worlds.

It's nice to be reminded of days when both America and I were so young and optimistic.