Encyclopedia Britannica

Dumpster Diving

By: Charles Giuliano - Jun 15, 2016

Encyclopedia Britannica

Hauling books
Annual library sale
Sign said
No encyclopedias
Among banned substances}
Weeding out
Lifetime of acquisition
Limited shelf space
Remembering the ‘50s
When dad traded in
Old Encyclopedia Britannica
For new one
Hokey binding
Missed the original
More science
After Sputnik
Totally upgraded
Salesman said
Subscribed to
Yearbooks
Through high school
Handy reference
Once thought
I would read them
Volume after volume
All that information
Be smart like
Charles Van Doren
$64,000 question
Ended in scandal
Or Jeopardy today
Get some answers
Not others
Real smart at times
Or thick as a brick
Does trivia
Measure knowledge
What do contestants
Really know
Can true intellect
Run narrow and deep
Or broad in reach
From beach to beach
Started with Diderot
The Enlightenment
Gathering all that was
Known at the time
Into reference books
Nobody needs anymore
All on line
Just type a search
Google it
Broke my heart
Tossing ours
Into the dumpster
Like yesterday’s newspaper

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Reader Comments

"I poured over the 11th ed of the Ency. Brit. Very pro-British, but ironically it was then owned by Americans. Shows how being Pro-Brit sells books. I said in my introductory paragraph to my essay "The Modern Corporate State, the Rhetoric of Freedom, and the Emergence of Modernism in the United States: The Mediation of Language in Critical Practice." In this essay I want to sketch out an argument premised on two propositions: first, that the modern corporate state, a political-economic phenomenon, and modernism, a cultural phenomenon, are complexly interdependent, with the former providing the conditions for the efflorescence and development of the latter, while the latter furnishes the cultural window-dressing for the former; and second, that in trying to understand the mediations between the modern corporate state and modernism, we might find it useful to examine the role played by rhetoric." That's all one sentence!!"

Posted By: Pat Hills on 06-18-2016, 10:39 am
"You all with your genuflection before the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica!! It was unremittingly pro-British. I wrote about what Williard Huntington Wright said in his book "Misinforming a Nation," a tirade against the eleventh edition. He said as follows" "No more vicious and dangerous educational influence on America can readily be conceived than the articles in this encyclopedaedia." I'll ask Charles to print the full excerpt from my (obscure) essay "The modern corporate state, the rhetoric of freedom and the emergence of modernism in the United States: the Mediation of Language in Critical Practice." printed in the obscure Malcolm Gee, ed, Art Criticism Since 1900 (Manchester University Press, 1993)."

Posted By: Patricia Hills on 06-18-2016, 08:55 am
"Still have my father's Eleventh Edition Brittanaca in twenty-odd small print volumes. Charles--our mutual friend Russ Klavun swore by what he used to call the, "Glorious Ninth" Edition. Books ARE becoming obsolete, but the process may never be complete."

Posted By: jimmy midnight on 06-17-2016, 05:26 pm
"I like the personal element in these, and in particular, shudder at the proximity of books and dumpster."

Posted By: Stephen Rifkin on 06-17-2016, 04:10 pm
"wow, there are projects I’d love to finish too..."

Posted By: Howie Levitz on 06-17-2016, 04:08 pm
"Charles Van Doren is/was a friend of mine...he was very smart. He is still alive but lost most of it."

Posted By: Irving Slavid on 06-17-2016, 04:06 pm
"I remember the old Brittania! Used for research papers occasionally, but only High School. Couldn't schlep to college. Tough to see them go."

Posted By: Jane Hudson on 06-17-2016, 03:05 pm