The Egghead’s Christmas

A few years ago, the back covers of many national magazines carried an advertisement that featured profiles of various successful men and women representing a wide array of professional endeavors; all of them were obviously smart and with it, all uncommonly prescient, and all bound by their preference for a brand of scotch.

In one of my mental constitutionals (that’s when my mind takes me for a walk), I considered applying the “profile” technique--didn’t Playboy use it with their Playmates?--to some of the people I regularly see in my bookstore who are tied together by their fierce and fanatical love of reading (one of them was actually featured in the scotch ad).

It was a lovely vision. Imagine entries like: “Earliest remembered childhood discovery: Realization that ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ was easily sounded out. Favorite song: Die Schone Mullerin in Fisher-Dieskau’s second recording. Favorite Movie: ‘Withnail and I,’ ‘Metropolitan’ and the early Merchant/Ivory films. Hobbies: cataloguing clicks in sub-Saharan language groups. First passion: The St. Matthew.” My profilees’ favorite radio personalities were neither Howard nor Rush, but Linda and Noah and Cokie and Bob. I have one customer for whom Etruscan Italy would be the historical period she’d “most want to live in,” and several who would claim Jane Austen to be the “writer you’d most want to meet.” I would guess that “I don’t agree with a word you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it,” and “The unexamined life is not worth living” to be high in the “favorite quote” category.

Popular culture’s image tends to stereotype these folks--my people, us--as horn-rimmed, high-cuffed, bow-tied or hair-bunned, uptight nerds (“Hey, Reginald, are you goin’ to Samantha’s party Friday night?” “Ah, er, no, Jason . . . I’m attending the lecture at the library on type variants in early Venetian printing.” Cut to Jason grimacing over a laugh track.) Pejoratives include egghead, Poindexter, geek, highbrow, Einstein, brainiac, or for the politically correct, persons of intellectual enhancement. Distinguishing characteristics: plastic pocket protectors, thick glasses, membership in chess clubs and ethnic folk dance groups, weird naso-oral gesticulations. It’s not a pretty picture.

It’s also a totally false picture, of course, because readers--serious, dedicated readers--are the most attractive people in the world. Sadly, The Great Unread simply lack the tools to discern this truth.

Of course, all these beautiful people need, nay, crave books for the holidays. Something to engage them and shield them from the football games, parades, Twilight Zone Marathons and other aural distractions associated with the holidays. Indeed, when we readers are given the choice between actual experience and reading about it, the latter is often preferable. Reading about the French Revolution is a lot safer than actually having been there. Heck, if it comes down to either reading Donald Hall’s “Fathers Playing Catch With Sons” and actually playing catch, would someone please toss the book over my way?

In shopping for your favorite reader, as good a place to start as any is THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 1993 edited by the quintessential egghead, Joseph Epstein. In this wonderful anthology can be found essayistic gems by Cynthia Ozick, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (who grills the Frugal Gourmet), Shelby Steele, and Lewis Thomas. Epstein, in a moment of unwarranted modesty, declined to include one of his own essays, which he writes under the name Aristides in American Scholar (thought we wouldn’t notice, Joe?); however, earlier this year he did publish a swell collection entitled PERTINENT PLAYERS: ESSAYS ON THE LITERARY LIFE, which includes subjects ranging from H.L. Mencken’s brand of anti-Semitism to a new assessment of Robert Hutchins.

Evolution seems to be a favorite topic this season with a natural selection of at least a half dozen new titles. The best buy for the inquiring novice is probably Philip Whitfield’s FROM SO SIMPLE A BEGINNING; its beautiful layout, computerized graphics and well defined compartments invite the reader in. Serious students of the science will probably be more interested in THE CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEIA OF HUMAN EVOLUTION edited by Steve Jones with some of his fellow hominids. Despite its monumental title it’s a friendly tome designed as both reference work and readers’ companion.

If you’re curious as to where all this evolution is leading (and don’t subscribe to my mother-in-law’s theory that it culminates in her grandchildren), then you might want to look at THE EVOLVING SELF by University of Chicago professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It follows his 1991 bestseller, “Flow,” which put forward the notion that happiness arises from immersion in difficult and challenging tasks. Serious readers know this from their own experiences; Csikszentmihalyi named the phenomenon “flow.” In his new book he argues that the model of evolution, and understanding our evolutionary heritage, mixed with complex and multiple goals can lead to flow, and therefore the experience of happiness. If you give this book to a reader, even if she detests the thesis, she’ll thoroughly enjoy working on pronouncing the author’s name.

If evolutionists have been busy this last year, historians haven’t been far behind. Most impressive, and comprehensive, is J.M. Roberts’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD. In just under a thousand pages, he expands on his extraordinary earlier “Pelican History of the World.” His narrative style, which gradually ties the disparate strands of human endeavor into the interconnected modern world, gives this history its distinctive voice--it would be great fun to have Dr. Roberts for dinner (“Well, Professor,” I might try as an icebreaker, “How ‘ bout that Fall of Constantinople?”).

But if you’re not in the mood for a historical smorgasbord, we can order from the menu: “Perhaps Madame might enjoy volume IV of THE HISTORY OF WOMEN: Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War edited by Genevieve Fraisse and Michelle Perrot? For starters, might we suggest a tureen of Peter Gay’s CULTIVATION OF HATRED, the latest installment of his Bourgeoisie Experience series, and to complement this repast, for dessert, Alice Turner’s sinfully delicious THE HISTORY OF HELL, garnished with color illustrations and topped with a generous dollop of bibliography. I’ll give you a moment to decide, and don’t forget that we have a child’s menu too.”

There are two “coffee table” histories which deserve special consideration. Margaret Oliphant’s THE ATLAS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD is lavishly illustrated with neat graphics, keen color photographs, and “wow”-inducing maps. THE SMITHSONIAN TIMELINES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD by Christopher Scarre looks even better, but my son Colin keeps pinching my copy so he can look at it, which is about the greatest praise I can bestow on any book.

Lest I help propagate the myth that we of the readership persuasion are interested only in what goes on between the covers of books, allow me a few recommendations. EROTIC LITERATURE: 24 Centuries of Sensual Writing edited by Jane Mills is 376 hot sheets which include all forms of sexual behavior as it’s appeared in world literature, from Sumerian Wedding verse to assure fertility, to Nicholson Baker’s phone sex in “Vox” (to assure safety). There are some pretty steamy stops along the way. If that suggestion lacks subtlety, THE METAMORPHOSES OF OVID: A New Verse Translation by Allen Mandelbaum is truly a beautiful book: cover, binding, printing, paper and production values. Those Olympians sure knew how to have a good time.

Still, these paltry few books represent only the slimmest sampling of holiday fare. Fiction (Atwood, Nordan, Mukherjee), biographies (Harold Laski, Vanessa Bell, Anais Nin, Bertrand Russell), general nonfiction (Wales, The North Pacific, the dietary habits of Jane Austen, sexual pessimism), reference books (defining word origins, telling pigs from hogs, explaining how aspirin finds headaches), even The Internet Directory (the Thomas Guide of the information highway, complete with Bitnet off-ramps) are just points on the reader’s compass. This season there’s more than enough to fog the glasses of any high brow. Have we had enough? Never!

BOOKS DISCUSSED, HINTED AT AND RECOMMENDED:

ATLAS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD, by Margaret Oliphant (Simon and Schuster: $40; 220 pp.) THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 1993 edited by Joseph Epstein (Ticknor and Fields: $21.95 cloth, $10.95 paper, 378 pp.) THE CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN EVOLUTION edited by Steve Jones et. al. (Cambridge University Press: $95; 506 pp.) THE CULTIVATION OF HATRED by Peter Gay (W.W. Norton: $30; 685 pp.) THE DICTIONARY OF WORD ORIGIN by John Ayto (Arcade: $29.95; 583 pp.) EROTIC LITERATURE: 24 Centuries of Sensual Writing edited by Jane Mills (HarperCollins: $30; 376 pp.) THE EVOLVING SELF: A Psychology for the Third Millennium by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (HarperCollins: $25; 358 pp.) FROM SO SIMPLE A BEGINNING: The Book of Evolution by Philip Whitfield (Macmillan: $40; 220 pp.) THE HISTORY OF HELL by Alice K. Turner (Harcourt Brace: $29.95; 275 pp.) THE HISTORY OF WOMEN: Emerging Feminism From Revolution to World War by Genevieve Fraisse and Michelle Perrot (Harvard University Press: $29.95; 640 pp.) THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD by J.M. Roberts (Oxford University Press: $45; 952 pp.) HOW DOES ASPIRIN FIND THE HEADACHE? by David Feldman (HarperCollins: $20; 270 pp.) THE INTERNET DIRECTORY by Eric Braun (Fawcett: $25 paper; 704 pp.) LET THE SEA MAKE A NOISE by Walter A. McDougell (Basic Books: $30; 793 pp.) METAMORPHOSES OF OVID: A New Verse Translation by Allen Mandelbaum (Harcourt Brace: $40; 59 pp.) THE NARIOKOTOME HOMO ERECTUS SKELETON by Alan Walker and Richard Leakey (Harvard University Press: $125; 458 pp.) PERTINENT PLAYERS: Essays on the Literary Life by Joseph Epstein (W.W. Norton: $24.95; 414 pp.) POISONED EMBRACE: A Brief History of Sexual Pessimism by Lawrence Osborne (Pantheon: $21; 242 pp.) THE SMITHSONIAN TIMELINES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD by Chris Scarre (Dorling Kindersley: $49; 256 pp.) WHAT JANE AUSTEN ATE AND CHARLES DICKENS KNEW by David Pool (Simon and Schuster: $25; 416 pp.) WHEN IS A PIG A HOG? by Bernice Randall (Prentice Hall: $10, paper; 328 pp.)