It's just not fair. Not only did Ken Jennings win 74 straight games on "Jeopardy," bringing home millions of dollars from those shows and subsequent tournaments, but in his 2006 book "Brainiac," he proves to be a deft writer and a darn capable reporter. Sure, you want to hate him, but the self-effacing tone of the book reinforces what he's shown on TV: He's a really likable guy.
Like I said, It's just not fair.
In "Brainiac," Jennings weaves together two storylines. In one, he gives the back story on his record-breaking 2004 run on "Jeopardy," taking us from his initial tryout all the way through to his defeat in game number 75. I'm a big "Jeopardy" fan, so I found this behind-the-scenes view fascinating.
One of the biggest challenges Jennings faced during his run was keeping it a secret. He was contractually forbidden from telling anyone the results of his shows — which didn't air for months after the tapings — so he had to invent excuses to explain his frequent absences from work and didn't tell his dad why he kept borrowing suits.
"I start to feel a little like Clark Kent at the Daily Planet, keeping up bland appearances to all his friends, who of course have no idea about bullet-stopping adventures in his double life," he writes.
Intertwined with Jennings' personal "Jeopardy" story is a parallel look at, as the book's subtitle says, the "Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs." I can't say I liked this second storyline as much as the first, but it's still pretty good.
Jennings delves deep into the history of trivia, and traces the development of general knowledge quizzes back to an 1830 book called "A Million of Facts." He described the emergence of quiz shows in the 20th century, first on radio, and then TV. He wonders whether trivia contests measure intelligence or only offer "the illusion of real intellectual mastery."
Jennings proves to be a solid writer, but what impressed me more is that he was willing to put on a journalist's hat and buzz around the country talking to people who have made trivia a big part of their lives. He visits a college quiz bowl team in Minnesota, a freelance trivia writer in California, a college student in Louisiana who talks about gender imbalance in trivia competitions, and the "World's Largest Trivia Contest" in Wisconsin. He's not above having some fun along the way: In Massachusetts, he puts on a modest disguise and helps a bar trivia team win a match.
The research brings him something of an epiphany: "It's rewarding to know a lot of great facts, but that knowledge is almost pointless if those facts don't help you get to know a lot of great people as well."
Many might think of Ken Jennings as the ultimate nerd, but when you see some of the people he interviews — people whose bookshelves groan under the weight of binders and folders filled with obscure bits of information — you realize there's a whole another world out there.
Helping make the book fun is that Jennings plants 10 trivia questions cleverly in the text of each chapter. As a little bonus, he sneaks in an interesting note at the very back of the book that describes the font used in the book.
In the end, Jennings comes away with a renewed belief that trivia can be a valuable educational building block.
"Trivia can serve as a gateway drug to more substantive learning," he writes. "Life is full of subjects too intimidating to dive into headlong, from quantum physics to Russian cinema. But trivia can provide an easy, intriguing introduction to any topic you feared might bore you silly."
No comments:
Post a Comment