Poor Zywiec. For years, this Polish city (population 32,000) has had the distinction of being the final entry in the print edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the last word in the 44-million-word opus.
Now, in this post-print, post-alphabetical world, Zywiec will be just another Central European town with a nice castle. Well, at least Zywiec citizens can console themselves with beer, which the Britannica says they are adept at brewing.
Dan Neville/The New York Times
I too am heartbroken. I spent many hundreds of hours with those gold-embossed Britannica volumes on my lap, flipping through the tissue-thin pages and squinting at the 9-point font. About 10 years ago, worried that my brain was turning to tapioca, I decided to smarten up by reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica – all 32 leather-bound volumes. It was a stunt, yes. But as I learned from the Britannica, stunts can have their own absurd nobility, whether it was Tenzing Norgay summiting Everest or the 19th century French acrobat Charles Blondin strolling across the Niagara Falls on a tightrope, stopping midway to make and eat an omelet.
Long before me, encyclopedia reading had an esteemed history. George Bernard Shaw and the heart surgeon Michael DeBakey are members of the start-to-finish club. C.S. Forester, the author of “Horatio Hornblower,” found it so riveting that he read the whole thing twice.
I know I sound like a crotchety old grandfather on the porch reminiscing about the good old days of rumble seats, but I loved having pages you could actually turn, not click or swipe. I adored the literal weight of each volume (4 pounds), which somehow lent it metaphorical gravitas as well. I fell hard for the familiar smell of leatherette covers and the crinkling of the pages. I marveled at the odd collision of words on the bindings (one volume runs from “Excretion” to “Geometry”).
The books gave comfort. A set of Britannicas sent the message that all the world’s information could fit on one shelf.
Such juxtapositions were key to its charm. The Britannica encouraged serendipitous discoveries. Look up Abbott and Costello, and you might be lured in by abalones or Absalom, who died after his luxurious hair got caught in a tree.
But you can’t reverse the arrow of time, to borrow a phrase from the astronomer Arthur Eddington (thanks, Britannica). I’m aware that digital has tons of advantages — speed, size and searchability among them. It’s also harder to censor. Back in 1751, the Britannica’s predecessor — Diderot’s Encyclopedie — was deemed so dangerous by King Louis XV that he had the volumes locked up in the Bastille alongside murderers and madmen. It’s much harder to lock up a Web site.
But physicality has its rewards as well. For decades, the Britannica served a symbolic purpose. Fill your living room shelf with encyclopedias, and you were announcing, “Yes, we are an intellectually curious family.” A mounted moose head, but for the brainy.
It was practical, too. On his trip to Antarctica, the explorer Ernest Shackleton lugged the entire ninth edition with him in the boat. Legend has it he ended up burning the volumes for kindling. Try doing that with Google.
The books gave comfort. A set of Britannicas sent the message that all the world’s information could fit on one shelf. Hans Koning, the New Yorker writer, once called the Britannica the culmination of the Enlightenment, the naïve belief that all human knowledge could be presented with a single point of view. The Britannica marched along, neatly and orderly, from A to Z. It was containable, unlike the sprawling chaos of Wikipedia.
I need to cheer up. Maybe I’ll listen to a jaunty a-ak tune. (A-ak: ancient Korean music and the first word in my Britannica set.)
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