Early in my parents’ marriage they fell prey to an encyclopedia salesman. Perhaps they imagined their budding family eventually using these volumes to help with a school paper on aardvarks, or to settle esoteric arguments about the theory of evolution, or to remind us who came first, Tutankhamun or Ramses II. Unfortunately they may as well have bought wallpaper,
(https://prettygoodbritain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/bookwallpaper.jpg)
fill in the blanks (https://www.worldofwallpaper.com/rasch-library-books-wallpaper-934809.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIq_PZwcLN5QIVFuDtCh2TaQq8EAQYASABEgLQO_D_BwE)
for all the use the dozens of volumes got. Still, it was nice to grow up with books around the house.
In that spirit, many years later I found myself hauling a load of Victorian Encyclopædias home, as they were at a please-get-these-out-of-here price point. I transcribed a few articles, (https://prettygoodbritain.com/encyclopedia.html) then they ended up in the loft as further mountains for the spiders to climb. One had honourable service as a base for the front wheel of a retired but still active bike. (https://www.notanothercyclingforum.net/index.php?topic=287.0)
A compendium of knowledge which did threaten to get dog-eared was the 1980s bestseller, An Incomplete Education. I may have been hooked by the promise on the cover.
(https://prettygoodbritain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/incompleted.jpg)
hungry for knowledge (https://prettygoodbritain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/incOmpleteducation.jpg)
Opening it on a random page, one finds the following:
The Day the Music Died
ATONALITY, TWELVE-TONE THEORY, AND SUCH
Depending on whether you’re one of the cognoscenti or just an average listener, atonality is either the biggest breakthrough of the twentieth century or what’s wrong with modern music. Before you can understand what atonality is, however, you have to know a little about what it isn’t – namely, tonality. Think, for a moment, of how nicely “do re mi fa sol la ti do” fit together – that’s tonality for you. It has to do with the idea that, of the twelve tones in a chromatic scale (all of the notes from, say, one C to another on the piano keyboard), only seven have a natural affinity for, hence are capable of sustaining meaningful relationships with, each other. These tones interact as family members, experiencing their little tensions (dissonances) from time to time, but managing to work things out between themselves (consonances), and always, ultimately, gravitating toward one restful “home” note (the tonic), which determines their key. Such groupings – orderly, reassuring, full of familiar emotional associations – are the basis of tonality and of virtually all Western music from Bach to Brahms.
I don’t know about you, but I find that irresistibly readable; and anyway a single volume hefty with potential to tease your inner dilettante is much friendlier than a set of encyclopedia.
According to an obituary, (https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/01/arts/william-wilson-51-co-author-of-witty-primer-for-college-grads.html) the book came about because
Mr. Wilson and his co-author, Judy Jones, shared an office in Esquire's research department. Perplexed by the elementary inquiries of the magazine's sophisticated writers, Mr. Wilson turned to his office mate and said: ''Haven't these people ever been to college? What they don't know could fill a book.'' And it did.
It was published by Ballantine Books. Yes, that (https://www.notanothercyclingforum.net/bikereader/contributors/Ballantine/ballantine.html) Ballantine.
It made the trip across the sea when I moved to England, and though it doesn’t get opened very often these days thanks to the internet, I can’t begrudge its few inches of shelf space.
I couldn’t tell you offhand how to tell Keats from Shelley.