Human Encyclopedias in 1954: a strangely normal couple.

[Fletch]

Now and then in the media we encounter human encyclopedias - people with prodigious memories. Traditionally, they are solitary, obsessive, often from exotic cultures or religions, with a deep focus on one topic. You know: math, chess, baseball. They are such a stereotype that you might think it's all in their genetic codes.

But in 1954, things were different for at least one couple. About all the middle-aged, middle-class, very married VanDeventers had in common with any other intellectuals was that they lived in Princeton, NJ.

Fred owned a printing company and Florence was a housewife and volunteer. What they did that made them so unusual was read - two hours or more every night - together - polishing off anything that interested them.

Through this free-feeding from the trough of general knowledge, they'd made a nice second career in the radio and TV quiz show field. (The picture shows them on the panel of the very popular Twenty Questions).

It was a far cry from what got them interested in quizzes and such: raising two young kids in the early '30s, the college-educated couple had been "too poor to go to the movies," and made their own entertainment.

To us today, it's an odd perspective on the life of the mind. Nice married middle-class folks don't become human encyclopedias in our era (and it was very rare in 1954). But it suggests that book-learning didn't carry quite the same markers of social aberration in years gone by, even if fewer people aspired to it.

Read about the VanDeventers in the Reading, PA, Eagle, May 2, 1954

 

[LizzieMaine]

Fred was also a broadcaster -- he'd been a news announcer at WOR during the war years, and first brought "Twenty Questions" to radio there after the war.

They were successors to the trend of "popular intellectualism" that was very common in the thirties -- witness the widespread popularity of "Information Please" and the Quiz Kids during that era, and even further back to the popularity of the "Ask Me Another" book series in the twenties.

 

[Foxer55]

People today have been dumbed down. You name it, it dumbed them down. The state of education, the internet, facebook, social media, whatever.

Example:

Friendships cut short on social media as people get ruder: survey

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/us-socialmedia-behaviour-survey-idUSBRE9390TO20130410

 

[Shangas]

Upon reading the title of this thread, I was immediately reminded of The 39 Steps.

 

[Fletch]

Mr. Memory

"How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?"

"Winnipeg. Third city of Canada and provincial capital of Manitoba. Distance from Montreal 1,424 miles. - Am I right, sir?"

"Quite right."

 

[Shangas]

"How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?"

"Winnipeg. Third city of Canada and provincial capital of Manitoba. Distance from Montreal 1,424 miles. - Am I right, sir?"

"Quite right."

Bingo!

 

[sheeplady]

They were successors to the trend of "popular intellectualism" that was very common in the thirties -- witness the widespread popularity of "Information Please" and the Quiz Kids during that era, and even further back to the popularity of the "Ask Me Another" book series in the twenties.

Among my maternal grandmother's siblings and herself, only one of the surviving 11 children went to high school. However, my mother's uncle was one of the most well read people I have ever met and had a huge vocabulary. When he was in his teens and 20s, he loved to read, but couldn't afford books nor had access to a library (very rural). So he bought himself a dictionary and read/studied several pages every day.

Having taught for over 10 years now at the college and graduate level I've seen all sorts of levels of committal to self education. I've come to realize that often those who are the thirstiest for knowledge are those who were intellectually starved as children in some way. It could be a sub-par library, poor teachers, a poor home life, poverty, a family that discouraged learning. But what I think motivates these individuals to learn (and push themselves to learn so much) is the fact that they recognized at some point that there was this feast of information out there- often from a taste of it- and they became determined to do anything to get at it. I've often wondered if the generation that became adults in the depression and world war II (or just before) were similarly deprived and therefore this instilled a need for self improvement.

I'm not saying that children who grow up in comfortable homes, nice schools, etc. don't have a love of learning. I think the difference is that I often see adults who come from more comfortable homes have a love of learning, but they do not have the same level of desperate hunger for it. Someone who loves to learn might read a few pages of a dictionary a day... but someone who is desperate will study it. I'm not sure if there is an advantage to having a hunger versus a love or the other way around, but I do think that many of the students from less advantaged backgrounds only make it out of their previous life circumstances because they feel this urgency.